black, not red, reigned at mapua campus
THE DAY of love was not a happy one for thousands of students of the Mapua Institute of Technology who protested the school’s impending name change to Malayan Colleges.
Instead of red, black was the predominant color on Monday at Mapua’s campus in Intramuros, Manila, as the students-calling themselves the United Mapuans-came to school wearing black shirts. They boycotted their classes to hold a day-long prayer vigil.
Armando Cristobal, official spokesperson of the group, said the students held the vigil to prevent school officials from changing the school’s name. He said a name change would be tantamount to disregarding the legacy of the school’s founder, Tomas Mapua.
Cristobal said Mapua’s vision was to make the school’s engineering courses help poor students to build companies for fellow Filipinos.
Board topnotchers
The 80-year-old school is well-known for its engineering and architecture programs, whose graduates have topped licensure examinations.
“Our request is simple. The legacy of Don Tomas is important to us. The term Mapuans is important to us. Our parents enrolled us here to graduate as Mapuans, not as Malayans,” Cristobal said. Students learned, he added, that diplomas of this year’s graduates would already carry the name Malayan Colleges.
Cristobal criticized school officials for not consulting students before effecting the change.
Last week’s announcement took students by surprise. Cristobal said it would be hard for them to trust the school again.
Mapua president Dr. Reynaldo Vea said the name change was a step in the school’s expansion to a university. He said the school started offering courses other than engineering and architecture since 2000 after the takeover by the Yuchengco Group of Companies. The offering of additional courses is one of the requirements for attaining university status.
Mapua’s new courses are nursing, psychology, biotechnology and business administration.
“If the school continued to be called Mapua, there might be a certain dilution because the Mapua name is closely associated with technology, engineering,” Vea told the Inquirer.
No formal change yet
This concern prompted school officials to choose Malayan Colleges, although Vea said the board has yet to set the date for the official change of the school’s name.
He told students that the name Mapua Institute of Technology need not be lost. It could still be used for the College of Engineering and Architecture of the Malayan University since a university could name its colleges.
“The name Mapua will not be lost. It will stay there. Is there any reason why it should be eclipsed by the name Malayan Colleges?” he said in an interview.
He cited the well-known Wharton Business School. Few people know it is actually part of the University of Pennsylvania, he said.
Vea added the name change was never meant to relegate Mapua to the background.
“Our intention is in fact to make it better known and that is why we are going for university status. Academically speaking, a technology school can become even better if the professional training is based on an inter-disciplinary approach to problems,” he said.
Cristobal said Monday’s mass action united different fraternities, student organizations, faculty and alumni. He said the United Mapuans would wait for the school officials’ announcement on whether to push through with the name change or not.
Vea said nobody would be penalized for the mass action because the school respected freedom of expression and also wanted to know the students’ sentiments.
Article taken from
http://news.inq7.net/metro/index.php?index=1&story_id=27560
Posted 02:47am (Mla time) Feb 15, 2005
By Leila Salaverria
Inquirer News Service
Photos taken from http://bubuekak.multiply.com/photos/album/26
