As I write this, I head to a resort in Cordova to members of the Today’s Carolinian, the official student publication of the University of San Carlos (USC). The paper’s editor-in-chief, Kathleen Belleza, my current student, told me that they have recently been having “problems with commitment” and needed to reiterate among members why the university needs an autonomous student paper. She asked me, a former editor-in-chief of “TC”, as we fondly the paper, to share my experiences and talk about its long history.
Indeed, USC’s student publication has come a long way from its beginnings in 1932 as El Estudiante when the school was then called Collegio de San Carlos (CSC). A certain Pablo Tan became the first editor of what was one of the first few student publications in the Philippines that emerged during the time. In fact, the sudden sprouting of student publications led to the establishment of the College Editors Guild of the Philippines at the end of the decade, and USC’s paper, now renamed The Carolinian, became one of its first members.
The Carolinian was instrumental in drumming up patriotism that later led to the Collegio’s ROTC cadets reporting to duty at the start of the Japanese invasion in 1942. Trained for actual combat, they served in regular and guerrilla units that fought the Japanese during the war, which saw the CSC being turned into a military garrison by the enemy. The school was thus heavily bombed by the American during Liberation in 1945 and yet it only took a year and a half for CSC to resume classes. In 1948, it became a university. During these years of recovery, The Carolinian documented how it was to attend classes among the ruins, with skeletons of the dead lying here and there.
The postwar years saw the rapid transformation of the school into a global university with the sudden migration of priest-intellectuals escaping from the crackdown of the clergy in China, which had just become communist. These émigré priests, mostly Germans, introduced international academic standards to the university. They also went around Europe to solicit funds to rebuild the school.
The pages of The Carolinian, now known to students as the “C” during the 50s and the 60s reflected this rapid growth and intellectual ferment of the university as it began pioneering research in physics (one of the German priest-professors had been a student of Einstein), ethnology (USC anthropology faculty and students would immerse with the Manobo, Ati, and Mangyans for months), biology, and engineering.
The 1960s saw the growing nationalism and radicalism in the country but this spirit was toned down in the pages of the student publication, thanks to the priests who sat as its “moderators”. Still, some articles explored questions of Filipino identity and lingering colonial mentality. One of the paper’s most historic coverage was the visit to the university of President Ramon Magsaysay and shocking death five hours after in a plane crash in Mt. Manunggal in March 17, 1957. The President delivered his last speech to graduating students of USC. The Carolinian reflected in its pages how this jubilation suddenly turned into mourning.
The Carolinian also documented the visit of West Germany’s President Heinrich Luebke during the inauguration of the new Technological Center, a modern building in the new Talamban campus. The German government donated some DM 2.5 million to the university through the Society of the Divine Word (SVD). The Carolinian also covered the visit of First Lady Imelda Marcos to USC during the inauguration of the school’s museum of biology and culture in 1967.
The years before Martial Law saw the increasing radicalization of students in USC. The nationalist cause was reflected in the clamor for Filipinization of the clergy, particularly in the administration of Catholic universities. This led to the ban on foreign priests from taking up important positions in the school administration. So in 1970, Fr. Amante Castillo, a young Filipino priest replaced the renowned German anthropologist Fr. Rudolf Rahmann as USC President.
After years of struggle, the demand of students for an autonomous student publication, where student staff ran the paper without moderators from the administration, was finally granted in 1971. Unfortunately, The Carolinian had to close down the year after as President Ferdinand Marcos declared Martial Law and authorized the closure of all student newspapers.
As the student body lost its voice, many Carolinians took to the streets or went into hiding to join the armed struggle against the dictatorship. Finally, two years after Martial Law was lifted, USC’s student publication was revived in 1983 and renamed Today’s Carolinian. For several years, the “TC”, as it would then be called, maintained its being an activist and truly autonomous student publication.
Today, the biggest challenge is how to make students themselves see the importance of a student publication in the age of digital media, when even mainstream newspapers are closing down due to lack of patronage. There is, indeed, a need to remind those running the student paper such as the Today’s Carolinian of what it took to win their right to have a paper that students can call their own.