Alumni

Trying to get today’s column going proved to be a bit of a chore, mainly involving sorting out the Latin masculine and feminine and singular and plural terms around the word “alumni.”

Just for fun, and for your next quiz show or parlor game, let’s get the terms right. “Alumni” is commonly used as the plural to refer to males and females who graduated from or attended a particular school. Purists, however, will say that “alumni” is specific to males, and that the singular is “alumnus.” The correct terms for females are “alumna” (singular) and “alumnae” (plural). All these terms are derived from the Latin “alere,” to nourish.

The school that you graduated from, or attended, is called your alma mater—“alma” also derived from the Latin “almus,” which comes from alere, the same word for nourishing. Thus, our alma mater is the school that nourished us. The plural here is “almae matres,” or alma maters. The term has been used, incidentally, to refer to the Virgin Mary.

If an alma mater is any school one has attended, then I have eight of them, including three Jesuit and three public schools (actually, state universities). Good blend, I think. Time for a confession: That included a few days or weeks (my parents prefer not to talk about it) in a kindergarten to which I couldn’t adjust because I was too young. There, let the truth be known that I was a kindergarten dropout.

Despite, or maybe because of, so many almae matres, I was never big on alumni homecomings. I’m still on the mailing list of three of them, including Texas A&M University (one of the “public schools”), which does not use the word “alumni.”  Instead, we have an Association of Former Students.

My lukewarm attitude toward alumni associations and homecomings came about because of the link with money.  Some homecomings I initially attended after high school were so centered on how much money one was making, or not making, that I, well, dropped out. Then, too, there were the endless solicitations, with the type of acknowledgement dependent on how much you had given.

But I’ve warmed up over the last year because as a UP administrator I have to work closely with alumni associations and homecomings. Last week was devoted almost wholly to alumni activities, with a huge university-wide homecoming, a smaller homecoming for veterinary medicine alumni, testimonial dinners, and an awarding ceremony for outstanding alumni.

The awarding ceremony was special because of so many categories—for example, for the most outstanding alumni association chapter, which this year went to the one in Hong Kong. I hadn’t realized, until the homecoming, how widely distributed our alumni chapters are, within and outside the Philippines, and how active they still are.

Generations

There were also awards for entire families that had left their mark with intergenerational alumni. I ran into former senator Santanina Tillah Rasul, who proudly introduced me to her daughter and granddaughter, only two of a number of family members who are UP alumni. The senator herself is still active with the UP Foundation.

The high points of the alumni celebration were the performances of our older alumni. The golden jubilarians, meaning those who graduated in 1964, brought the house down cha-cha-ing to a song with only two words, their representative explaining that it was to make sure they would not have senior moments during the rendition.  The two words were “aba” and “naku.”

The diamond jubilarians, those who graduated in 1954, were not to be outdone. They performed a whole medley of English and Filipino songs, some quite romantic, which shows that no one is ever too old for love, or for dance.

The previous night I was seated between Dr. Manuel Alba and Eddie Hernandez, both graduates of the 1950s. They had all these stories about life in their times. Hernandez, a lawyer, said that all there were on campus in Diliman were Quonset huts and two buildings—Malcolm Hall and Benitez Hall. It was they who planted those acacia trees that have  come to symbolize the Diliman campus.

More than trees and buildings, the university must have meant so much more to them—a whole new world, maybe even worlds opening up every single day. Many more of the earlier UP students came from lower-income families, and went on with their degrees to become leaders in their fields.

The ceremony tended to be long and drawn-out, with the awardees taking time to walk up on the stage, often having to be assisted. But it was all worth it, for them, and for those who watched.

I realized that these homecomings are mainly attended by senior citizens, and made a mental note that next year we have to make sure that we get the young ones, especially the graduating class, to attend… and to meet the diamond, golden, and ruby alumni. No financial solicitations, just a time to bridge the generations, to learn from each other.

I like the idea of nourishing in the terms “alumni” and “alma mater,” but I also like the Chinese term, “xiao you,” which means “school friends.” That can mean people who were friends to each other in their alma mater, or are now friends, or supporters, of the school.

A different kind

I’m going to end with a funny story, giving another twist to the term “alumni.” My son takes after me: He also had problems with adjusting to his school and had to move. One day in the summer he was asked to leave, I was with him lining up at the cashier’s in a fast-food restaurant. My son, who’s a cinch to win a Mr. Congeniality award any time, tried to strike up a conversation with the man next to us.

“Hello!” he sang out, and the man responded, “Hello.” After the usual exchange of what’s your name and how old are you, I went into minor panic. The man asked, “What school do you go to?” But my son was nonchalant: “No school yet right now. I got kicked out of ______.”

I was aghast, having spent time explaining to him that he was not kicked out but merely asked to take a break, that the teachers all loved him (they did; in fact, they were the ones who cried when they told me he had to, well, take a break), and that someday he could return.

Anyway, the man looked at my son and, in a split-second, said: “Really?  Me, too, I got kicked out of ______!” And he named the same school my son was in. He paused and added, almost with nostalgia, “I was Grade 3 then.”

For a moment there, I looked at the two bonding as alumni, or former students, or whatever term you might want to use. You really never know about the ties that bind.

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E-mail: mtan@inquirer.com.ph