PART 11 THE UNIVERSITY OF SANTO TOMAS IS THE OLDEST EXISTING UNIVERSITY IN ASIA
PART 11 SOMETHING INTERESTING ABOUT THE LLAMAS FAMILY OF THE PHILIPPINES BY:DEO ANTONIO D. LLAMAS
THE UNIVERSITY OF SANTO TOMAS IS THE OLDEST EXISTING UNIVERSITY IN ASIA
My childhood memories in the University of Santo Tomas in Sampaloc, Manila is worth sharing. We have relatives here within the surrounding vicinity of the university. In Kalye Langit is my aunt, my papa's sister who was the head of periodical section of UST Mrs. Fanny Llamas Baldovino ,recently the Brgy. Chairman was Jojo Llamas Baldovino her son . And in Dos Castillas St. Tita Ping Delfin Villanueva my moms sister and in Dapitan st. My mom's elder brother Atty. Arturo Diaz Delfin. So in Sampaloc I always feel at home. Recently I found out that one of the flower shop in Dos Castillas Extension St. Is owned by Jhay Llamas a member of the Llamas Clan FB group. But we where staying in Quezon city then , my birthplace before we transfered here in Iloilo as our permanent address .
I still remember those times when my father would bring me to the university church during Sunday masses and after which a play in the campus field is a most enjoyable activity. I remember him buying me always a box of raisins which was my favorite snack food as I am holding his hands while strolling in the green grass, remembered him saying that his papa Mayor Jose Fernandez Llamas use to be a professor of Law and a Spanish teacher in this university as prior and after his service as Mayor of Dagupan City .
Antonio Llamas Garcia was a professor in college Fine Arts and Dr. Modesto Llamas served in the college of Medicine.
Like wise Tita Fanny Baldovino serves as a the campus librarian before she migrated to the states and my uncle priest fr. Luis Jovellanos Llamas was a seminarian of this school as well. So two generation of Llamas have kept the tradition in serving the academe. While my mama and papa finish their law school at Far Eastern University . Nevertheless allow me to post tid bits of history of University of Santo Tomas the oldest university in Asia for your consumption UST a family tradition in the Llamas family.
HISTORY
THE UNIVERSITY OF SANTO TOMAS IS THE OLDEST EXISTING UNIVERSITY in Asia.
In terms of student population, it is the largest Catholic university in the world in a single campus. The institution was established through the initiative of Bishop Miguel de Benavides, O.P., the third Archbishop of Manila. On July 24, 1605, he bequeathed a modest amount of his personal funds for the establishment of a “seminary-college” to prepare young men for the priesthood. Those funds, and his personal library collection, became the nucleus for the start of UST and its library.
The founding of the University of Santo Tomas followed on April 28, 1611. The original campus was located in Intramuros, the Walled City of Manila. UST was first called Colegio de Nuestra Señora del Santisimo Rosario, and later renamed Colegio de Santo Tomas, in memory of the foremost Dominican Theologian, St. Thomas Aquinas.
In 1624, the Colegio was authorized to confer academic degrees in Theology, Philosophy, and the Arts. By November 20, 1645, Pope Innocent X elevated the college to a university. In 1680, it was subsequently placed under the royal patronage of the Spanish monarchy. It was King Charles III of Spain who granted it the title of “Royal University” in 1785, for its exceptional loyalty in the fight to defend Manila against the British invaders.
On September 17, 1902, Pope Leo XIII made the University of Santo Tomas a “Pontifical University”, and by 1947, Pope Pius XII bestowed upon it the title of “The Catholic University of the Philippines”.
The continuing increase in enrolment prompted the administration, in 1927, to transfer the university campus from Intramuros to its present site in the Sampaloc district, which covers a total of 21.5 hectares. Since its establishment in 1611, the university academic life was disrupted only twice: once, from 1898 to 1899, due to the Philippine revolution against Spain; and, a second time, from 1942 to 1945, when the the Japanese Occupation Forces during the Second World War converted the UST main building into a concentration camp.
As it prepares for its 400th year by 2011, UST plans to establish campuses outside España Boulevard, Manila. A campus will rise in Sta. Rosa, Laguna, and another is forthcoming in General Santos City. Through these campuses, UST will continue to provide Filipinos with the characteristically high quality of Catholic education.
