We were barely in our 20s that sweltering afternoon on the Quezon Hall grounds in April 1957. When our names were called out we nervously walked up the podium to receive our UP diplomas. I remember taking a deep breath and looking wistfully in the direction of the Liberal Arts building (now Palma Hall) where most of my classes had been held. I was lost in thought and somehow forgot how excited my mother and relatives in the audience must have been to see a first graduate at UP from the family. But after the obligatory tossing of togas and flowers into the air, we all repaired to Ongpin for a well-deserved Chinese dinner. As the JD bus careened out of campus, it was as though all the time I had spent on these hallowed grounds flashed in my mind’s eye and I was wondering what to do next.
Diliman in the fifties had a primeval quality to it: fresh, lush, green, serene, in the middle of nowhere almost. The only access to it was a dusty talahib-ridden road that went by the name of Highway 54. Who was to know then that, three decades later, it would metamorphose into EDSA, the site of a modern Philippine revolution?
Diliman was the postwar vision of UP President, Bienvenido Gonzalez, who bucked the establishment to effect the transfer of the country’s premiere institution from the war-ravaged buildings of Padre Faura. People had never heard of Diliman except as a remnant of a U.S. Army camp with quonset huts and probably a lot of ghosts.
But at least it had an Officer’s Club which promptly became Gregory Terrace, the domain of the indomitable Dean of Women, Ursula Clemente, with her retinue of activities collectively called Euthenics. I was bewildered by this strange term, but after hearing Dean Clemente lecture on how rud€€it was to hurry and how uncharming it was to be late, I more or less figured I better watch my behavior. The Terrace had a great socializing effect. Parties, meetings, dancing, games, study sessions and all kinds of social activities were held there.
Not far from there was Area 2 where I was billeted to a sawali cottage run by Aurora Munar, a cashier at Quezon Hall, with whom my mother trusted more than the dorms. I paid only P15 a month for room space with a fellow Ilocana and relative, Adelinda Flores. We had “cotbeds” that were infernally infested with bedbugs. In the middle of the night I would wake up finding red welts on my body from all the scratching. I paid P35 a month for meals delivered in “pimreras” by an enterprising family next door. Once in a while, Adelinda and I would go to Little Quiapo with our co-boarders in the bigger room in our cottage - Josefita Elliot, Teresita Briones, and Norma Egay and her two sisters, all from Surigao. It was my first time to live with students from another region and I began to understand Cebuano just listening to the lively chatter of the “Surigao girls.”
It was, in part, their enthusiasm for UPSCA that made me join in as well. In those days, there was a feudal system of sorts between the Greek-letter fraternities and sororities and the “barbarians.” The citified and mestizo-mestiza students from the upper crust tended to join the frats and sororities hoping to one day become grand archon or archoness, vice-chancellor, or whatever. Maureen Tiongco was the grand archoness of Sigma Delta. The Upsilon had a succession of grand archons who would become future leaders of the country. The more timid students from provincial high schools gravitated around UPSCA or kept to themselves.
The great issue of the day was the spirited crusade mounted by Fr. John P. Delaney against hazing and other undesirable activities of the fraternities. He also advocated the teaching of religion and the campus liberals hit the roof on behalf of academic freedom.
Fr. Delaney also raised the specter of atheism, which in turn invited attention from the red-baiting Congress Committee on Anti-Filipino Activities (CAFA). It was part of the global Cold War atmosphere. US Senator Joseph McCarthy was finding a communist under every toilet seat and denounced even movie stars and directors. An ultra anti-Communist politician by the name of Richard Nixon emerged.
In the Philippines, the witch hunt revolved around Diliman. Dr. Agustin Rodolfo wrote manifestos for the Society for the Advancement of Academic Freedom, which had in its ranks Leopoldo Yabes, Alfredo Lagmay, Ricaredo Demetillo, Eleanor Elequin and the younger instructors like Elmer Ordonez, Armando Bonifacia, Romy Diaz and S.V. Epistola. So contentious was the intellectual climate that J.D. Constantino (later to become a nun) bewailed the “Slow Death of an Institution,” to which Bonifacio promptly replied.
