People defined by their quests

Letter-writer Carlos Erwin Fajardo picks a good target: the heads of four of what he calls “the so-called top schools”—(“by what standards?” he asks parenthetically).

This writer advances the observation that the aim of corrupt practices is the accumulation of money. Having graduated from a Catholic college in the late 1950s, I can say that in my commerce course we were never taught how to be corrupt.

But, alas, we were given the impression that the “successful” graduate of our school was one who was financially successful. The alumni the school usually pointed to as “successful” were the ones who were prominent in business and eminently wealthy. Nothing wrong with that. Perfectly the success standard of the day.

However, a very thin line exists between the desire for financial gain and the tendency to be greedy. Apparently, this failure to draw the line oftentimes stimulates the inclination to cross that line, and thus are born the alumni that the schools headed by the Pontius Pilate-like heads of the University of the Philippines, Ateneo, Miriam and La Salle.

Add the view that UP has been “infiltrated” by prestige-hungry high school grads from the three other “prominent” schools and countless other high schools. A school is defined not only by its administrators but also by its students and their culture, who are in turn defined by home- and school-grown sets of values, which, in this particular context, is defined by a quest for wealth.

A corrupt school alumnus is no different from one who is not corrupt. It’s just a question of the degree each seeks to enrich oneself. What’s to prevent an alumnus from allowing the appreciation of wealth and prestige to degenerate into greed?

That, sad to say, our dear alma maters seem to have left out of their thrusts.

In the case of La Salle (DLSC at the time), I recall that its envisioned end-product was a “Christian gentleman.” What, pray tell, is the university’s present-day aim? And what was DLSC’S idea of a Christian gentleman?

Fajardo’s piece was a good read. Keep them coming!

—BOBBY G. KRAUT, [email protected]