“This shall be the Mariano Marcos State University” – President Ferdinand E. Marcos

If Pres. Ferdinand E. Marcos were still alive today, he would be happy to  see the fulfillment of his dream for the Mariano Marcos State University. 

 

Indeed, every Ilocano is blessed to have a great man and a “kailian” who led this nation for 20 years with an unparalleled vision of establishing a reputable university that will become an epitome of quality learning in this part of the country.

 

His dream was expressed in his speech during MMSU’s First Commencement Exercises on April 25, 1978. The following are the excerpts of his speech:    

 

“You know, I have had the idea that this campus should now be worked and planned properly by a development planning engineer. Once again, I go through the ceremony of signing PD     1279 which converts this college into a university, which will be replicated in all the regional universities that we are putting up throughout the Philippines. And we are starting this in Ilocos Norte.

 

“The Mariano Marcos State University is for the less affluent members of our society who are not financially able to attend a university. And because they do hard work such as farming, they may not attain scholarships under the wide-ranging scholarship program of our government which gives 7,000 to 8,000 scholarships every year.

 

“I have always dreamed that someday we would be able to establish a university in this part of the country. This is, therefore, historic because this is a commencement ceremony of a college that you did not know was already a university at the time you were still studying. Rest assured that while I am President, I will continue to support this university. It is my intention to see to it that this university becomes a model for other regions throughout the Philippines.

 

“We must, therefore, start out by improving its quality. There are specializations which we must now bring into the university. This specialization will require augmenting the size and quality of the faculty. 

 

“The relevance of an institution to a region will depend upon how very deeply we have studied the requirements of the region as well as the requirements of our nation.

 

“And as I look at the graduates, as I feel the firmness of their grip, I realize that they have become taller than my generation, healthier than my generation, and more mentally capable than my generation. But more than anything else, they have also acquired a greater capacity to love their people and their country than my generation who fought, bled and died so that our country may be free and prosperous.

 

“You know, when there is a tragic absence of love of country and for people, for prudence, feeling of justice, of oneness with humanity, we are witness to a world where technology may have an ableness to travel farther, to cure the diseases of the body and even to manipulate the behavior of people. But our institutions of development, because they have not paid sufficient attention to the development of those virtues that I speak of, have not succeeded in alleviating the miseries of fear and want and malice.

 

“It is my fervent hope that the graduates of this university now and in the future will all be imbued with a passion for justice as they are with the necessary skills for development.

 

It will be then my joy and pride, the joy and pride of the parents, and of our people to know that we have established a university true to the dreams of all those who have died, including the man after whom the university is named. 

 

“This is a university worth its name, a place from whence our leaders of the future will come, men and women who can  rule others because they have learned the basic precept of learning — first to rule themselves, their emotions, and their passions. A true university is a school of discipline where the mind, the will, and the spirit may be enabled to achieve and create in the image of God; who are born and live, who must rely on human rather than material resources, who have a need of this kind of university to transmit the virtues of the older generation to the young, to institutionalize the transmittal of this virtue from one generation to the other.

 

“I hope and pray that this shall be the Mariano Marcos State University.” 

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