UV alumni: Gullases’ tremendous contributions to nation-building
Unlike other institutions which build their philosophy on the pursuit of wealth and power, prestige and popularity, University of the Visayas is a low-key institution of learning, whose success is measured on the degree of services that its alumni and students, faculty and employees do contribute to the noble and challenging mission of building a nation, and forming a just and humane society.
The best evidence of UV's success, in its 100 anniversary, is not really on the number of student population, much less on the amount of revenues generated from tuition and other sources of income. These are important too, but UV and the Gullas family consider the achievements of the Visayanian alumni as more indicative of success. The tree is, after all, known by the quality of its fruits.
From a small class of 37 students in 1919, to 87 in 1920, to as high as semestral and summer total enrollment of 60,000 in the seventies and eighties, UV has already produced hundreds of thousands of public officials, from low to high, educators in all levels, public and private, accountants in government and private firms, police generals, PNP officers and men, NBI officials and personnel, DOLE and NLRC commissioners and labor arbiters like Attys. Belarmino and Carreon, Supreme Court Justice, Court of Appeals Justices, regional trial court and city and municipal judges, more than a half million lawyers over the many decades of the Gullas Law School,. We also have topnotch engineers and architects, nurses, dentists and medical doctors. We have great artists, singers and sports champions in basketball and other games.
One can go from town to town and cities in Cebu, there is always a Visayanian who is either mayor, vice mayor, councilor or barangay captain. UV graduates were trained for leadership and public service. You can hop from island to island, from Cebu to Bohol to Leyte, Southern Leyte and Biliran. We have former students coming from Northern Samar, Samar and Western Samar, and from Bicol, from Masbate, and both provinces of Negros. And in the whole island of Panay and Mindanao.
They are businessmen, practicing lawyers, accountants and medical professionals. Many are into industries and trade. Others have put up their own schools and hospitals. Visayananians were trained to be entrepreneurial. They own buildings, transport vehicles, both land and marine.
In public service, UV has produced Mayor Eddie Gullas, former Governor (an outstanding one) , multi-term congressman of the old third, now first district, deputy speaker and founder of the citihood of Talisay. UV is proud of its alumni, Senator Ernesto Boy Herrera, Cabinet member Sergio Cerge Remonde, Supreme Court Justice Regino Hermosisima, Court of Appeals Justices Portia A Hormachuelos and Pampio Abarintos, former Cebu Governor Francisco Emilio F Remotigue, and former Mandaue Mayor Demetrio Cortes, and thousands of many others. Pacheco Seares and Frank Malilong of the other newspaper, and Atty. Aven Piramide of this publication, as well as former Lapu-Lapu City Prosecutor Celso Espinosa and Cebu provincial secretary Annie Pasaylo, Atty. Gloria L Dalawampu, Dodong Baduel and Pat Acabodillo, were graduates of UV Law. Both Mayor Mike Rama and Vice Mayor Edgar Labella are UV alumni too. I beg forgiveness if I cannot mention them all.
UV is the home of the brave and the daring, the poor young men and women who fought life's many odds and won, the courageous provincianos who dared to face the ''slings and arrows of outrageous fortunes'' and came out victorious, albeit wounded and scarred in the many battlefields of life. They are now happy and at peace that they have done their best and made UV their alma mater proud.
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