150 Years. 150 Things About the Ateneo. (51−100)
We started with the First 50 last week, and we are continuing with the next 50 things about the Ateneo.
GO TO PART 1 (First 50). PART 3 (101−150).
GO TO PART 1 (First 50). PART 3 (101−150).
51. Philosophy and Theology. They say you can’t consider yourself an Atenean if you have not gone through Philo and Theo. These subjects also “spawn” (hehe) the most beloved teachers in the college partly because the subject itself is great but also because the teachers are great themselves: Padre, Ediboy, Gus, Tonette, Leo Garcia, (add your favorite Philo teacher here), Fr. Dacanay, BobbyGuev, (add your favorite Theo teacher here).
Ateneo will not be the same without the experience of Philo and Theo.
52. By-words and catchy terms: “We Believe”, “Ang Sarap Maging Atenista”, “Iba ang Dugong Bughaw”, “Nobody does it the way we do it”, “Win or Lose It’s The School We Choose”, etc. These phrases may sound cliche-ic, but they’re easy to remember and encapsulate so many things about our experiences inside the Ateneo.
53. Ateneo de Manila University Vision-Mission Statement
As a University, the Ateneo de Manila seeks to preserve, extend, and communicate truth and apply it to human development and the preservation of the environment.
As a Filipino University, the Ateneo de Manila seeks to identify and enrich Philippine culture and make its own. Through the education of the whole person and the formation of needed professionals and through various corporate activities, the University aims to contribute to the development goals of the nation.
As a Catholic University, the Ateneo de Manila seeks to form persons who, following the teachings and example of Christ, will devote their lives to the service of others and, through the promotion of justice, serve especially those who are most in need of help, the poor and the powerless. Loyal to the teachings of the Catholic Church, the University seeks to serve the Faith and to interpret its teachings to modern Philippine society.
As a Jesuit University, the Ateneo de Manila seeks the goals of Jesuit liberal education through the harmonious development of moral and intellectual virtues. Imbued with the Ignatian spirit, the University aims to lead its students to see God in all things and to strive for the greater glory of God and the greater service of mankind.
The University seeks all these, as an academic community, through the exercise of the functions proper to a university, that is, through teaching, research and service to the community.
54. The Ateneo Seals (long format).
This seal was introduced for the 50th Anniversary or Golden Jubilee of the Ateneo de Manila. Father Joaquin Añon, SJ (1905 — 1910) was then the Rector.
Granted to the Ateneo in 1909, the seal was circular in form framed by two semi-circular ribbons. The upper ribbon of the Ateneo seal bore the motto “Lux in Domino” — Light in the Lord, a phrase taken from St. Paul. The lower ribbon bore the school’s name: Ateneo de Manila.
Within the circular frame, upon a gold background, was a large silver star, six-pointed like the Star of David. This was the emblem of Mary, Mother of God, of the House of David, Patroness of the Philippines and of the Ateneo.
Encased in the center of this silver star was the oval escutcheon of Manila, which had been granted to the City in 1596 by King Philip II of Spain with an oval shield divided (as the heraldic experts would say) “per fesse”: that is, it was divided horizontally into two portions. The upper portion showed a castle or battlemented tower on a red field. The lower portion was blue (signifying the ocean) upon which swam a golden animal with the head of a lion and the body and tail of a dolphin. This sea-lion brandished a sword in its right paw. Surcharged upon the Manila escutcheon was the emblem of the Jesuits: a tiny green shield upon which was a white (or silver) circle containing the letters IHS — the first three letters of the Name of Jesus in Greek.
Father Richard A. O’Brien, SJ who was a Marine Officer and Chaplain was Rector for the period 1927 to 1933. Possibly as part of his preparations for the Diamond Jubilee of the Ateneo, he introduced the use of the seal of the Soldier-Saint Ignatius Loyola in 1929.
Like the seal of 1909, this seal is circular in shape, with the identical border: “Lux in Domino” on top and “Ateneo de Manila” below. Jesuit monogram — IHS is contained in a circular sun emitting rays in every direction. Under this sun is a shield divided “in pale” into two parts.
On the dexter or right side (but to the left of the beholder) is a bendy of fifteen pieces, alternating in color, red and gold. On the sinister or left side (but to the right of the beholder) is a white field upon which are the wolves and pot (lobos y olla) of Loyola. The wolves are standing on their hind legs, reaching with their forepaws for the pot which hangs from the ceiling. Tradition tells us that this was an emblem of generosity: the lords of Loyola used to provide so much food for their followers that there would be plenty left over in the pot to feed the wolves of the countryside.
