On Thursday we in the University of the Philippines Los Baños will celebrate Loyalty Day & Alumni Homecoming. This year we stretched the day to a week, as it began on Friday, October 4 and will end on October 10. Before Friday noon the Trade Fair was open.

These days, we interpret October 10 as a marker of commitment, a pledge renewed yearly by the numerous students, faculty, staff, and alumni to the university. Hence, the parade of units and offices which we mounted a couple of days ago, on a rainy Sunday morning. Like the second semester’s Feb Fair, Loyalty Day is an occasion for alumni to return to Los Baños and initiate reunions. I understood these during my first year in service. Historical awareness will come later, not immediately. Unlike the Feb Fair which makes it a point to regularly remind constituents and visitors of its 70s roots as a protest movement against Martial Law, Loyalty Day — though transparent — isn’t as forthcoming. Here’s a screenshot from the Office of Alumni relations (https://oar.uplb.edu.ph/loyalty-day/ld2024/).

The logical link between then (World War I volunteerism) and now (general mirth, pledges of loyalty, and unity) is best voiced by a post from the Business Affairs Office. 

Well and good, then yes? Our commitment to the university feeds into the university’s service to the nation and the world. However, problems arise when we look into the grounds of this commitment, the nature of the service, and the direction of our loyalties. Who decides the nobility of a cause? Who benefits from this public act of volunteerism? Who gains more power, curries greater favor and from which hegemon? Salient questions then and now, as certificates of candidacy are filed, our ruling blocs carrying the banners (though sometimes veiled, sheathed, or temporarily denied) of their choice patrons (US or China), ceaselessly courting their foreign favor as they vie for domestic popularity. 

On October 13, 2012, Prof. Elmer Ordoñez published “Under the Stacks: Retrieving the forgotten past,” an article for the Manila Times and a review of Saul Hofileña Jr.’s book. To illustrate Filipino subservience to the US after 1916, Ordoñez mentions UPLB: “The Faculty and students of the University of the Philippines (Los Baños) volunteered to a man to enlist in the US Army at the start of the First World War. For decades, UP Los Baños celebrated this event as Loyalty Day. They had since come to their senses and called it Arbor Day.” 

While correct, Ordoñez missed two marks:

(A) Arbor Day — or Tree Planting Day, an acknowledgment of our dependence and need for trees and ecological balance — was pegged in the Philippines at June 25 since 2012. 

(B) 1918, 2012, and 2024 — 106 years, and we have yet to come to our senses.

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