Rarely do we come across mentors who, despite the generational gap and the physical distance, have truly made a mark in us. And I have found precisely that in Dean Luis V. Teodoro whose life we celebrate today.
Like most journalists here, Dean Louie began his journalistic journey in a student publication. During his college years, Dean Louie wrote for the Philippine Collegian. His early articles were published in the 1961 editions of the Collegian. He was a features editor. His name stood alongside giant names in public life: former Supreme Court Associate Justice Leonardo Quisimbing, Communist Party of the Philippines Founder Jose Maria Sison, Rep. Edcel Lagman, columnist Mahar Mangahas, among others.
But for us in the Collegian, Dean Louie was more than just an alumnus. In 1996, Dean Louie edited a book entitled “The Collegian Tradition,” a compilation of the publication’s winning and prized editorials from 1932 to 1995. The book was published during his term as dean of the College of Mass Communication (CMC).
And throughout the years, Dean Louie was a constant figure in the Collegian’s history. As dean of CMC, he chaired the Board of Judges, the body that selects the publication’s editor-in-chief. He did that for six years. And during those six years, Dean Louie had somewhat of a say in how the publication would be run, effectively guiding the publication’s history.
Last night, UP President Angelo Jimenez said in his remarks that his fraternity had a hard time winning the editorial examination during the tenure of Dean Louie. The 1990’s, after all, was a fraught time both for the university and the country. A few years after the 1986 EDSA Revolution, their generation had an existential crisis in finding the meaning of the newly regained civil liberties and reinvigorated democratic institutions.
In 1996, Dean Louie was placed at the spotlight after a contentious Collegian editorial examination. The BOJ, which he headed, declared poet and activist, the late Richard Gappi, as the first place of the examination. However, second-place law student Voltaire Veneracion filed a complaint, saying that the score sheets of the BOJ had erasures which, upon close inspection, revealed that Veneracion is the top scorer of the exam. As any self-respecting individual would do, Dean Louie stood by the BOJ’s decision until the UP administration overturned him and declared Veneracion as the editor-in-chief. But, until the end, the student body stood by the BOJ’s pick which led to the second iteration of the Rebel Collegian under the helm of Gappi and other progressives.
Dean Louie continued to help the publication in various ways. Sometimes, he would critique issues of the publication. Sometimes, he was invited to deliver a lecture or a talk. Even under my term, Dean Louie was supposed to write the foreword of our Collegian 100 book—a fitting tribute, we thought, to a man who has done so much both to our publication and the Philippine media as a whole.
To be honest, with Dean Louie’s sudden passing, we don’t know who else will fill the space that he was supposed to occupy in the book that commemorates the centenary of the first publication he worked in.
During one of our brainstorming meetings last year, Dean Louie told us that we could choose “democratization” as the general theme of the Collegian 100 book. For him, the stories that the Collegian staffers—him included—wrote are inexplicably tied to the country’s progress and nation-building.
And indeed, that process remains underway until now. Dean Louie may have left us but the lessons and wisdom that he imparted, especially us campus journalists, will remain. In the many ways that he could, he contributed to the development of the Philippine media landscape. Especially with his support of a pro-people alternative media, Dean Louie believed in the power of wielding the pen to uncover stories that corporate media might find unattractive. He believed that journalism must be foremost for the people and must be told from the perspective of the marginalized and oppressed.
There is no better way to pay tribute to Dean Louie by living by the time-tested values of journalism that he always advocated for—that quality journalism is hard, that truth-telling has no shortcut. In many ways, Dean Louie embodied the Collegian tradition—sharp and militant, but responsible and ethical.
As we confront the pressing sociopolitical issues of our generation, his words ring truer to this day. We shall carry on the torch of ethical, good-quality, and, most of all, pro-people advocacy journalism. On behalf of the Collegian Editorial Board and staff, we give our highest tribute to Dean Louie. ●
As prepared remarks during the media sector’s tribute for Luis V. Teodoro on March 16 at the Loyola Memorial Chapels and Crematorium.
