SOME 100 students of the University of the Philippines High School in Iloilo graduated last week.

UPHSI Principial Edelia Braga presented the candidates for graduation to Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences Dr. Alice Joan Ferrer.

Ferrer and Braga distributed the diplomas to the graduate.

Chancellor Clement Camposano was the guest speaker at the graduation rites where he spoke about “excellence.”

“I speak here of a prolonged process of formation and cultivation, where students not so much gain an understanding of excellence as an ideal, as they begin to embody it. They learn excellence by having it inscribed in their bodies in the form of habits and dispositions,” UPV quoted Camposano as saying.

“The exemplary professionals, luminaries in the various fields, and leaders that have emerged from this University were products not only of its formal curriculum but also, and more significantly, of the general environment it provided for its students,” he added.

Class valedictorian Ace Navarra delivered a speech on behalf of his class.

“As we proceed to the next chapter of our lives, know that being a better person really means realizing the ‘we,’ in the past, and the ‘we,’ in the present, are not the same anymore and that we have grown,” Navarra said.

“We may not know what this new chapter of our life will bring us… But I hope this will not stop us from becoming a better person by exercising what it means to be an ‘iskolar ng bayan,’ which is to serve the people while upholding honor and excellence,” he said.