An ode to brotherhood

One way of knowing that your alma mater has left a lasting mark on you is when you look back and are thankful for a lot of things it has done for you. This article is proof enough that my alma mater has done a good job.

The only thing permanent in life is change, or so the saying goes. It isn’t possible to live life without change. No matter how bitter, harsh, cruel or painful it gets, we have no choice but to face it to survive. Last year, change happened again – to our school. Imagine the shock my friends (and even people who are not from my school) and I got when we learned that San Beda was to turn coed.

After 102 years of existence, an all-boys institution has now become co-educational and is introducing new courses that are far from want our school has been known for. Moreover, the grade school and high school departments will be slowly phased out in the Mendiola campus and moved to a new campus in Taytay, Rizal, which will also turn coed, to our utter dismay.

This school year, all that has been set in motion. People have mixed feelings about it. A lot were surprised while others said it was about time. You’d think turning an exclusive boys school into a coed institution would be seen a God-sent, but it seems that’s not necessarily the case. Even if boys are naturally girl-crazy, still many students at San Beda seem apprehensive about the idea.

They are not being sexist, they just want to preserve the school’s culture and tradition. In other words, there’s a certain distinct aura and pride when you come from an all-boys school.

With these changes, a lot of us are afraid that our alma mater’s culture and tradition are slowly being threatened. I visited our campus not so long ago, and I sensed that a lot of things have indeed changed. The overall feel was different. Even the security guards are now kinda a pain. During my time, even if they were strict about IDs at least the guards managed to smile as we entered every now and then. Now, it seems that there is an impersonal feel about San Beda – characteristic of any institution that’s getting bigger and assuming a varied population.

I’ve written many times about my school before, but I guess this will be my last. Let’s just say this is a reminiscing piece on the old San Beda, the San Beda me and my fellow Bedans once knew. Even if they say that the San Beda I have always known is old school – exclusive, compact and down-home compared to the bigger universities – and thus was turning obsolete, somehow we feel it was better to have been in the old school.

Unlike in other academic institutions where students, upon graduation, don’t want to have anything to do with the school anymore, for us Bedans, San Beda was not just a school we attended to get a diploma. We enjoyed the process, the learning, the experiences, and the enthusiasm we got coming to school, no matter how tough it was. There is an emotional bond that binds us and keeps us much closer even if we no longer go there to attend classes. We love the school when we were there; we love it even more after leaving it.

I’ve been a Bedan all my life (technically that is), coming from the sister campus in Alabang, but it was only during my four years at San Beda, in college, did I feel the true Bedan culture. My high school, St. Benedict College in Alabang, had prepared me to adjust comfortably at San Beda. But if one really wanted to feel the real Bedan culture, one went to San Beda, the "original" in Mendiola. It was in this school that I found a sense of identity and belonging.

The Bedans can proudly claim that it has developed a culture and identity that is uniquely its own. The college was established in 1901 after the Benedictine Monks arrived in the Philippines in 1895 from Catalonia, Spain, bringing new educational standards, making it one of the most modern schools in the country at that time. The strength of the foundation did not solely come from the cornerstone of the school buildings but largely from the heartfelt dedication of the founding monks and the alumni and the generations after them. The bond between the school and its students is proof that to this day the influence of the founders has not diminished in strength. This undying faithfulness to our alma mater is the very reason San Beda has become one of the largest Benedictine schools in the world.

The founding monks’ primary focus for their Benedictine students was to be educated in the complete sense; that is, to develop fully and harmoniously the faculties of the whole man- intellectual, moral and physical. It recognized the student’s need to work and function in his post-San Beda-years, but gave equal weight to his need for character formation. It sought solid training of both mind and heart, to help the student further his development through his adulthood. Many may have come from privileged families but this was never a hindrance to seeing different realities from different angles; we were never taught to be elitists. We Bedans are proud of our ability to adjust to different social classes without losing the perspective of an educated human – one of the best attributes that distinguish us from the rest.

People may have been wondering why Bedans have always been viewed as warm and humble and I can boldly say without conceit that we really are. Students of other private schools seem to have the opposite image – I mean they deliberately act and speak in a way that tells other people how better off they are to have been able to enjoy quality elitist education. I am proud that in our school we do not just strive to be the best academically but also to be the warmest in reaching out to people.

