Remember Boquiren?
Leonardo J Galvez
17 Aug 2011
All those sour gripes thrown at the doorsteps of Pangasinan State University President Vic Estira are now academic. The board of regents extended his services for another term as head of the only public university in the province, notwithstanding the corruption charges filed against him. What else is new? Embarrass him? No way!
Ambitious mortals employ so many unorthodox ways at getting even with their rivals who are perceived as a threat to their getting a plum in the university hierarchy. If worse comes to worst, flimsy and blitzkrieg of unfounded charges are circulated around the school and the community with the less-educated politicians in concert with pseudo-influential characters acting as rah-rah boys.
While service-oriented public servants fight it out with gusto, the principled ones choose to ignore it to the chagrin of their opponents.
It reminds me of the late Dr. Telesforo N Boquiren, the first DepED Region I director who was plucked out from his current post and appointed PSU’s first president. He held court in his office at the present PSU-College of Education site which was nationally known before as the Bayambang Normal School. Being the only public institution in the province offering tertiary education, logically it should be the main PSU campus. But the turn of events, turned things upside down.
With no premonition at all, paying my respect to him one morning (as regional director, he signed my promotion papers as division supervisor), we went to the Pangasinan School of Arts and Trade in Lingayen. His few personal belongings and papers were tucked in his small luggage. Along the way, he told me, “I am transferring my office now”. I was not surprised? Need I say more?
A Malasiqui native, he introduced functional academic innovations and launched a massive physical development program of the university. With the title of superintendent, he was always the DepEd choice to run the summer classes for the hundred of teachers – who came all the way from the four corners of the country — at the Teacher’s Camp in the Simla of the Philippines. He was well-liked and very much prepared for his job. A happy-go-lucky guy, he mingles with newspapermen at the former Dagupena restaurant, his drop-off point, before going and returning to and from his Baguio City residence.
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