« on: August 26, 2007, 10:13:50 PM »
Of visits and visitors
The first time I heard about PAASCU was more than 20 years ago. And from an unexpected source: my 8-year old niece. She was writing to me, and then excused her brevity saying that they were busy at school preparing for the PAASCU visit. I wondered, what scholastic animal could this be that even grade schoolers are awed? A few months ago, I sent my niece, now nearing 29, a text message joking that now I finally understood what she meant.
Since last year, San Sebastian College – Manila has been on a vigorous PAASCU-visit-preparation mode, crescendoing as last week neared. The school went into serious self-examination under Dr. Leonida Africa’s experienced and expert guidance, and with Dr. Rod Ponce’s and staff’s doggedly thorough supervision and service.
Recommendations of the last PAASCU visit (2002) in hand, committees headed by school bigwigs finecombed both open fields and nooks and crannies of school life and structures to check on how we have fared in the areas needing improvement. The imminent visit spurred the school to buy new equipment, upgrade facilities, revisit its vision and mission statement, put decorative plants and air freshener in comfort rooms, among others.
But wizened accreditors see through the gleam of spanking new computers, the smell of newly-applied paint and the unfaded yellow shirts of maintenance staff. They look for the patina of lengthy service by competent faculty and practitioners and the solidity of a curriculum that weds the wisdom of the ages with the appropriate innovations of the present. They fish out through review of documents and interviews with teacher, student or personnel, the tradition of community inreach and outreach, of long-held and long-practiced values, of consistent effort to give the best, whether in teaching, supervising, cleaning, or servicing. The accreditation visit, it has been sufficiently stated, does not impart quality; it just proclaims whether or not we have that quality.
Visits are a profound reality in our life. Some are announced so the host will prepare, while others are not, let the host beware. Some are looked forward to, while others are gladly seen behind. The early Christians expected Christ’s second coming to occur soon, on the strength of Scripture passages like: “Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom” (Mt 16:28). The Parousia took long in coming and Christians understood that Christ comes every day in our lives. If we welcome him as a daily visitor, we have no reason to worry about his second coming.
Another kind of visitor came to San Sebastian also Wednesday. Three quarters of the hour after midnight, death visited Fr. Lino Agunod, one of the religious administrators of San Sebastian. Born in 1928, in Cortes, Bohol, he was ordained Recollect priest in 1963. He had been assigned to the high school seminary of the Augustinian Recollects in San Carlos City, Negros Occidental, to San Sebastian College in Cavite, and to this school. Here he had served as prior of the religious community (1997 - 2003) and as dean of the IREP. Refusing to retire even after 75, he continued to serve as assistant campus minister in these last years. Among the recent memories the religious administrators fondly remember him by are his silent but supportive presence at meetings and his willingness to substitute as mass presider or confessor of the confrere who finds himself saddled with another commitment. Faculty members of the IREP recall that he would always give them a copy of a photograph he took in which they appeared. And they can still almost see him hanging his laundry at the convent’s terrazza, whistling as he went about. The medical and dental staff still savor the chocolates that he would send them from time to time. Life was made smoother and more pleasant with his simple presence.
Fr. Lino prepared for death’s final visit with a life spent in service to the Lord and his people. PAASCU visits are wake-up calls. Like in death, the only way to really prepare is to spend a whole life wide awake.
