Paper weight
What a fuss over a meaningless piece of paper.
To enter most Catholic colleges and universities, an applicant needs to present a certificate of good moral character issued by the applicant's former high school. And to get that certificate is easy peasy for the vast majority of graduates. After all, the high school let them graduate, right? So it means the applicant fulfilled all the school's requirements, reasonable or not, in order to walk up that stage.
Yet that wasn't where Santo Niño Parochial School graduate Krisel Mallari found herself this year. She had thought herself up a scheme where she could vent her frustrations with the school: delivering the commencement speech for her graduation rites, one that unfortunately for the hapless officials, included skewering those she loved to hate at her institution.
That didn't sit too well with school officialdom, which promptly shut her down in the middle of her address. After all, who wanted to listen to the salutatorian's tirade against the institution that awarded the valedictorian spot to some second rate, trying hard teen-aged chit, right?
My mother feels very strongly about this act of disrespect. Her view is, Mallari should have voiced her frustration somewhere else. Not at a solemn ceremony, (or a joyous occasion) where school administration can be shamed in front of the madlang people. Perhaps, at a private audience with the principal? In a strongly-worded letter to the Department of Education? In a Facebook rant or a Twitter tirade? But certainly not in a graduation ceremony.
I felt the generation gap very strongly that day as I spoke to my mother. I could not, for the life of me, see what was wrong with voicing criticism at even the most public of fora. My generation (and specially those even younger) does that all the time. We speak up and disagree. We rant. We fire off letters to the editor. We post in the comments sections of virtual newspapers. We start on-line petitions for random strangers to notice and sign up, in the hopes of creating swells and viral movements. Heck, politicians don't just get heckled by frustrated constituents, they even get shoes thrown at them.
So that was the libertarian philosophy I was espousing when I tussled with my mom on whether Santo Niño Parochial School had a right to withhold the certificate of good moral character, a piece of paper needed by Mallari to proceed to the very Catholic University of Santo Tomas (UST). (I had to back off before mama dear regretted her decision to send me to law school. Any more than she already does).
Poor Mallari. She didn't realize how vindictive or offended the school would be when she tried her hand at expressing herself freely. To the extent of ignoring her request for a certification on how good her moral character was. Equating her exercise of free speech with a judgment that she was not moral. Taking a position on her morality, her basic goodness. Even fighting her in court, all the way to the Court of Appeals. And when ordered by a court to issue that piece of paper, issuing one that made sure anyone reading it would understand that its issuance had only been forced.
Sounds like the acts of people with very good moral characters. With a perfect right to judge those younger than them.
If you think about it, this conundrum faced by Mallari (and the root cause for my argument with my mother) was actually precipitated by UST. If UST didn't impose that stupid requirement of a certificate of good moral character, Santo Niño wouldn't have had that leverage over Mallari to begin with. And if you really, deeply think about it, why does UST need to judge a 16-year-old's moral character so early in her life, anyway?
I thought Catholicism was all about forgiveness and redemption. So if a student was a hellcat in high school and snuck out to parties and got into fistfights or (gasp) wore lipstick and mascara (at an all boys' school), that means the applicant can never be forgiven and enter the wrought iron gates at España Boulevard? Whereas an adult in full possession of his mental faculties can commit heinous crimes and sleep around, and then go to church, confess his sins and repent? And then receive eternal salvation at the pearly gates?
There's an inconsistency here.
Why does a University need to evaluate teenagers at that early an age? Why pin scarlet letters on troubled kids, and basically shunt them to less desirable schools (like that godless University of the Philippines)? Why not take a chance on these kids and reform them with all the institutional grandeur of the oldest university in Manila?
And really, how would it know whether the certificates it receives from thousands of high schools mean the same thing? Would a certificate issued by a parochial school be the same as a certificate from an exclusive convent school? Would the issuers apply the same standards of morality in judging their students?
And then we get the news report that UST would accept the qualified certificate issued by Santo Niño, anyhow. Which tells us just what weight that piece of paper possesses.
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