WELCOME ABOARD!

With this maiden issue, we take off from where we left off twenty eight years ago. The LCHS Spectrum, last edited by Charles O. Sy and Victor L. Chiu, folded up after a year's stint in 1969.

Today, the Internet offers us a good reason to relaunch the LCHS Spectrum. The new global interconnectivity of the Net provides us a faster and easier means of reproducing this news and info service. This time our newsletter rides on the crest of the Internet. Distribution is thru E-mail and is sent out free to all alumni connected to the Net.

Contributions of articles, opinions and news items are welcome.
They may be addressed to: charlesy@durian.usc.edu.ph

Our initial line up of writers/reporters/contributors are:

Henry L. Yu (Cebu);
Terry Racines (Iligan);
Loloy Tan (Sydney, Australia);
Mike Ong (Edmonton, Canada); and
Alex Rodriguez (Florida, U.S.A.).

We are still in the infant stage. Changes and improvements shall be incorporated into this Internet newsletter as we go along and become more organized.

If you know of any fellow alumni whom you wish to be included in our mailing list, please feel free to forward their e-mail addresses to us.

This issue begins a series of a quick nostalgic trip back to the glorious days of LCHS. The first ever student publication to see print in LCHS was founded in 1965 by Victor L. Chiu. It was called the Scholastic Gazette. It lasted a year. In 1968, a second student organ was published, called the Campus Keeper, with Henry Yu and Emelita Lee as editors. The paper also lasted a year. In 1969, the LCHS Spectrum was published for the alumni and students of LCHS, then edited by Charles O. Sy. Like its predecessors, it also lasted a year with Victor L. Chiu as editor of the final issue. In the summer of 1970, a fourth publication came up called LCHS Time-Out. It was published by Henry Yu and Charles Sy and was circulated in Iligan as an insert in the Chinese Commercial News.

For this issue, we feature an article written by Victor Chiu in the Scholastic Gazette on Jan. 15, 1965. The situation and human condition on which he voiced his concerns remain strikingly true today as they did more than 30 years ago. Victor 'A-E' Chiu currently works as assessor of the Phil. Ports Authority in Iligan City. The ff. is the article:

Nowadays, it's very, very hard to find an honest man. And why will it not be when everybody thinks of himself an honest man? If he could commit dishonesty, he would then say that he had done it just to suit the things to the situation.

When the teacher told the students to get a pencil and a piece of paper, that meants a test. So, Pedro got one. But because, last night, he was not able to study, he didn't know anything. And during the examination, he cheated. So, Pedro got a hundred. Now, is that bad?

Certainly, it is bad - but to Pedro, it is not. To Pedro, when you know the lessons, it is bad to copy. But when you don't know the lessons, it isn't bad, it is good! And Pedro is a model student.

The model student isn't the one who doesn't know how to copy, but the one who breaks the code of ethics - but only once in a while. That is the model student to me. Otherwise, there would be no model student at all.

I admit, and let me be frank, that, sometimes, I cheated. And then, what? Who hasn't? Only a man out of a million who hasn't. And, with the exception of Jesus Christ, I doubt if such a man ever existed.

To accept the truth, I must say that I'm not a man of an exceptional virtue. I'm just an ordinary man - a plain nobody! (But sometimes, I think I am the most important person in the world, and I don't care for the death of a president more than I care for the slightest headache I feel.)

They said that a man who commits dishonesty is a man who has no sense of dignity. But sense of dignity takes so many forms. And since man is a rational animal, he always appears right.

I always think how nice the world would be if there's a man who has a sense of dignity. And by it, I mean sense of dignity that really means sense of dignity. That is, without a single touch of man's rationalization.

I haven't ever encountered such a man. And how I wish that God sent me to this world at the time of Jesus Christ and not at this time when I can't see a Christ-like heart, a Christ-like hand, a Christ-like head, or anything else Christ-like - except the tongue of man.

Where there is word without deed, there is truthfulness without dishonesty. And like Deogenes who carried a lighted lamp under a bright sun along the street, I am looking for an honest man!

Hey, sir, hey, ma'am, are you the one?