in response to the growing student population and the corresponding need for more facilities. With much help from many donors, mostly alumni and entities from abroad, the program saw the construction of more academic buildings, dormitories, housing units for the faculty and other facilities. These constructions included the now famous Luce Auditorium which was funded largely by the Henry Luce Foundation, the Science Complex, equipped with an observatory on top of the third floor, the Engineering Complex, and the Silliman University Medical Center. Martial law era When Martial Law was declared in 1972, Silliman became one of the first two universities ordered by the government to be closed and one of the last to be opened. On the morning of September 23, 1972 some faculty members and many students were rounded up by the local Philippine Constabulary (now the Philippine National Police), some of whom were detained for one to six months. Many offices of the university, including the Weekly Sillimanian, the student paper, were raided by the PC. Journalist Crispin Maslog, who was teaching in the university at the time, recalls that Marcos himself had complained about instances where members of the political opposition such as Senator Jovito Salonga and Senator Juan Liwag were invited to speak at the university. The year 1979 became a landmark year for Silliman when its Van Houweling Research Laboratory, then headed by Dr. George Beran, produced a dog vaccine that gave a three-year immunity from rabies, making it the first and only laboratory to produce a rabies vaccine with long-term immunity in the whole of Southeast Asia. The development of the vaccine resulted in the elimination of rabies in many parts of the Visayas and Mindanao Islands and was later on used by other countries in their fight against rabies conducted in collaboration with the World Health Organization. 1980s to recent history The 1980s saw the restoration of the university's Student Government and the approval of its constitution. After years of suppression by the Marcos regime, students were again allowed to self-organize in 1981. The decade also witnessed the 100% board exam ratings of the Electrical Engineering, Nursing and Accountancy programs and the installation of solar-powered light posts in the campus in the years 1986 and 1989 respectively. In the 1990s the university shifted its grading system from alphabetical to numerical. In 1994, eleven Sillimanians landed in the top ten of that year's