150 Years. 150Things About The Ateneo (First 50)

16. Loy­ola Heights. Despite the occa­sional flood­ing, it is a great place to have a uni­ver­sity. And with the numer­ous con­dos, board­ing houses, restau­rants, a giant National Book­store, and the req­ui­site Star­bucks (or three), it has become a bustling uni­ver­sity “town” all its own. It is the rea­son why we are not in a place like the old uni­ver­sity belt and we have the lux­ury of hav­ing a sprawl­ing campus.

17. Fr. William Mas­ter­son. The genius behind the trans­fer to Loy­ola Heights is a guy named Fr. William Mas­ter­son. He found this out-of-the-way but sprawl­ing cam­pus in a god for­saken place called Katipunan. Every­body was against the trans­fer in the begin­ning because it was just so far from civ­i­liza­tion. An Ate­neo Jesuit sup­pos­edly said that only the ‘chil­dren of Tarzan’ would study in the new cam­pus. But he per­sisted. Because he had a vision. I don’t know what he saw. But if he could see Katipunan now, I think he would be proud. And vindicated.

18. The great Jesuits (who are now build­ings in the cam­pus): dela Costa, Cervini, Eli­azo, Smith, Alin­gal, Henry Lee Irwin, Fer­min, etc. Just an aside: Fr. Joey Fer­min was my teacher back in high school. Good, cool per­son. Every­one of them build­ings have a great story because they were named after great men. Oh, and for the record, PIPAC was never a PIPAC, SJ.

19. The great Jesuit teach­ers of our times: Fer­riols, Dacanay, Roche, Arevalo, Tanseco, Reuter, Gal­don. They are insti­tu­tions because they have made a name for them­selves in the sub­jects they taught (or con­tinue teach­ing). They are one of the rea­sons why peo­ple love and respect the Jesuits so much.

20. Lay teach­ers who have made a name for them­selves and have become the stan­dard by which teach­ing is done in the Ate­neo: “Dean” (i will always call him dean) Leo Gar­cia, Bobby Guev, Edi­boy Calasanz, Rofel Brion, Tonette Ange­les to name a few. In an infor­mal meet­ing of alumni I attended sev­eral weeks ago, we exhanged notes if we had gone through these “great teach­ers” and many of us have; and we all said that our Ate­neo expe­ri­ence wouldn’t have been com­plete if we did not have them as teach­ers. Their leg­end, of course, becomes even greater in the telling.

21. In 2000, the School of Arts and Sci­ences restruc­tured into four Loy­ola Schools: the School of Human­i­ties, the John Gokong­wei School of Man­age­ment, the School of Sci­ence and Engi­neer­ing, and the School of Social Sciences.

22. The Blue Bab­ble Batal­lion. TRIVIA: Ate­neo is the first school in the philip­pines to orga­nize a cheer­ing squad. We were also the first school to adopt an offi­cial mas­cot (the Blue Eagle in the 1930s).

23. The Dark Ages. I was in col­lege when the so-called Ate­neo UAAP Dark Ages was in effect. Those were sim­pler times. We did not win as much but we cheered our hearts out. We meant it when we said, “Win or lose, it’s the school we choose,” because we rarely won. But vic­to­ries now are made much sweeter, because we went through the Dark Ages.

24. Back to Back Bas­ket­ball Cham­pi­onships. In the UAAP it was in ’88-’89 and ’08-’09. Oh, and we have the dis­tinc­tion of win­ning both the Juniors and Seniors cham­pi­onships in the just con­cluded 2008 and 2009 sea­sons, mak­ing us the first school to score a dou­ble back-to-back in bas­ket­ball cham­pi­onship in UAAP history.

Over­all, Ate­neo has already won 6 dou­ble cham­pi­onships. These were the years when both the Blue Eagles and the Blue Eaglets won the cham­pi­onship in the same year: 1933, 1937, 1975, 1976, 2008 and 2009. The Blue Eagles became 3-peat cham­pi­ons when they won the title in 1931, 1932 and 1933. They have also won back-to-back titles 5 times. Three were won in the NCAA (1953 and 1954, 1957 and 1958, 1975 and 1976) and two in the UAAP (1987 and 1988, 2008 and 2009).

