A Philippine university that bills itself as the oldest in Asia launched its 400th anniversary celebrations with fanfare this week.
Priests and nuns in their cassocks and habits mingled with masked students in colorful costumes as the church-run University of Santo Tomas in central Manila began marking the historic event.
The year-long celebrations will include masses, academic gatherings, opera concerts, charity projects, film festivals, dance contests and visits by movie star alumni as the university seeks to lighten its conservative image.
Photo: AFP
“Other schools say they have produced presidents, but we have produced national heroes and saints,” university rector Father Rolando de la Rosa told a crowd of beaming faculty as the celebrations got under way.
The national hero, Jose Rizal, studied at the university and several Santo Tomas alumni were canonized after they were killed while doing missionary work in Japan, China and Korea from the 17th to 19th century.
The school, which is attended by about 44,000 students, has also produced its share of Philippine presidents and legislators.
Santo Tomas alumni and students like to point out that their university is “older than Harvard” — a leading US educational institution, which has a mere 375 years under its belt.
The celebrations started on Wednesday with a solemn mass celebrated by a Vatican envoy, while simultaneously hundreds of students and faculty held a raucous parade just outside the chapel.
This was followed by an extravagant street dance competition where giant speakers blasted pop tunes throughout the campus, mingling with the prayers being piped from the chapel through the -university’s public address system.
The celebrations are to include the unveiling of new statues symbolizing the virtues of the university. The figures are modeled after prominent alumni Piolo Pascual, a Philippine movie heartthrob, and beauty queen Charlene Gonzales.
Run by the Dominican order of priests, the University of Santo Tomas was originally established as a seminary in 1611 when the Philippine islands were being colonized by Spain.
It soon expanded to offer other academic courses, establishing the first schools of law, medicine, engineering and journalism amid many other “firsts” in Philippine history.
Another Philippine institution, the University of San Carlos in the central city of Cebu, claims it is the oldest university in Asia, having been founded in 1595.
The two have a friendly rivalry over bragging rights, with Santo Tomas proponents pointing out it has run almost continuously since its founding, while San Carlos closed for long periods and was used for different purposes over the centuries.
The university’s top educational standards and strong Catholic influence mirror the Philippines’ high literacy rate and a population that is more than 70 percent Catholic.
Doctors produced by the university dominate the country’s health services and the school boasts that its graduates have the best record in passing the government’s professional exams.
However, the history comes with some baggage: The University of Santo Tomas has also been labeled a bastion of conservatism by its critics, including rival Catholic schools.
University students are still required to wear uniforms and must take classes in theology, regardless of their major. However, -Carmina Luis, an 18-year-old fine arts freshman at Santo Tomas, said she did not mind the restrictions or the religious influence.
“It is safer here and the school uniforms are not a problem. You don’t have to worry about what to wear in the morning,” she added.
Students and university officials also say leftist activism and the fraternity-related violence rampant in other Philippine colleges have been kept under control at Santo Tomas.
“The teaching of Christianity here is a major point. It helps dampen the violence from fraternities. It also redirects students away from noisy activism,” university archivist Regalado Jose said.
“You can be conservative in culture and still be very creative artistically and in output,” he said.
While other church-run schools have catered to the country’s wealthy, Santo Tomas tries to keep its tuition rates down to remain more accessible.
“We are a university that caters to middle class families. We don’t want to be identified as elitist,” said rector de la Rosa.
A semester at the university costs about 35,000 pesos (US$790) to 40,000 pesos, according to de la Rosa. In contrast, other elite universities charge about 70,000 pesos.
The university does this without receiving any subsidy from church or state, de la Rosa said.
And while many elite schools have moved to more peaceful suburbs, Santo Tomas maintains its 21.5 hectare campus in the heart of the capital, not far from slums and monstrous traffic.
The university is also building new facilities, including a sports complex, while expanding the university hospital that caters to the general public.
It also plans to expand outside of Manila for the first time, setting up satellite campuses elsewhere in the Philippines.
In the sweltering streets of Jakarta, buskers carry towering, hollow puppets and pass around a bucket for donations. Now, they fear becoming outlaws. City authorities said they would crack down on use of the sacred ondel-ondel puppets, which can stand as tall as a truck, and they are drafting legislation to remove what they view as a street nuisance. Performances featuring the puppets — originally used by Jakarta’s Betawi people to ward off evil spirits — would be allowed only at set events. The ban could leave many ondel-ondel buskers in Jakarta jobless. “I am confused and anxious. I fear getting raided or even
Eleven people, including a former minister, were arrested in Serbia on Friday over a train station disaster in which 16 people died. The concrete canopy of the newly renovated station in the northern city of Novi Sad collapsed on Nov. 1, 2024 in a disaster widely blamed on corruption and poor oversight. It sparked a wave of student-led protests and led to the resignation of then-Serbian prime minister Milos Vucevic and the fall of his government. The public prosecutor’s office in Novi Sad opened an investigation into the accident and deaths. In February, the public prosecutor’s office for organized crime opened another probe into
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
RESTRUCTURE: Myanmar’s military has ended emergency rule and announced plans for elections in December, but critics said the move aims to entrench junta control Myanmar’s military government announced on Thursday that it was ending the state of emergency declared after it seized power in 2021 and would restructure administrative bodies to prepare for the new election at the end of the year. However, the polls planned for an unspecified date in December face serious obstacles, including a civil war raging over most of the country and pledges by opponents of the military rule to derail the election because they believe it can be neither free nor fair. Under the restructuring, Myanmar’s junta chief Min Aung Hlaing is giving up two posts, but would stay at the