Joe Bert sent me a picture thru my email. It was taken from a Friendster account, and not just some Friendster account but that of my friend, Celia Clave. The picture depicts a writing on the white board taken from the old Adamson Chronicle (TAC) office. We used the white board to write, to leave insults, grievances and things to remember during press works.
The writing on the white board was angry, typical of a loose cannon, devastated, a loser, the kind that hangs on teetering on the corner but still won’t give up the fight. And that writing was mine…
I am Allan Jay Q. Martirez. I am proud to say that along with Celia Clave and the rest of us, passed the Editorial Board exams in the summer of 1997. And it was not just some exam but an exam made and facilitated by Joe Bert Lazarte. Then that was my baptism of fire in the publication. I enjoyed it, the UAAP coverage for free, thanks to Tito Escaño, our Associate Editor who thought I could handle it back then, the prestige of the by–line, and being one of the prime movers of campus opinion.
Joe Bert Lazarte is not just a name, but a legend. He’s won numerous literary awards, if I’m a physicist in the league of Enrico Fermi or Oppenheimer, Joe Bert is Einstein. Yet my writing skill is no way near Fermi nor Oppenheimer if it was physics but the days after Joe Bert’s time and beyond has sown in me hatred as explosive as Oppenheimer’s Atomic bomb (thanks to Fermi).
Celia Clave is not just another name. She went up the ladder to become the Editor–in–Chief (EIC) and is a versatile writer that could write both English and Pilipino articles very well.
You see, back then, I look up to Joe Bert, Tito, Ronnie (my EIC during the time I first entered TAC), and Alvin Julian. The names I mentioned had become EICs themselves except for Tito who decided to quit it all and left the TAC undisciplined. I am one of those unruly members, and so I personally resented Tito’s decision. But life had to go on…
To be continued…
Continuation… 9:39 am 29th September 2008
Actually, when I was still a newbie at the publication, I heard the tenured ones discussing about the Chronicle. I remember one saying that if all the administrators in Adamson would be like Fr. Belita, then TAC wouldn’t have been a radical publication that it was during our time. I concluded quickly that those writers were after all unlike my comrades in our activist leftist organization in which I had been involved with before entering the Chronicle, that those writers, even in there subconscious minds only want reform in Adamson and that they are upholding the role of the campus publication to bring about that reform. Most important was, they were not loose cannons; they in fact commend people, an administrator at that, who they think is doing a good job.
Then they veered at a different topic attacking the revolutionary nature of change that the left espouses, saying that the rhetoric, the tone, the well-versed chants and the melodrama wouldn’t really bring about change. We were talking about political issues at that time, the vote shaving, and the possibility of the culture permeating into the college level; so I chipped in my two cents’ worth of opinion saying that even the political parties inside the school are partisan to the national level political parties and that the jockeying of these outside forces — including the traditionally corrupt and left-leaning groups — are obvious during the supreme council elections. It didn’t surprise anyone, when I thought I solved the “general relativity” of the whole argument. Tito Escaño just afforded me a mocking smile as if amused by my courage to tell them the obvious, sort of undermining their intellect. Alvin Julian managed to give me a nice smirk, Ronnie’s eyes pierced through his glasses. At least Joe Bert had the courtesy to veer to a different topic saving me from further embarrassment. It was their favorite topic, speciation, Hawkings, Camus, etc. … those thing that I can’t relate with, but save me from my state of being at that time, God, my cheeks were so red that time hehehe.
When I got terminated from the Adamson Chronicle due to reasons my enemies back then prod me into doing, rather knowing how irrational I could be when my pot head acted on a situation, I was cursing Joe Bert Lazarte and Tito Escaño. Because in my understanding of the situation, it wouldn’t have happened to me if they were there to shed light to the whole situation…
To be continued. . .
Last entry . . October 4, 2008 10:09 AM
But this is an old grudge.
An old issue that could have died out naturally a long time ago.
Frankly it affected me. It affected my well-being. It haunted me through it all. It’s as if I saw the world’s new face, the thing that I never anticipated. Can’t trust anyone, anymore, drifting from one job to another.
Frankly, how I wish I didn’t see that picture of that scribbling on the white board. It bears nothing but bad memories. As for me I forced myself to let go, to move on, not to feel the pain at all. But the sordid past has to catch up with me somehow.
I know you won’t be interested at all but what forced my hand to take that decision less that a decade back (8 years, as suggested by Aldrin Esteban) was my frustration over the Editorial Board of 1999 – 2000. I thought it was a new board, I thought it would serve as the “Sword of Gideon” that would root out the problems that the students were facing, and after all, they were our publishers. I thought it was a SELF–CLEANSING BODY.
On that fateful night that sparked it all, during that editorial board meeting, I thought we were going to talk about rectification, mending the wrong ways and devising a plan to correct on our wrong footing. But no! HELL NO!!!
By the looks of it, we were going to pamper the delusion that we inherited, that instead of looking into our accountability, we instead were going to hit on innocent people, much more OUR OWN.
Yes, we were harassed! The AUSG together with some left–leaning groups were at it, they were training their scopes on us, on our every mistake, our inability to publish, our publication’s content, our inability to liquidate. But those bastards who were after us only wanted to replace us all. How I remember them trying to infiltrate the board by seeding the editorial board exams with their members. Of course, they would harass us, they wanted to see us startled, make more mistakes. The calls every morning, every afternoon, asking us where we were putting the students’ money. Our in–fighting. I for one was tasked to track down a member’s activity who was then suspected of being a SPY. A “spy” for God’s sake that did not exist. Why were we even fighting when we only have to show them that we were not corrupt and redirect the issue to corrupt administrators, teachers who were incompetent, the “façade mentality” that takes on the direction of constructions in Adamson. There were so many issues to choose from to take “their” eyes off us. All it should have taken was one honest move.
On that night, six members of the editorial board were about to be punished with suspension, whose sins were merely not making themselves available during press works. Press works? WHAT PRESS WORK?
Oh, maybe, “press work” meant those late night “intellectual conversations,” or the nights in some fast food spending over PhP200 per head courtesy of our publishers. Or those were the nights spent in expensive bowling lanes, thanks to gullible students.
What ever happened to the old TAC Credo?
To Sin by Silence
When we must Protest
Makes Cowards out of Men…
Silence is no longer deafening, and the way it looks is no longer sinful but a comforting silence.
And why protest when all is on the take, when all is happy?
Cowards? Strength is in number.
After my termination, the constitution and by laws of the publication got revised. I really don’t know but I’ve heard that it was a happier law for them. First, I couldn’t contest my termination because of the new constitution, and then later, I heard it put a member through law school. Thanks to the students’ money, of course.
The old Chronicle board was the black horse for corruption. And those people who were in the bottom of the pecking order got promoted to Top Dog, a.k.a. “editor–in–chief” simply because of their loyalty. Those people with an unbearable idiotic IQ then claim “intellectual brilliance” borrowing lines from dead philosophers, posing as “left-leaning intellectuals” or even atheists.
I remember a conversation with Joe Bert. Not really an INTELLECTUAL conversation because my friend Joe Bert hates being called an “intellectual” to his face.
So, there was this time that he asked me why did I become a leftist. I gave him a rhetoric answer. He didn’t reply for some time, and then told me that if I only knew each and everyone in this country, then maybe I’d shun my convictions.
Tito Escaño once said that when your stomach begins to knock, “your shallow philosophy will fly out of the window.”
What I like best about Joe Bert and Tito is that, they hate posers.
About the author:
AJ007 has blogged 7
posts
Write a comment