25. Moro Lorenzo. Lorenzo played col­lege ball for the Ate­neo de Manila, before mov­ing on to play for Philip­pine Air­lines in the Manila Indus­trial and Com­mer­cial Ath­letic Asso­ci­a­tion (MICAA), pre­cur­sor of the PBA. He was also part of the Philip­pine national bas­ket­ball team that won the gold medal at the 1951 Asian Games. He was also the owner of the Pepsi Bot­tlers bas­ket­ball team in the Philip­pine Bas­ket­ball Asso­ci­a­tion, and the chair­man and pres­i­dent of Pepsi Prod­ucts Philip­pines, Inc. The Moro Lorenzo Sports Cen­ter inside the Ate­neo de Manila Uni­ver­sity is named after him.

26. The many park­ing spaces within the cam­pus. The total land area of the park­ing spaces inside Ate­neo is prob­a­bly big­ger than the total land area of the build­ings. Back in the day, we used to call them by weird names: Japan­ese, Chi­nese, etc. I’m not sure if they’re still called that right now. Maybe they should be called by more Jesuit

27. The three “main” build­ings named after three great saints. Before SOM, and the set of new red brick build­ings near SOM, we had the three main build­ings sur­round­ing the quad. They were named after the three Jesuit saints who died before they were ordained priests. Stanis­laus Kostka died when he was a Jesuit novice. Aloy­sius Gon­zaga died when he was study­ing phi­los­o­phy. And John Berch­mans died when he was study­ing the­ol­ogy. As an aside, if you visit the St. Louis Uni­ver­sity in Baguio, a statue of St. Aloy­sius Gon­zaga can be found in their cam­pus. Appar­ently, Aloy­sius Gon­zaga is St. Louis!

28. Patron Saints. The University’s patron saint is Ignatius of Loy­ola, while Maria Puris­sima (or Mary, the Immac­u­late Con­cep­tion) is its patroness, as is evi­dent in its pon­tif­i­cal name “Uni­ver­sity of the Immac­u­late Con­cep­tion” and in the selec­tion of blue and white as the school’s col­ors. The patron saint of its law school is Thomas More, the high school has Stanis­laus Kostka as its patron, and the grade school the Holy Guardian Angels as its patrons.

29. Fr. Rene Javel­lana, SJ, talks of the “War of the Two Maries” between the Jesuit run Ate­neo Munic­i­pal and the Domini­can run Cole­gio de Santo Tomas. The Jesuits had Mary of the Immac­u­late Con­cep­tion as its patroness and the Domini­cans had Mary of the Most Holy Rosary (in fact, Cole­gio de Santo Tomas used to be called Cole­gio de Nues­tra Señora del San­tísimo Rosario).

Imag­ine the two great schools in the walled city of Intra­muros. On the feast day of their patron Mary of the Most Holy Rosary and St. Thomas Aquinas, the Domini­cans would bring out all their car­rozas of Domini­can saints and parade them around Intra­muros. On the feast of the Immac­u­late Con­cep­tion and on St. Ignatius Day, the Jesuits would also bring out their own car­rozas of Jesuit saints and parade around the city, rid­ing their horses.

This was the “reli­gious” pre­cur­sor of the rabid Ateneo-La Salle bas­ket­ball games 400 years later.

The Jesuits even­tu­ally “won” this lit­tle war when the Immac­u­late Con­cep­tion became patroness of the whole Philip­pine Islands.

30. On the Feast Day of St. Ignatius, the Rec­tor of the Domini­cans used to preach to the Jesuits in Intra­muros. The Jesuit rec­tor was also invited to return the favor on the Feast of St. Thomas Aquinas. We do not know when this “tra­di­tion” was even­tu­ally stopped.

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