I just arrived from our 35th class reunion in Dumaguete City. Celebrating its 111th Founder’s Day, Silliman University was amass with thousands of Sillimanians, returning home or simply being there to participate in the various festivities of the school. Every August, Dumaguete City, a university town in Central Visayas, heralds back alumni from Silliman University from all over the world in the manner Bohol calls home all Bol-anons.
Fraternities and Sororities were in a mood for revelry and reverie as brods and sis visited to feel young again and perhaps, show off to their children how their years were spent in the pink of youth, with dreams set before them.
These days, choosing the right organization for your children to get involved in, needs careful indoctrination and decision. If your child is involved with the wrong crowd, instead of gaining the fullness of his age, he may not mature at all, not to mention age.
Some fraternities focus more on the initiation with the sinister objective of breaking a person in the name of brotherhood, when all it does sometimes is feed on the ego of the superior or the lord, and diminish the spirit of the neophyte. The power of the paddle or the belt or whatever torturous gauntlet of pain one is subjected to should have the right objectives, and yes, processes reviewed. School organizations that bring out the best in every individual would be appropriate. Not just simply camaraderie and brotherhood or sisterhood, but a bond that grooms positive growth in terms of perspective, leadership, and the quest for the right living principles. I have found a lot of good in my sorority, the Pan Hellenic Society, and I am grateful that God led me to this organization then as it helped me metamorphose from a shy hesitant young girl into a more confident individual.
Squeezing the trip to Dumaguete City between my Visayas-Mindanao leg must have been so ordained as a holiday was slipped into the weekend. With the prodding of my classmate, Annabelle Diao-Lagnason, our other classmate Rodita Kaimko-Asiniero and I headed for the portals of Silliman wondering how our batch mates were and how we must have changed.
But nothing much changed. We were still ambivalent. Possibly caught in the net of renewed adolescence. We moved from being observant, to participative; quiet to boisterous; shy to audacious. All in the spirit of fun! We shared notes, funny stories of our lives, and a few sad ones for those good friends who met their early appointment with God. We made vows to meet again. To savour the only witnesses to our fine years of “groping and grouping” as one of our favourite teachers in high school, Mrs. Milagros Blauta would say. We eventually found our identities, let go of our inhibitions, and became our age in confidence. Yet our hearts remained forever young.
I know every high school class would say their batch was the best. Our batch perfected the shaping of our selves. With bullies and facilitators lumped in the same bundle of growing buddies, we ended up, complete.
Viva SUHS Batch’77!