As I write this, I look forward to Saturday, the day before this column appears. By then I shall have met with the current members of the Today’s Carolinian, the official student publication of the University of San Carlos. They invited me to talk about the history of the paper, of which I have been a proud alumnus, serving it in what was for me the best years of my college life.
This is the second time that I have been invited by the “TC”, as the paper is known in USC, to talk about its story. And, like before, I share that story in this column.
But this year, as we exercise our right to vote, I feel the need to remind the students that their right to press freedom was obtained after a long struggle through dark times.
In my previous talks with the young writers of the Today’s Carolinian, I suggested that they revert to its original name, which is The Carolinian, to be able to reconnect with its glorious past. USC’s student publication actually have come a long way from its humble beginnings in 1932, when it came out the Colegio de San Carlos published El Estudiante and became one of the first schools in the Philippines to actually have a student paper. This paper would be renamed The Carolinian in 1934.
Today, USC’s huge library in the Talamban campus keeps a collection of volumes of The Carolinian from the years prior to the Japanese occupation of the Philippines during the Second World War to the recent issues of the Today’s Carolinian (as the paper would again be renamed). In the last years before the Japanese invasion, The Carolinian already reflected how the mood changed from peacetime prosperity to jitters as the war became more and more imminent.
It recorded, for instance, how the cadets in the ROTC were being trained for actual combat. One issue made an inventory of the arsenal deposited in the university’s armory. It consisted World War I vintage field guns, machine guns, and hundreds of rifles. It was not a surprise, therefore, that when they heard that the Japanese troops have landed in Luzon, the young Carolinian cadets showed up to the university when called for combat duties. Many of them later joined guerrilla units and fought gallant battles when the Japanese finally occupied Cebu.
In the few issues before it ceased publication following the closure of the university as the Japanese army turned it into a garrison, The Carolinian helped to drum up patriotic sentiments among the students.
The paper resumed publication as soon as the school reopened in 1946. In the following years, it reflected the upbeat mood of postwar reconstruction, particularly the rise of new buildings from the rubbles of the bombed out main campus in P. Del Rosario Street. In 1948, the Colegio obtained university status and was renamed University of San Carlos.
The early ’50s saw the sudden influx into the university of foreign priest-scholars that fled persecution from China when it became a communist country in 1949.
This created a kind of émigré culture that enriched the intellectual life of the university during the postwar years.
The university was making strides in the fields of anthropology, biology, and engineering unsurpassed by even the universities in Manila. The student paper followed some of the most significant discoveries being made by USC’s anthropology and biology professors and their students camping out in distant tribal communities, archaeological sites, and jungles just to conduct field work.
The ’70s saw the surge of nationalism and radicalism and this spirit still found its way in the pages of The Carolinian, in spite of the fact that it remained moderated by priest advisers. Yet, this was also the time when the student journalists started to demand autonomy or their right to press freedom in the campus.
But just a year after the USC administration allowed students to run the paper without moderators, President Ferdinand Marcos declared Martial Law in 1972 and ordered the closure of all student publications nationwide. Once again, The Carolinian was silenced.
After Martial Law was lifted 1981, students in USC resumed its demand for an autonomous campus press. This was granted in 1983 and to signify the resurrection of the USC’s student publication, it was renamed Today’s Carolinian. Emerging from these turbulent years prior to the EDSA Revolution in 1986, Today’s Carolinian assumed an activist character that continued until the early 2000s.
Today, the paper has toned down from its militant role as it struggles to attract the interest of students. It tries to augment its printed edition with a Facebook page hoping to expand readership well into the social media.
This generation of millennials in USC has now forgotten what Today’s Carolinian has stood for over the years: the right for a free campus press was gained after a long struggle through war and dictatorship. From its birth during the American colonial period through the dark years of Marcos dictatorship, USC’s student publication has kept a tradition of promoting love of country and the values of freedom and democracy.
As our democracy is once threatened by candidates with authoritarian tendencies (even the possibility of another Marcos presidency), I feel the urgency to remind the current batch of TC editors and writers of this significant role the student paper has to play not only in the University of San Carlos but in the Philippine society in general.
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