Presenting "The UE-ian Way"

There are a lot of things going on right now. While I don’t set aside the issues of pork barrel and the Zamboanga stand-off, I just want to focus on something that concerns me more directly – UAAP.

I am a proud alumnae of the University of the East (Caloocan) and is thus a supporter of the UE Red Warriors, the men’s basketball team of the school. I take pride on it, win or lose. I may not know so much about the technicalities of basketball but I know enough to say that the team is struggling to give pride to Lualhati, as we have been experiencing drought –UAAP championship-wise – for nearly three decades already.

I can see the effort in every game played, and so I have taken offense on what a writer wrote on his column at the website of Philippine Star.

Truth be told, I hated him; and I hated his editor more. UE’s pride was lambasted and degraded in every manner possible, just because of a simple conflict between the two school’s basketball teams. The whole community was dragged into a bad light, when the main focus should be the games only. There was a plethora of snide remarks against UE and other schools, which are totally unacceptable, if you ask me. As I have predicted, the writer used the ‘opinion’ card, but even for an opinion writer whose articles are published on a major (national) news portal site, it was terrifyingly unprofessional.

I went to the writer’s Twitter account and was more enraged by the fact that he doesn’t show even a bit of remorse on what he had done. He easily reasoned out that the article won’t get published if the editor didn’t like it. So as it was released online, no one should blame me if I assume that the editor’s from the same school. If that’s the case, I guess, I now have an idea how their ‘way’ is. Tsk tsk. I wonder if it’s normal for people there to act so high. I have many other separate experiences with this kind of attitude from others of their kind too.

Or here’s a possible spin-off: The editor is not from the same school, but had decided to approve the article anyway to create more noise. If that’s the case, I see that as a low-blow, certainly unethical for a person working in the journalism field. Such action’s a disgrace. The company should do something about it. I thought it’s only PDI which has this kind of system. Apparently, I’m mistaken.

At the moment, I’m trying to hold in the anger. Someone needs to be the bigger person, as what the writer had suggested by RT-ing a certain tweet. And personally, I wanted to be that one. My school taught me the significance of humility (which I honestly learned the hard way) and simplicity; so instead of promoting hate against the perfect and flawless writer and his editor, let me just point out what I think many fail to see in UE:

Home. UE is a home.

And that’s why the whole community’s fired up right now. Like any normal person in this world, we do react and fight back when our home is threatened. In this case, we were lambasted with derogatory statements without even given a chance to fight back. We were stabbed at the back, because nobody saw this kind of rude act coming. We were all so focused on setting things straight about fairness in the league, and then this came up. His words weren’t mere opinions of an educated person. Those were libelous statements aimed to bring down an opponent in the dirtiest sort of fashion. I bet if it’s someone from UE who wrote something like this against their school, we won’t be seeing the end of it; because pride is their breathing ground. They would – proven by other past circumstances – fight to death to retrieve their school’s glory. So tell me, why can’t we do the same?

Because we’re not them? Because we’re not from the big four?

UE is usually a victim of double standards among the UAAP schools, to be honest; and in many incidents, the community had just decided to let it pass – capitalizing on the virtue of humility we’ve all been – in one way or another – imbued with. But we’re not idiots. We know when to cry foul, and that's the reason behind this series of protests; and that is why we gravely took offense on the ‘opinions’ of that writer.

We may lean more on the ‘jologs’ side. We are certainly not a coño school. Our tuition may not be at par as the others’. But we are individuals who know the limits of every action. Goodness! To understand that doesn’t even require one to be a college student! That’s common sense! Everything that’s happening had stretched the whole UE community to its boiling point. We snapped.

And so like Warriors, we will defend ours. That’s the natural reaction. We can always accept defeat as long as there’s a fair and unbiased process to determine the victor. We aren’t stupid people who would insist on something we know we’ve lost on. That’s a quality where the whole school thrives on. I wish other people would see that.

UE may not be as powerful as the writer’s school; but we still have a dignity to uphold. In whatever field, the university pride should be protected because this is where we came from. We are a school, a community – not a mere laughing stock for these almighty people to bully and pick on all the time.We are the children of Lualhati, and we are who we are in our own ways. We may be different from others but I hope people would look at the positive side of it, instead of focusing on the impression that we are just UE…

Because at least, we don’t ruin a whole school’s reputation just to put ours in the good light. We aren’t hypocrites who think that our school’s so perfect and that we’re ahead of everyone else.

Because believe it or not, humility and simplicity is “The UE-ian Way.” And frankly speaking, I have never felt so thankful that I chose UE among all other schools than now.