Rites of Passage
A Repost from Sarah Raymundo’s Blog

I’m a sucker for UP graduation ceremonies. That’s what I have become as a faculty member. I missed my own graduation rites exactly a decade ago. I thought back then that such rituals are for whimps. Against the tragic feminine tradition of my school and family, I remember myself swearing, as a teenage sociology major, never to succumb to the seduction of matrimonial rites since walking down the aisle dressed in white while holding a bouquet of flowers was for me the perfect image of fetishism. And fetishism was the lowest of all crimes any young self-proclaimed marxist could ever be found guilty of, at least for my peer group back then. I also resolved never to give in to baptismal rites and impose upon my children a religion that my parents imposed on me. I even remember someone making a very convincing proposal about educating our children: Let’s not send them to formal schooling, that way they would be spared from the “kacheapan” of bourgeois education. We just teach them ourselves, anyway we are smart and then they just have to take the qualifying exam from DECS so that they will be eligible to take the UPCAT.

Armed with our avant-gardeish claims, we thought we are ready to damn all institutions that get in our way of fostering our self-styled idea of freedom, justice and what not. I realize that it was the stubborness of the punk movement, the audacity of the Beat poets and the maverick thinking of Flaubert, Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Milan Kundera which shaped our young sensibilities; and not Marx’s Manifesto or Mao’s Five Golden Rays.

But it was all good.

But then again, I must say, with all humility and sincerity, that the young activists of this day are better. I observe that they are not given to useless snobbery and can very well mix with their generation. Some students hate them on account of their strong positions on an issue. I had never heard of anybody hating me in college but I must have earned the ire of some when I opined in class that my classmate’s presentation was more like a faux pas than a report or when I attached a course syllabus with a complete reading list and a logical sequence of topics in my final exam because I thought that the course was crappy.

The young activists are present in all ceremonies that the studentry generally go to. They would unfurl protest banners during the freshman orientation day. They would hold a lightning rally in fora to protest a guest speaker. They would be present in every room in AS, if permitted by the instructor, to convince the students to take a stand on a particular issue. Some students have branded them as self-righteous, dogmatic and emotional. But those who do so are believers to the doxa of the free market without their knowing. I refuse to elaborate on this point because I have nothing more to say to social climbers and their corresponding neoliberal agenda for their so-called lives.

But you see, a few ideas and events deserve some lashing.

On UP’s centennial commencement exercise, the valedictorian whose name I cannot recall at the moment, claimed that indifference is not a mark of the current crop of UP students (I am paraphrasing her since I only feign ineloquence when dealing with superiors and armed men, charoz). She proposes that we reinvent our definition of patriotism since cutting classes just so that students could commit themselves to giving solutions to persistent social issues is wasting the taxes of the marginalized in society whom the activists claim to defend. Focusing on one’s studies is itself a form of patriotism

For example, she opines, students from the College of Human Kinetics who run and train barefoot is an expression of patriotism. And she was serious. Such is, of course a romanticized view of runners. Whoever runs barefoot from that College anyway? Besides, I don’t think that our mighty and fast runners run without having to tell themselves that they do it in the name of patriotism. Does one actually think about patriotism while reviewing for an exam or writing a paper? I think the young lady was imputing her own rationality to the hardworking students she was talking about. Precisely, this is what the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu refers to as theoreticism–the academic’s tendency to skip to understand the practical logic involved in a practice and instead comes up with an explanation which is a mere assertion of his/her hypothesis. In her aim to prove that militant activism is passe, she then cited running, reading, going to class as new expressions of patriotism. Can we also include coffee drinking at Chocolate Kiss, tambay hours in our respective orgs, photocopying readings, taking pictures of trees in the lagoon, smooching at the sunken garden as other examples of this new sensibility? Why not? I mean, she is, in fact, saying that patriotism’s signifiers are forever sliding therefore it can be everything and and nothing (as logic would have it) at the same time. Maging Summa ka man daw at magaling, sumasablay din.

Indifference as per C. Wright Mills (The Sociological Imagination) is a condition when people are not consciously aware of their cherished values and, in effect, do not feel that these values are being threatened. Indifference is not a disposition that is consciously chosen. In short, one does not will indifference. And so when some people label others as indifferent, it is not necessarily a put down or a derogatory statement. Rather, it is a description of a condition that shapes a person’s location in his/her social millieu. I hope people would start to appreciate the term as a conceptual tool (i.e. imbis na magtampo o mairita tayo, bakit hindi na lang natin basahin si C. Wright Mills, chapter 1, The Promise?)

But indifference was not the theme of UP’s Centennial Graduation Rites. Below is a statement that Arnold wrote to describe the protest action on UP’s centennial graduation.

GMA MUST GO: SYMBOLIC ACTION AT THE UP CENTENNIAL
GRADUATION CEREMONIES

Progressive faculty members, graduating militant
students and non-academic personnel of the University
made a series of symbolic actions at the UP Centennial
Graduation ceremonies last April 27, 2008. Amidst the
tight security of the University authorities, various
groups creatively made bold statements on the
country’s deteriorating political and economic
situation reiterating the position of the Diliman
University Council that GMA must go!

Around past four in the afternoon, breaking the somber
mood of the keynote speech that was being delivered,
activist teachers breached the back section of the
amphitheater and hoisted a streamer on red balloons
that read “Oust GMA!”. As the streamer made its way
up, it became visible to the faculty members and
guests on the stage as well as the parents on the side
of the amphitheater until it got entangled on a tree at
the back of the amphitheater.
The streamer was to remain there visible for all to see throughout the
whole graduation ceremonies as a symbolic reminder of
the University community’s stance in the wake of the
series of scandals that has plagued the Arroyo
administration. It was only the first of a series of
actions that would take place in the ceremony.

After the conferment of degrees and the valedictory
speech, University police and the Rayadillo cadets
from the UPROTC moved to block the access points to
the stage in anticipation of more symbolic actions.
But this did not deter activist graduating students to
break from their ranks on the grounds of the
amphitheater. With a red banner that read “Serve the
People!”, they marched to the front of the stage and
raised their firsts while singing “UP Naming Mahal.”

On the stage, progressive faculty members, with
clenched fists, went down from their bleachers to
unfurl two banners that read “GMA MUST GO!” . This is
the call made by the UP Diliman University Council in
its special meeting on February 27, 2008. As the
graduates sang the UP Hymn, the amphitheater
transformed into a sea of clenched fists as faculty,
students, and even alumni from the gallery
symbolically joined the protest.

Not a few faculty members, parents, fellow students
and guests were impressed about the militance that the
actions represented. The afternoon’s symbolic actions
were a reminder to everyone that on the occasion of
UP’s centennial graduation ceremonies, the cherished
University traditions of activism and nationalism
cannot be forgotten. For as long as courageous souls
emboldened by their UP education continue to speak
truth against tyranny, these traditions will remain
integral to the University’s soul.

It is precisely for these moments of precipitating the Real, as it were that I attend graduation ceremonies.