Chancellor Lyre Anni Murao delivers her Welcome Remarks

To all our freshmen, a special and warm welcome to the University of the Philippines, Mindanao. From a pool of over 100,000 applicants to UPCAT, you have qualified to be the new Iskolar ng Bayan. Congratulations to the 390 new freshmen of UP Mindanao.

We are deeply honored that you have chosen UP Mindanao to be your academic home for the next 3 or 5 years. Setting into the halls of the university is a major milestone, and we want to journey with you in that important transition. This is now the culmination of your rite of passage to UP Mindanao.

From the enrollment to the freshman orientation, meeting your blockmates, up to today's convocation, you are now a qualified Isko Freshman. I missed that experience as a freshman when I entered UP 3 weeks late, coming from an international student exchange program. As a Probinsyana from Davao, and on my first solo adventure in Diliman, I was nervous, but also excited.

Actually, while I was looking at your faces, you looked nervous, right? Yes, okay. Everyone around me seemed to have already figured things out, yet I was still learning how to navigate through campus life. I remember my first encounter with my PE teacher.

He was ready to flunk me because I have already missed several sessions. That's why I know how important it is for you to be supported in this transition period. From now on, consider UP Mindanao not just as a place of learning, but consider it also as your second home.

UP Mindanao was created through a Republic Act to widen access to UP education down to the last mile in Mindanao. And here we are now. Look around you.

UP Mindanao students are not just beautiful and handsome. Your classmates came from 12 different regions in the Philippines, including BARMM. We also have 12 Lingap scholars coming from geographically disadvantaged areas, or GIDA.

This is the kind of home that we have built for UP Mindanao. A home for inclusive and holistic development. We provide a safe space that will allow you to live your full potential and totality as individuals.

The university is your playground for the free exchange of ideas, inspiring innovation and creativity, celebrating your uniqueness, and nurturing relationships with your peers and mentors. Of course, fundamental to that is the strengthening of character, building individuals of solid integrity. Your faculty, staff, and officials are always ready to support you in this journey of growth.

UP Mindanao is also a home for collective growth. Here, we collaborate with each other to create a campus culture of innovative thinking and service with empathy as foundations for institution building. This is a place where your out-of-the-box ideas are celebrated.

Your failures are treated as learning trajectories. Individual strengths are blended to generate success, and actions are guided by the value that they bring to others and to the institution. This is our practice, this is our habit, this is our lifestyle.

UP Mindanao is also a home for people who want to serve. At the core of our ethos is excellence and broad impact. As the only constituent university of UP in Mindanao, we have the unique opportunity to influence and shape the narratives of Mindanao and our neighboring countries in BIMP-EAGA through education, research, and public service.

As students, you may share in this narrative, you may contribute to this narrative by committing to your academic duties, developing research and creative works, active participation in student organizations and university activities, and volunteerism. Your batch is also privileged to be the witness of a university-wide milestone as we celebrate our 30th anniversary next year. This celebration will be an epitome of what we have delivered over the years as a public service institution.

In other words, the UP Mindanao brand of education is transformative, bringing positive change to the lives of individuals, groups, all the way to communities. Being the new members of this community, your success is our priority. May this success be an embodiment of honor, excellence, and service.

Welcome to your new home.

Mr. Errol A. Merquita at the 2024 University Convocation

 
Back in 1996, I didn't know that UP had a campus in Davao. I wasn't aware of the UPCAT at the time. It was during my first year of college that I discovered UP in Bago Oshiro, just a few kilometers away from our house in Los Amigos. To transfer to UP, I needed a GWA of at least 2.0, but because it's UP, I set a higher standard for myself, aiming for 1.25—which I achieved. After passing a series of interviews, I found myself traveling on the 'hemorrhagic road' leading to UP.

I arrived at UP Mindanao wearing eyeglasses made of thick expectations and even thicker insecurity. Our daily landscape included clingy amorseco, the mooing and droppings of cows, the UP Bus, and the singing of cicadas at the EBL, PCA, and Kanluran campuses. At that time, only four courses were offered: Biology, Applied Math, Social Science, and Creative Writing, with fewer than 300 students across the campus. Many of us, myself included, were striving to meet the university's standard of academic excellence. We wanted to prove that students from Mindanao were just as capable as, if not better than, those from Luzon-centric campuses.

I failed to meet that expectation. Receiving grades of INC, and 5.0 during my first year was difficult to process. Sablay. I failed. I promised myself I would make it to the Dean's List and Chancellor's List, which I did in my third and fourth years. After college, I moved from one company to another, seeking promotions, building my reputation, and leveraging my UP badge to establish my career.