Meanwhile, other progressive groups like SDK, SCAUP, MPKP and the Bertrand Russell Peace Movement were being formed. A leading campus young intellectual, Francisco Nemenzo, Jr., was attracting a following. A few years later, the Kabataang Makabayan, with Jose Maria Sison at the helm, would be launched. The fifties spawned the seeds of nationalism, which would grow in full force in the sixties. It was the end of an era with a laid-back innocence. Hello revolution.
It was not only a time of incipient ferment on campus. The fifties were marked by a profound intellectual stimulation on the deeper issues of society. As English majors, we read and analyzed the “modernist” authors of the time - T.S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce, Marcel Proust, Jean Paul Sartre, D. H. Lawrence, Joseph Conrad, etc. In English 10, Leticia Ramos (later Shahani) introduced us to English literature. She had just gotten an MA from Columbia. Virgie Moreno developed a new Humanities course for English majors to take. Visiting Professor Leonard Casper gave us a full dose of American literature.
I was concerned that we were not getting enough Philippine literature. So, N.V.M. Gonzalez devoted an entire course to Philippine creative writing. We discussed some of his short stories. He inspired me to write my undergraduate thesis on pre-Hispanic literature in the country that was to become the Philippines. On the whole, we did lots and lots of reading, well into the dawn hours for sheer love of learning. Of course, there were also some “holy terrors” of professors at the time for whom we had to be fully prepared out of fear, as we would be asked to recite in class.
There were lots of theater activities too, and the UP Dramatic Club was in its heyday. Cherry Santos, Angie Collas, Rosemarie Seranilla, Rita Kalaw Ledesma and others were the darlings of the stage. Jun Roy, Jules Yogore, Louie Lagdameo and Fortunato Gupit, Jr. were the male regulars. It was the high noon of Western theater and the UP thespians took on everything: Chekhov, Ibsen, Sartre, Tennessee Williams, Sherwood Anderson, Thornton Wilder, William Inge, and Arthur Miller. The .A. theater was a hub of activity under fidgety guru Wilfrido Ma. Guerrero.
Meanwhile, Epifanio San Juan, Jr. was being chastised by a committee for his supposedly obscene poem, “Man Is a Political Animal.” He was to graduate magna cum laude a year after us. Homobono Adaza was under expulsion proceedings and Fernando Lagua was suspended, never to return. Also in the milieu of the fifties were two students who would become U.P. presidents in the future: Emanual Soriano and Edgardo Angara.
After 40 years, what does it all mean? Well, the fact that I and my fellow jubilarians this year have survived 40 years has to mean a hell of a lot. Really a lot. It was not just the formal education we got. You can get that anywhere. Perhaps we all started thinking we’d go to UP for an education - the best in the country. But in the process we were getting something else, more than we bargained for. An awakening. A broadening. A discovery. A strengthening character. An independence of thought. A confrontation with our demons. A search for meaning. Above all, a special kind of identity because UP was a special place. We entered its doors young, naïve, innocent, wide-eyed and with shackles in our minds. We came away free and liberated, with a stronger foundation for life. Otherwise we wouldn’t have lasted for 40 years. Much of this is because there will always be UP, which isn’t just a memory.
This article was published in the Alumni Reunion Yearbook 1997.
A native of San Fernando, La Union, Belinda A. Aquino got her MA in Political Science from the University of Hawaii as an East-West Center grantee, and her Ph.D. in Political Science from Cornell University. She served on the UP faculty in the 60s and was UP Vice President for Public Affairs in 1989-91. She is currently Professor of Political Science and Asian Studies at the University of Hawaii were she is also the Director of the Center of Philippine Studies. She is an internationally recognized authority on contemporary Philippine politics.