In 1952, under the direction of the Father Rector James J. McMahon, SJ (1950−1956), the Ateneo’s College and High School Departments transferred from Padre Faura to Loyola Heights. In 1959 when Ateneo was celebrating its centenary at the Loyola Heights campus, it was decided during the tenure of Father Rector Francisco Araneta, SJ (1959−1965) to combine the old seal (1909) with the new one (1929) — to synthesize the past with the present. Since then, this joint seal has been used as official seal of the University, together with the 1929 seal originating from the family of St. Ignatius Loyola.
55. Information Technology. In February 1978, the Ateneo opened the Ateneo-Univac Computer Technology Center, one of the country’s pioneering computer centers. This later became the Ateneo Computer Technology Center.
In 1994, the Ateneo was one of the first Philippine schools on the Internet, and was part of the conference that connected the Philippines to the world wide web. In 1996 the Ateneo relaunched the Ateneo Computer Technology Center as the Ateneo Information Technology Institute.
56. The Big Three: ACLC, ACIL and ATSCA. These are three of the oldest orgs in the Ateneo and were known as the Big Three. They have the longest history among the orgs in the Ateneo, and were core members to what was known as the Socially Oriented Activities (SOA) Cluster of the Ateneo (the present crop of students don’t have SOA anymore). They used to be stationed in the old Colayco Hall before it was torn down. Now they have their own rooms in the new Org building in the MVP Center.
Tina Montiel and Susan Evangelista, in their book Down from the Hill: Ateneo de Manila in the First Ten Years under Martial Law mentioned the critical role of the three orgs during Martial Law:
“According to alumni members of the student orgs, Jesuit Fathers Noel Vasquez, Francis Reilly, Pasquale Giordano, Paul Limgenco and Raul Bonoan were among the moderators who spearheaded the efforts to revive the three organizations. They (also) personally invited their students to join (or rejoin) these organizations. Their mentoring were instrumental to the growth of these organizations from 1973–1982.”
“The students heeded the call heeded the call to join these orgs for a variety of reasons…and the formation programs made a lasting impact on them. In many instances, the commitment to social change continued beyond their student years and extended into their professional lives.”
57. Jesuit Volunteers Philippines. JVP is a community dedicated to the task of nation-building by promoting volunteerism and rendering faith-driven service. It recruits, trains, forms, and sends young men and women volunteers to work in under-resourced schools, non-government organizations and parishes all over the country for at least one year. The JVP community provides the youth with the support and opportunity to engage in meaningful relationships that will fuel their drive to serve.
Birthed in the 1970’s, grown through the 1980’s. Men and women for others. This was the challenge posed by Jesuit educators to their graduates in the different universities. However, in the late 1970s, their options were rather limited because of martial law. The government held little hope for such persons and non-government organizations (NGOs) were not yet in fashion. For those coming from the Ateneo de Manila, the summer work camp was offered but this was only for two months. The question then was what to do and where to go.
However, this concern did not go unnoticed. Fr. Joaquin Bernas, SJ, then provincial of the Society of Jesus in the Philippines, and Fr. William Kreutz, SJ, then the college chaplain of the Ateneo de Manila University, considered this in a lunch meeting they had in Washington, DC. They discussed the possibility of setting up a program for those interested to do service and agreed to get information on a similar program, Jesuit Volunteer Corps. Upon returning to the Philippines, Fr. Kreutz consulted with the other Jesuits that eventually led to the birth of the Jesuit Volunteers Philippines (JVP).
With then scholastics Noel Vasquez, Jemy See, and Victor Labao to help Fr. Kreutz run the program, nine volunteers were sent in June 1980 to the different Jesuit mission areas in Mindanao. Of these, seven were graduates of the University while two were graduates of the Holy Spirit College. There was no special training, no preparations. They were the first who boldly left everything behind and had that fire in their hearts to offer service to others.
The first batches of volunteers were sent to assist the Jesuits in rural parishes in Bukidnon as well as special programs in other Jesuit schools in Cagayan de Oro City, Davao City, Zamboanga City, and Naga City. But as years went by, JVP was no longer confined to the different Jesuit mission areas in Mindanao but to non-Jesuit and non-sectarian apostolates in the different parts of the country as well. It developed into a lay organization of young men and women who assist in social, pastoral, and development work of missions, apostolates, NGOs, schools, and social development agencies. The program became more well-known as an alternative career.