Throughout our formative years, we measure our achievements using certain standards and constructs. It labels us and others, either loudly or silently, as successful, unsuccessful, or mediocre. Some of the constructs most of us were chasing back then were Latin honors, multiple titles, and English eloquence. But after years of pursuing these goals, I feel like I was chasing and running in circles like Sisyphus endlessly pushing his boulder. I found myself wondering, "until when will I chase this? who am I really doing this for?"

In the aftermath of Typhoon Sendong, Pablo, Yolanda, and the Marawi siege, I have seen dead bodies piling up in the streets, buried with their families inside their homes, and floating in the river. I have seen children who barely eat twice a day while their leaders dine in four-star hotels. Many girls in rural areas still believe that getting married is their best option after puberty. Many women with great potential are deprived of proper education simply because they are women. And I asked myself, how have the academic excellence and the corporate ladder I sought for years contributed to establishing meaningful connections with people and reducing the inequalities we see every day?

From these many failures, I realized that excellence and success are not confined to a single construct and can be redefined. When I removed the glasses, I wore when I first arrived here, I was able to see differently. It was uncomfortable to take off the glasses I was so used to wearing, but my vision became wider. In between chasing excellence and meeting failures, I learned some important lessons in life.

Becoming Smart: Today's CEOs call it Merit, Excellence, and Intelligence (MEI). Aristotle believed that achieving academic excellence is crucial for cultivating virtue. Plato envisioned a just society where well-educated individuals contribute to the common good. Yet, 2,400 years later, we have entered the Anthropocene era—a period marked by extensive human impact and the world seems more disconnected than ever. What is the point of being so smart in this world if our own existence is at risk? Who benefits from excellence when there is no real connection to people? My realization didn't lead me to the usual "hemorrhagic road" but instead to a path less traveled— I call "malasakit."

During batch reunions, we can no longer recall the scores from our blue books. Instead, we remember the times when a stranger became an ally through an act of malasakit—how a classmate saved us from hunger when our weekly allowance ran out by Wednesday, how a teacher supported us during tough times, or how a school bus driver patiently waited for us to take the ride. Malasakit is when you treat others regardless of their gender, faith, or economic status.

Acts of malasakit, no matter how small, are remembered. What does malasakit mean exactly? It means embracing values that are just as important as MEI—values like respect, equity, diversity, and inclusion. But malasakit is not charity; it is solidarity. The perception of being charitable can give a sense of arrogance, but solidarity distributes power and resources to those most harmed by an unfair system. While excellence can lead to so-called career advancement, malasakit values can make me happy, when people support me as they also progress as individuals.

The challenge lies in how the academic community can effectively measure 'malasakit,' one of the many intangibles. This challenge is further compounded by the tendency of families and society to glorify traditional measures of success over the values of learning and accountability. Until it is mainstreamed, normalizing the values of malasakit will be difficult. So, I urge to continue practicing these values of respect, equity, diversity, and inclusion. Imagine a campus of students being so intelligent and excellent, yet also diverse and inclusive.

Growing Roots: Climate change initiatives promote trees with longer and stronger roots. They improve stability, support microbial communities, enhance carbon sequestration, and increase water absorption. Growing roots, for me, means recognizing and embracing where I come from—my tribe. As a child and throughout high school, I struggled with stuttering. It was difficult for me to master the rules of English phonetics. I could feel the strain on my tongue, leading to a tendency to repeat words and prolong sounds. Every class recitation or social interaction in English reminded me of deep self-doubt, magnifying my archipelagic insecurity. While many laughed at learners like us, I also learned here at UP that English has been used to intimidate people. I refused to be intimidated by a colonial language. I began harnessing the words my tribe taught me. Binisaya. I wrote balak and sugilanon, which led me to various local and national writing fellowships and earned me some national recognition. I am growing. Nurturing and growing my roots have allowed me to connect deeply with my Mindanawon roots, understand my community's struggles—which are larger than my stuttering—navigate the complex narratives of the Moro, Lumad, and settlers, discover indigenous terminologies that are key to preserving biodiversity and understanding heritage, and forge deeper partnerships with people. This would have been difficult if I had continued chasing English eloquence, as it is not my roots.

As for you, this is the right time to fail. But fail quickly, learn from your mistakes, and find smart solutions. At UP, we take pride in wearing the sablay. Four to five years from now, when you wear your sablay, it won't signify failure. Instead, it will represent your national identity, the UP values, and your commitment to serving our communities as an act of solidarity.

Starting today, we will harness this power to manifest our intentions, and together we say, 'sasablay.'

Errol Merquita.8.19.2024