Chans Gerry

IT’S TRANSITION time at the University of the Philippines, with a new president, Alfredo E. Pascual, taking office in February after Dr. Emerlinda Roman. Last Wednesday, at the flagship Diliman campus, Dr. Caesar Saloma was selected by the board of regents as our new chancellor, succeeding Dr. Sergio Cao.

Saloma is a highly respected physicist, a wall-to-wall UP product from his bachelor’s degree to his PhD. As dean of the College of Science, he was able to build the sprawling National Science Complex.

For today’s column I wanted to write about the previous UP Diliman chancellor, “Chans Gerry” to colleagues. I do this as a personal way of thanking him, as well as a reflection on positive leadership, Filipino-style.

For most of Chans Gerry’s six years in office, my interactions were mainly with the chancellor. As chair of the anthropology department, the times I had to write him were almost always through channels, meaning through the dean and his vice chancellors.

But I did have a hint of how he paid attention to detail when he e-mailed me once, after the Inquirer published an angry letter from a student protesting a new course called Social Science 3 or Exploring Gender and Sexuality. The “controversy” quickly died since the student had made false claims, but I was struck by the chancellor’s taking time to check out a situation, which was clearly meant to express his concern as well.

Last August, right after finishing nine years as department chair, I was conscripted to become college dean, which meant more direct communications with the chancellor.

At the oath-taking ceremonies, the chancellor informed the new deans that we were going to have to attend an orientation workshop. I welcomed the idea of an orientation and was expecting several speakers in a rather formal workshop. As things turned out, we did get a thick folder with all kinds of documents to guide us through UP’s bureaucratic maze, but the chancellor himself handled the orientation, sharing many of his personal experiences to explain how we could tackle the many challenges of administrative work.

One simple message kept recurring throughout our orientation and this was to approach him if we had problems or needs. “Ask, and you shall receive,” he said half in jest. That was when I began to understand why people were calling him Chans Gerry, reflecting a combination of the formal and informal in his leadership.

Singing Chancellor

Shortly after that workshop, I got another invitation, this time to a concert for his 50th (or was it, smile, the 40th?) birthday. All this was again so Filipino, much like a birthday celebrator treating friends to a night of karaoke, except of course that the quality was much, much higher.

I wasn’t aware that Chans Gerry was a baritone, and that he had come to be known as the “Singing Chancellor” because at many ceremonial functions, he would deliver a speech—and sing a song. He would also do concerts to help raise funds for various causes.

Defying the stereotype of the dour academic, our Singing Chancellor also had an amazing sense of humor, made the more charming because his jokes often involved a bit of self-deprecation. At his birthday concert he brought the house down with a story of an official visit to a Japanese university. His staff had packed a gift for a ranking university official and Chans Gerry presumed it was the usual souvenir jeepney. So, in front of a large audience, he told the official the gift was a replica of the Filipino’s most common mode of transportation. The official opened the gift. It was a carved carabao.

There was much more to the Singing Chancellor. He decentralized the use of various funds, the most important of which was the release of 20 percent of undergraduate tuition payments to the colleges. Taking the cue from him, I also had our college fund allocated to the departments, in proportion to the number of undergraduate students.

There were other similar mechanisms for other funds, all of which I saw as Chans Gerry’s way of moving away from a patronage system, i.e., local units having to be “loyal” to superiors out of fear of not getting funds.

Knowing that our salaries were based on a fixed national scale, he instituted other perks such as special awards for exemplary service. He was particularly concerned about health and medical needs, and was able to negotiate additional discounts, now totaling 30 percent, for hospitalization at the Philippine General Hospital. In addition, he initiated a fund for faculty and staff to reimburse hospitalization expenses, to a maximum of P200,000. The hospitalization fund was eventually adopted by other UP campuses.

Chans Gerry was understandably proud of these extra benefits but he was also realistic, knowing how quickly emergencies could wipe out budgets. Over and above the official benefits, he was always ready to look for additional funds for emergencies involving faculty, staff and students. Again, I was always amazed at how quickly he would get word of these crisis situations, followed by prompt offers to assist.

Compassion

Chans Gerry had a no-nonsense outlook to work, which was sometimes interpreted as stubbornness. He could be direct, even brutally frank, but I also often saw a compassionate side, which others would interpret as weakness. Once, when we were discussing some problematic faculty member from my college, he quietly advised me, “With people like that, I always try to understand where they’re coming from.”

Equanimity was the word that kept coming to my mind when I watched him chair meetings, whether of the deans, or of the University Council, which means more than a hundred faculty members. Professors can be an arrogant lot and there were many times when Chans Gerry would handle the verbal fireworks rather calmly, only a slight quiver in his voice betraying the pressure he was feeling. I wondered at times if he’d get home and boom out his frustrations, baritone-style of course.

The last few months he had to deal with his mother’s serious illness, and her death in December. Again, he projected equanimity and grace under pressure. In more private moments, he would tell me how her death had affected him. At one of our college affairs, a tribute for a deceased faculty member, there was a group that rendered some rather sad songs. He turned to me misty-eyed and said, “Napaiyak ako.” I knew the songs had brought back memories of his mother.

At the orientation workshop for deans, Chans Gerry warned us that we had to be ready to take home our work, to wake up in the middle of the night because of some unsolved problem. He could have added: Be ready as well, to be reminded in the middle of your work, of the personal, of family and of friends.

Over time I have learned that people in high positions sometimes end up “loving” their work mainly because of the power that they get to wield. With Chans Gerry, I am totally convinced he was sustained, even driven, in his work because of love for UP and, more importantly, a love of people and a love of country.

* * *

Email: [email protected]