58. Admission Statistics. The Ateneo receives thousands of applications every year. Applications from foreigners to the college and graduate school programs are quite common. In 2005, the Loyola Schools admitted 2,023 freshmen, a figure larger than the projected average of 1,800 freshmen from recent years. 20% of the entering class was composed of valedictorians (83), salutatorians (62), and honorable mention graduates.
59. Tambayans. Ateneo won’t be complete without its tambayans.
“Part of the atmosphere and the culture is TAMBAY. Tambay means to sit around with your friends, groupmates, classmates, blockmates, orgmates, course mates. So that one of the first things people will ask you if you do get to study there is: saan ka nagtatambay? That means, where do you spend your free time in school? Where are you accepted? From what group are you?
My point is that it is this sense of tambay—of learning things outside the 4 walls of the classroom, of not being too consumed by school work makes the experience of studying in the Ateneo very enriching.” [Eric Santillan, Life at the Ateneo]
And the tambayans (and the people who are in them) have been christened names with their own characteristic: Dog House, Assoc, Pink House, Cono Bench, “the Admin Kids” (really the bench in Xavier Hall), RSF, Mecolayco (but there’s no Colayco anymore :( ), Snake Pit, Berch’s Boys and Girls, and then there are the kids who make “tambay” in the library to study.
Tambay is one of those experiences that makes the Ateneo experience complete.
60. Pocket gardens. A fairly recent Ateneo phenomenon, the pocket gardens (or SPG–Smoker’s Pocket Gardens or the more cutesy name: Smocket Gardens) were made around the year 2000 when the Ateneo college became a smoke-free campus. The compromise are these beautifully designed pocket gardens for smokers.
Oh, and there’s even a Smoker’s Pocket Garden Profile in Friendster (sorry, could not find a similar one in FB).
61. Theater in the Ateneo. Mr. Pagsi remembers 1941 vividly. Not only was it the year he was admitted to the Ateneo in Padre Faura as a high school freshman at the age of 14, it was also the year he saw his very first play. The play was “Who Ride on White Horses,” which told the story of St. Edmund Campion, one of the very first Jesuit missionaries sent to England during Elizabethan times. It was directed by Fr. James B. Reuter and Fr. Horacio de la Costa, then two young Jesuit scholastics, and staged at the grand Ateneo auditorium, touted as “the finest auditorium in the Far East” in those times.
It is said that the Ateneo productions in those times, although performed by an all-male cast, were social events often graced not only by Manila’s elite but also by American governors general and Filipino politicians. After that night, the seed of dramatic arts has been forever planted in Pagsi’s heart. Only briefly did his passion for theater take a respite – when the war broke out and the Ateneo at Padre Faura had to close down, but not before the traditional December 8 Mass had been celebrated, amid the drone of combat helicopters. [From Sibol’s Journey: From Shylock to Serapio]
62. Fr. Henry Lee Irwin. It was July 1946, about one and a half years after its brief harbor at Plaza Guipit, when Ateneo reopened at Padre Faura. The resurrected campus was also dubbed the “Ateneo-Quonset huts” because two dozen of the semi-cylindrical structures, originally manufactured for the US Navy, were used in place of classrooms and even the chapel. The once great Ateneo edifices – the Manila Observatory, the Mission House, the St. Ignatius Church and the famed Ateneo Auditorium – were all in shambles.
But drama in the Ateneo remained very strong. When he was in college, Mr. Pagsi recalls, there would be a dramatic night for each year level and all the productions were Shakespearean plays. “The Tragedy of Julius Caesar,” “The Merchant of Venice,” “Romeo and Juliet,” and “Othello” were among the memorable plays then. Each group strived to put on a quality production in spite of the tight budget. But perhaps one of the most effective teachers on resourcefulness was Fr. Henry Lee Irwin.
“For me, Father Irwin is not a building; he was my teacher and I learned much from him,” says Mr. Pagsi. From scraping off the left-over lipstick from its tube to writing on the clean side of a used sheet of paper, Fr. Irwin showed his students by example how to use everything as wisely as they possibly could. His ingenuity was brought into play again when he directed a post-war production of “Hamlet,” in which he transformed the very ruins of the Ateneo, with its majestic arches, into the Castle of Elsinore. It helped too that he had excellent orators in the cast in the persons of Teofisto Guingona (Hamlet) and Vic Silayan (Ghost). [From Mr. Onofre Pagsanghan on Fr. Henry Lee Irwin]
63. Sibol. In 1956, Mr. Pagsi earned the nod of the principal to organize the high school’s own drama club, the Ateneo High School Dramatics Society, and became its moderator. Although the club debuted with “MacBeth,” “The Merchant of Venice” was its first major production in 1957, starring a brilliant Noel Trinidad as Shylock.