The camaraderie among the students is legendary and exemplary. This institution thrived on the concept of "brotherhood," young gentlemen who give different hues of meaning to the already colorful experience of camaraderie.

This close-knit community where you see grade school, high school and even college students seated at one table playing Magic cards (I think now it’s Yugio) together aptly illustrates the Bedan culture. When Bedans run into each other outside the school setting they feel as if they were long-lost friends regardless of batch or age. And it does not stop there.

And now with all these changes, we are not quite sure if the old San Beda culture would still thrive.

So what will I and many of my fellow Bedans miss in the "old" San Beda? A lot actually, probably it will mark an end of an era. The absence of our "balut" vendor Mang Roger for one, the only "Bedan" who doesn’t need an ID to go inside the campus. Aside from the guards he was usually the first and the last person we’d see in school. I’ve heard it said that his "balut" was considered a Bedan delicacy– he’s been there that long. He’d station himself right beside the phone booths with his basket of duck eggs and "chicharon," a favorite snack bar for students of all levels. And when college basketball season came, he was always there with the Bedan crowd, a rather unofficial school mascot cheering our team on. If La Salle had its "Mang Jack," at San Beda we had our "Mang Roger."

Another slice of the "old" San Beda was "Hepa Lane," referring to the endless stalls of street food located just outside our walls, though thankfully I know of no one who really got sick of "Hepa" (hepatitis) from eating all that street food. Before the sprouting of endless food chains in the vicinity, the "Hepa Lane" was a favorite hang-out of students in between classes, since there one enjoyed an endless smorgasbord of skewed innards, good, yummy, cheap, "clean" (?) animal innards.

The old basketball courts, though there was nothing structurally majestic with these, were a favorite hang-out of students after class. The athletic, the bookworms and those who just wanted to kill time could use the court as they pleased. Today, the new wooden courts are only for the school varsity players.

The college lost some of its very good professors and faculty members who had already made a mark. There was once a heated argument over the requirement for every faculty member to have a master’s degree and the ones who argued for it prevailed. Consequently, those who had none, no matter how good they were, had to leave. Unfortunately, the ones we lost were not only cool and fun inside the classroom but also taught us much more than theories and way beyond what a master’s degree could ever impart to us.

Lastly, the grade school and high school students must be the last remnants of the "original" Bedan culture. Watching the grade school kids run around after their classes made us smile and gave us a light-hearted feeling after a tough and grueling day. The inquisitive ones would come to you from time to time to ask a bit of help and even call you "kuya." There was something in the vicinity, which is Mendiola where one is exposed to everything, that has molded and created a unique identity for San Beda. Since Mendiola has all kinds of establishments, in our time it brought us the outside world. In that way was the Bedan, even if he was in an exclusive boys’ school, not really shielded from the realities of the outside world. Leaving it now might mean leaving the culture that is the very identity and the very essence of being a Bedan. It is the end of the road where everything a Bedan is had all blossomed more than a century ago. The separation of the high school and college might be equivalent to cutting the kinship that has been nurtured for years.

I, for one, have had the closest friends way back from the high school. Surely, there are many exclusive schools that have gone coed before us but they have retained the exclusivity of their primary and secondary schools, thus continuing a part of the legacy of their past.

The people behind these changes said they had to do these to survive. Ironically back in my freshman year, I sometimes wished ours was a coed environment. But now, I have learned that we should really be careful about what we wish for since we might not really want it in the end.

Of course the addition of girls in the school would mean new ideas, new blood. On the light side, you don’t have to react negatively if you’re branded "school heartthrob." (If you’re all guys in school, you do the math.) It is believed that turning coeducational would lead us closer to the goal of achieving the "university status."

There are certain things we want so hard to remain exactly as they are but they too, have to change. We are left with no choice but to accept change. Instead of being reluctant and uncompromising about these inevitable changes, the only thing we can be now is just be supportive of them every step of the way. It is time for us to be open to change. Maybe Providence has placed us in a seemingly darker situation so that we could appreciate a much brighter light later. There must be a greater vision to which He wants us to open our eyes, though it may be hard to see it at the moment. The transition might be difficult, but who knows if we just have to redirect our vision to be able to see broader and greener plains. Nevertheless, I must say that I am very fortunate to have been a part of that "Old" school. Animo San Beda!!!! To all Bedans, we have an online community, check www.bedista.com

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E-mail/Friendster the author at ketsupluis@hotmail.com