In the meantime, I received a flood of feedback from readers and other parties who were hyperlinked to my laptop (I travel a lot). Many Dilimanians wrote in to share memories and lament the passing of the UP of old. The others wrote about their memories of the esteros and the memorable structures that lined the university’s once clean banks.
Let’s start with this e-mail from a biologist, Benjamin Vallejo Jr., who wrote:
Dear Mr. Alcazaren,
It was interesting to learn that the central part of the UP Academic Oval was intended to be an artificial lake. If it had pushed through, we would have seen something like the tidal basin of Washington DC, with Quezon Hall and the Main Library reminiscent of the Jefferson and Lincoln Memorials. Instead of cherry blossoms fringing the banks, we would have flame trees.
Well, what we have now is the famous UP lagoon that is better called a sewage treatment pond. Generations of biology majors have at one time sampled water from this classic example of eutrophication. In the process, most, if not all, of them would fall into the wash! I suppose no one would get a biology degree from UP without falling into this cesspool.
It is good that UP has made Sundays car-less days at the oval. There is that time of the year (at the start of the rainy season) that the road bisecting the oval into two, the one that links Engineering with the CAL Faculty Centre, is carpeted with flame tree blossoms. One can walk on the carpet of blossoms. This is probably the most magical sight on campus. The next Monday, all the blossoms are crushed by rubber tires.
The Academic Oval area has become less like a jungle (the grass, it seems, is regularly mowed). This has made the lagoon a good picnic area. Unfortunately, the lagoon remains, as it once was – a foul gray cesspool. UP should have its Environmental Science and Biology institutes do something about this.
I am a full-blooded maroon. I remember when I was a kid studying at UP Elementary, there were fairy shrimps still in the streams leading into the lagoon. Now, there are none. There were soft-shelled turtles and wild gurami fish and carps then. Now, there are just the kataba, more popularly called isdang canal. Kataba can live in the stinkiest of water. Fairy shrimps require relatively clear water. There were still shrimps when I was at UP High (when I first fell into the lagoon in my second year Biology class).
The UP is still relatively green. As a biologist, I know that this greenery is deceiving. This greenery remains in just a few areas. The Academic Oval is the biggest of these. If one walks away from the well-trodden paths, you would see some endangered birds (that have been scientifically documented by Prof. Perry Ong of Biology) such as kingfishers, woodpeckers and flowerpeckers. Where else would one find kingfishers and woodpeckers in almost treeless Metro Manila? UP’s administration should take pride that the university remains a sanctuary for nature. UP must allocate areas on campus for preserving greenery while it balances its goals of infrastructure development.
The "basin" would have been wonderful. Students and residents nearby would have been able to engage in water-based sports, picnic along its banks and use the area, as they do now, as a rendezvous for certain aspects of their social development. That said, and despite the comments of Mr. Vallejo, the lagoon has undergone much improvement. Former Dean Honni Fernandez did a wonderful job of resurrecting the place from total oblivion.
Much can still be done and it is not impossible that Parson’s original intent is finally implemented. There are six more years till the university’s centennial and this could be one of the proposals for the state university’s larger "resurrection." With a "basin," the buildings of the university could be integrated with an element that serves as a reflecting pool, a means of transport and a venue of social interaction.
I meant by this term to point out the fact that most of the university’s expansion had taken the route of parcelization without integration. The original intent of housing colleges in interconnected pavilions easily accessed by walking was abandoned in favor of individual plots assigned to various "complexes." Each of these built its own parking lot and driveway, indicating the priority given by later-day campus planners and architects to car-riding students and professors.
The effect of present campus planning at the UP is that the campus is "sprawling" away almost without rhyme (look at the cacophony of architectural styles) or reason (a gym in the middle of nowhere), making the task of catching classes more and more difficult from the point of view of physical distance and lack of protection from the sun and rain (not to mention muggers, rapists and drive-by shooters). There is still hope but the university needs to acknowledge these problems as well as address the constant and growing pressure from the engulfing city.
Dear Paulo,
I enjoyed your article "Storied Esteros" in the Saturday STAR (June 15). The estero has been a part of my life since the day I arrived at DLSU, Sept. 28, 1958. Mrs. Maria Clara Lobregat used to live on the other side of what was a parking lot for years. Along our "western front" is the Leveriza estero. The older brothers told me the story about her father (Lorenzo). When he was commissioner of public works (or something the equivalent), he covered a lot of esteros. He didn’t cover ours because he was a good public servant and didn’t want people to feel that he was giving himself (and us) preferential treatment by covering the estero along his property. They don’t make many of these public servants anymore. Sometimes, when I use a back door road and go by the estero, I want to cry! Hope you can stimulate someone to clean them up!