DepEd officials need to be educated

Kindly allow me to react to the article titled “CHEd upholds UST stand vs Go: Academic freedom” (Inquirer, 6/19/12).

It disturbs me to realize that a high-ranking executive of the Commission on Higher Education seems unable to comprehend what he reads, when reading and comprehension are very basic skills we teach here at Marian School of Quezon City as early as the pre-school levels. Julito Vitriolo, CHEd’s executive director, reacting to my published complaint against Michael Anthony Vasco, dean of the Faculty of Arts and Letters of the University of Santo Tomas (UST), said that “he was not certain if UST had committed some violations when it ignored Go’s inquiry about the Eteeap [Expanded Tertiary Education Equivalency and Accreditation Program].”

Vitriolo completely missed the point of my grievance: Vasco ignored, not once but twice, two simple requests for information I sent to him via LBC courier service in February and again in March of 2011. He missed completely the glaring injustice that this “dean” of a  “Center of Excellence” did to me after Vasco disapproved my nonexistent application (for inclusion in the Eteeap program) for no reason other than that Vasco must have felt he is not answerable for his actions, however execrable they may be. Soc Fernandez of the CHEd’s Eteeap Office also added the zero weight of her mindless inference: “These colleges and universities are not using the program as their diploma mill. If an applicant was rejected, maybe he was not qualified.”

Shame on these two officials for coming to the aid and defense of Vasco. What he did to me has nothing to do with the catchall alibi of “academic freedom” which, in an ideal world of thinking public officials and caring college deans, does not give the right to do what is wrong. It does not confer blanket authority to be boorish and rude. Vitriolo must be educated: Vasco violated the rules of good manners and right conduct, of etiquette and of simple civility.

Lacking these basic bedrocks of civilized society, how can one have the presumptuousness to head an institution of higher learning?

The following, I repeat, should be learned as early as kindergarten by those who aspire to grow up to be high-ranking public officials and college deans: Letters must be answered, especially if these had been sent to you twice; we must be humble and not let all those titles behind our names get into our little heads only to muddle and befuddle; it is the weak and the helpless who ought to be defended and helped against the already strong and powerful; we must say sorry for transgressions we have committed, intentionally or otherwise.

At the end of time, all the pawns and all the kings that walked the checkerboard of this earth will be placed side by side in the dim dark box of Final Reckoning by the knowing Hand of God. Diplomas are nothing but paper roses that exude no fragrance and will not stand the test of time. It is our deeds that will outlast us and tell all and sundry what we did with our time while we lived. All else is vanity, a fading flower of a dying summer.

—ANTONIO CALIPJO GO,

academic supervisor,

Marian School of Quezon City