It was in 1966 when the name “Dulaang Sibol” became official. The move to change the name of the drama club to something Filipino was a response to the stirrings of nationalism that started to be felt by many sectors of society in the late 1950s. The first two Filipino productions of Sibol were “Paa ng Kuwago,” Soc Rodrigo’s adaptation of an English short story, and “Sino Ba Kayo?” By Julian Balmaceda. Soon after, the group was adapting other works to Filipino – J.M. Barrie’s “Dear Brutus” became “Wala sa Ating Mga Bituin” and Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town” was adapted into “Doon Po Sa Amin.” Mr. Pagsi, a great motivator, also succeeded in turning his students into his co-authors, and together they turned out plays which have become classics and staples of every Dulaang Sibol season: “Adarna,” “Sa Kaharian ng Araw” and “Sinta.” By then, Sibol started collaborating with neighboring girls’ schools Miriam and St. Bridget’s in order to tap female talents for its plays.
However, Pagsi’s indefatigable work of coaxing out the collective talents of his students was to bear even more precious fruit. In his lifetime, he has mentored some of the country’s most admired leaders and artists, such as Jim Paredes, Noel Trinidad, Subas Herrero, Johnny Manahan, Leo Martinez, Basil Valdez, and Jun Urbano.
He is particularly proud to have been a teacher to the creative geniuses behind two of the most enduring contributions to the Philippine music and theater scene springing from the ranks of high school students. One of these “geniuses” he says is Manuel (Manoling) Francisco (GS: 1979; HS: 1983; Coll: 1990; PostGrad: 1999) who set to music the prize-winning liturgical composition “Hindi Kita Malilimutan” when he was but a high school freshman. A member of the Society of Jesus, Father Manoling is co-founder of Bukas Palad Music Ministry and composer of numerous popular liturgical songs.
The other is Paul Dumol (GS: 1965; HS: 1969; Coll: 1973) whose masterpiece, “Ang Paglilitis ni Mang Serapio,” won the second Paglisahang Pandulaan in 1968, when he was in fourth year high school. “Serapio” is touted as the first Filipino modernist play and the most frequently staged Filipino one-act play of all time. Dumol is also credited for two other important Filipino plays: “Ang Puting Timamanukin,” critically acclaimed as the first major breakthrough in the writing of Philippine theater, and “Ibong Adarna,” which he wrote when he was in the Ateneo Grade School. [From Sibol’s Journey: From Shylock to Serapio]
64. Ang Paglilitis ni Mang Serapio. One of the best plays to ever come out of the mind of an Atenean.
“Dulaang Sibol and Mr. Pagsi consider “Serapio” as their passion play, not unlike the passion plays that were traditionally performed in the glory days of the Ateneo auditorium. And it has traveled across every kind of stage, from the grand Cultural Center of the Philippines, to the lowly streets of Balic-Balic.”
“We see Serapio as the Christ image. He dares to be different, he dares to love in a society that forbids love. Paul Dumol says that no one is as poor as the people who cannot love because they are forbidden to love,” Mr. Pagsi elucidates.
He adds that every aspect of the play is thus carefully conceptualized and executed – from the design of the three kinds of crosses in the backdrop, to the inclusion of the “passion” elements in the various scenes: the agony of solitude, the betrayal, the bearing of false witness, the scourging, the stripping, and finally the crucifixion (gouging out of the eyes). The director also adds a touch by including in the cruelest moment of the play a Gregorian chant that translates to: “Where there is love, there God is and when there is no love, where is God?”
In closing, Mr. Pagsi shares with his audience an experience in another performance of “Serapio” that starred Cholo Malillin years ago. He narrates that when Cholo was asked during the open forum why he chose to be in the play even if he had to be slapped and hurt repeatedly at each performance, the young actor gestured towards the crucifix at the back of the theater and uttered, “Because…”
To his young audience (and their parents) Pagsi then turns and asks, “What is your ‘because’?” [By Gia Damaso-Dumo]
65. Sinta The ultimate play for holding hands. And I think it is the longest running play in the Philippines as well.
The story is told, part of urban legend and Sibol folk lore, of a time when a couple watched Sinta with their three children. When the play began, the children sat between them in the intimate theater of Tanghalang Onofre Pagsanghan. By the second act though, the husband had signalled the children to make way for their mother to sit beside him. And they remained seated beside each other, holding hands for the rest of the play.
The story is told more convincingly and more beautifully by Mr. Pagsi himself of course, so you have to watch it yourself.
