College Coop 1916

MANILA: You are looking at the image of a folded year-2000 flyer on the oldest consumers' cooperative in the Philippines, which we simply called Coop when we were students in the late 1950s and early 1960s at the University of the Philippines' College of Agriculture in Los Baños, Laguna. This flyer was prepared by the Education & Training Committee: Rosalinda P Garcia (Chair), Avelina M Salcedo (Vice Chair), Sonia B Maristela (1st Secretary), Hosanna H Espanto (2nd Secretary), and Winifrida D Medina (Member). Thank you, Ms Garcia.

The first 2 paragraphs of the flyer give us just a little bit of history of the Coop:

The first consumers' cooperative established in the Philippines is the College Consumers' Cooperative. It was organized on 20 October 1916 by administrators, professors, employees, and campus residents of the University of the Philippines College of Agriculture in Los Baños, Laguna. It was initially named the Agricultural Cooperative Company and started with a paid-up capital of P4,000.

The pioneer organizers were BM Gonzales, FW McLean, OA Reinking, FW Foxworthy, H Cuzner, FM Fronda, JL Marfori, LB Uichanco, RB Espino, GO Ocfemia, CF Baker, Cs Banks, PA David, J Jamias, RK Habaluyas, OF Santos, AL Teodoro, I Elayda, AV Yñiquez, EF Roldan, H Silayan, FB Sarao, JL Roxas, FR De Peralta, T Ferrer, and AR Chanco.

Info not found in the flyer, I have been trying to retrieve from the Web the first full name and field of interest or occupation of each of the incorporators; I have them all now, except for McLean, Marfori, Jamias, and Yñiquez. The list is given like that (above) in the flyer; I don't know if it reflects that it was Gonzales who initiated the whole thing, and that I would not be surprised, as showing leadership, Gonzales was the one who went on to became UP President.

"The oldest" means the Coop was the very first consumers' cooperative in these islands. It will soon be celebrating its centenary on 20 October 2016. In recognition of the iconic Loyalty Day celebration of the College (UP College of Agriculture, now UP Los Baños), the Coop is celebrating the day ahead by 10 days, in order to join the alumni of the College. College, yes. Even today, UP Los Baños is simply referred to as College not only by alumni but also jeepney drivers from nearby San Pablo and Calamba City, and bus conductors plying the Santa Cruz-Manila route.

I'm 76 now; a few years ago, I saw the value of the cooperative as an instrument to help the members benefit from a common fund. Today, I am the Vice Chair of the Nagkaisa Multi-Purpose Cooperative in my hometown of Asingan in Pangasinan, which means I am ex-officio the Chair of the Education & Training Committee of Nagkaisa. That is why I am very much interested in the history of the College Coop. We could learn a few hard lessons here.

And indeed, there is occasion to learn in the history of the College Coop. On the 25th of March 2009, or 7 years ago, the Coop receive an unexpected letter from UP President Emerlinda Ramos-Roman that had bad news in the very first paragraph:

It is with regret that we inform you of the pretermination of the Memorandum of Agreement dated 01 June 1999 between the College Consumers Cooperative (sic) and the University of the Philippines System.

Based on the investigation conducted by the University's officials, the Cooperative was found to be in violation of several provisions of the MOA.

The letter went on to enumerate 3 "grounds" for terminating the MOA before its expiration date, which is 2024 yet. Never mind the details, but as a scholar of the law, as an avid reader of the creative and critical genius of Perry Mason, who was Erle Stanley Gardner's star attorney in many pocketbooks, and many of those I read entranced in my high school years yet, I say that the UP-Coop case is open, neither here nor there, and should have been rendered in favor of the Coop.

Appeals were submitted, denied. The Coop finally appealed to allow it to stay in place until this year, but the appeal was likewise denied. What the decision to oust the Coop from the occupied premises of the College tells me is that the Chancellors Three of UP Los Baños whom the Coop appealed to reverse the decision – Luis Rey Velasco, Rex Victor Cruz and Fernando Sanchez Jr – they neither appreciated the value of history nor the benefits from a cooperative that College constituents had been deriving from the Coop. Neither did the first and only lady President, who ordered the pretermination of the MOA in the first place, and who herself was a product of UP Los Baños.

The good news is that UPLB Chancellor Sanchez has approved the request of the Coop for the University to help celebrate its centennial. That is to say, UP Los Baños through its Institute of Cooperatives and Bio-Enterprise Development (ICOBED) will be assisting. The ICOBED will take care of the invitation of the speakers for the symposium and the UPLB constituents who will participate in the event, while the Coop takes care of other arrangements and the logistics.

So, the 100-year story of the Coop will end in a few months' time. They are planning to merge the Coop with the UP Employees Multi-Purpose Cooperative (UPEMPCO), with UPEMCO as the merger's name. I say that that would be surrendering to a greenhorn. The UPEMPCO was organized only recently, a Johnny-Come-Lately. While it has the lofty aim of "entrepreneurial engagement," UPEMPCO has no history while the Coop has 100 years behind it.

OK Bautista is now the Chair of the Coop, and she was the one who engaged me to write its history. What I have written here is entirely my own and has neither been seen nor approved by OK. I have never been and I cannot be a member of the Coop; I'm writing this as an historian and advocate of cooperativism, being a coop official myself. Some things are better left done or undone. Except the members, nobody at UP Los Baños appreciates it, so my recommendation is not to merge with UPEMPCO, to simply let the Coop die a natural death, to live on in history as a happy memory!