BSU going global: the centennial challenge

September 3, 2017 Community Billboard

LA TRINIDAD, BENGUET – Benguet State University (BSU) will culminate its two-year Centennial Foundation Anniversary celebration with a series of activities on September 25-28, 2017.
Activities were designed to involve all the university stakeholders that include the students, employees, alumni and the general public. These activities aim to highlight BSU in its 100th year as it envisions being a premier university delivering world-class education that promotes sustainable development amidst climate change.
BSU officially launched its Centennial Foundation Anniversary celebration on September 30, 2016. That day was graced by former Commission on Higher Education (CHED) Commissioner Alex B. Brillantes Jr. who encouraged BSU to think global, act local, to look back and to be thankful, to critically assess the present, pursue reforms, and be hopeful for the future. He reminded BSU constituents that as they reflect on their achievements, they also have to realize that they have gone far but there is more work to be done.
A slight adjustment on the Centennial Foundation anniversary celebration activities were done upon the changing of the BSU Foundation Month from June 1916 to September 1916. In a written explanation by Dr. Stanley F. Anongos of the BSU-Center for Culture and the Arts, the reference to June 1916 as a foundation month for Benguet State University is not supported by historical documents. What historical documents say is that in 1916 the Experimental Station of the Bureau of Agriculture at La Trinidad, (BSU land) was turned over to the Bureau of Education. In the same year, grade 5 students of Baguio Industrial School (BIS), now the Baguio City High School, used the land for their gardening class. In 1017, an Agricultural school distinct from BIS was established in La Trinidad and was labeled in Education Bureau reports as Trinidad Agricultural School (TAS).
It appears that the reference to June as the foundation is anchored on the presumption that the start of BSU coincided with the opening of the school year in 1916. A review of secondary documents, however, shows that the BIS students would have started using the gardens on September of 1916. The documents do not explain the circumstances but simply point to September as the beginning. These documents include: Halsema Collection found in Delos Reyes’ dissertion, which puts September 1916 as the foundation of a Trinidad Farm School; Nicomedes Alipit’s article on the history of Trinidad National Agricultural School found in From G-Strings to Modern Pants, published in 1051, where he uses September 1916 as the beginning of the school; Chronology of events found in the Foundation Day program paper of MNAS in 1951 placing September 1916 as the start of Trinidad Farm School; and Lucio B. Victor’s sabbatical paper entitled “Benguet State University: From a Farm School to a University” where he puts the date as September 1.
If 1916 would be considered as the foundation year owing to the use of BIS students of the gardens turned over by the bureau of Education, the safer month to use for the observance of this school’s foundation would be September. Although supported by secondary documents for now, it has historical bases than the month of June. PR / ABN