The Varsitarian at 80 Exhibit
The struggle and the glory
By Andrew Isiah P. Bonifacio
In a message to the first issue of the Varsitarian on January 16, 1928, the UST Rector Magnificus, Fr. Serapio Tamayo, O.P., expressed his “firm conviction” that the publication would “catalyze students” to become good writers.
Seventy-nine years later, the good Dominican seemed to have his belief confirmed. A year shy of its pearl anniversary, the Varsitarian, the official student organ of UST, has consolidated a solid reputation as the campus paper that has formed several generations of top Filipino journalists, writers, artists, and leaders.
Those whose names have graced the Varsitarian’s staff box include Vice-President Emmanuel Pelaez, Manila Mayor Arsenio Lacson, Archbishop Artemio Casas, Sen. Francisco Tatad, Governor Juan Frivaldo, Dr. Vicente Rosales, Ambassador Ricardo Endaya, Commission on Higher Education chair Fr. Rolando de la Rosa, O.P., Press Undersecretary Isabel de Leon, and Akbayan chair Ronald Llamas.
The country’s top writers, artists and media leaders have been editors and staffers of the Varsitarian: National Artists Bienvenido Lumbera, F. Sionil Jose, Daisy Avellana and J. Elizalde Navarro; Jullie Yap-Daza, Diego Cagahastian, Celso Carunungan, Doris Trinidad, Gloria Goloy, Neal Cruz, Tony Lopez, Antonio Siddayao, Teodoro Valencia, Jose Guevarra, Jess Sison, Jose Burgos Jr., Amado Macasaet, Mario Hernando, Rey Panaligan, Wilfrido Nolledo, Cirilo Bautista, Ophelia Dimalanta, Federico Licsi Espino, Jose Flores, Jose Villa Panganiban, Rogelio Sicat, Bella Abangan, Eric Gamalinda, J.C. Tuvera, Cristina Pantoja, Sister Delia Coronel, I.C.M., Fr. Albert Alejo, S.J., Fr. Norberto Castillo, O.P., Fr. Gilbert Centina, O.S.A., Cenon Rivera, Teofilo Montifar, Danny Dalena, and countless others.
How the Varsitarian grew to become the country’s most respected campus paper is documented in the exhibit, The Varsitarian at 80: the Struggle and the Glory, which runs until Feb. 15 at the UST Museum of Arts and Sciences.
The exhibit charts the history of the Varsitarian from its foundation in 1928 up to the new century, a Herculean task.
“Coming up with a survey that will do justice to the rich history of the Varsitarian is like coming up with a synopsis of the Bible or of War and Peace,” said journalist, editor and Varsitarian publications adviser Lito Zulueta.
Pages of history
The Varsitarian at 80 consists of panels of yellowing pages of the paper showing the evolution of the Varsitarian masthead as well as detailing the highlights for the paper and the history of the Philippines across eight decades.
The progression of each panel roughly approximates the process of newspapering, from editorial brainstorming to the execution of the articles and the laying out of the pages.
Retaining the original layout, the first panel contains the front page of the very first issue of the Varsitarian.
Featured in the page are news articles for the second semester of the school year, including Fr. Tamayo’s congratulatory message to the publication.
During its debut, the paper’s emphasis was on literary works, some of which were written by Jose Villa Panganiban, the first associate editor. Most of the preliminary issues published sayings, anecdotes, letters to the editor, movie schedules, invitations, as well as “academic problems and their solutions.”
Although the first editor in chief of the paper was Pablo Anido, a Medicine student, Panganiban is considered the founder of the Varsitarian since a campus paper was his idea and he headed the lobby to convince the Dominican authorities to establish one. Panganiban later on became an accomplished linguist, a print and broadcast journalist, the director of the National Language Institute (now the Komisyon ng Wika), and the author of the classic work on the standardization of the national language, Tesauro Pilipino-Ingles.
The next panel charts the meteoric rise of the Varsitarian as UST’s official publication for its first 20 years. Summarized in bold texts were the publication’s firsts such as The Quill, the UST Literary yearbook under former editor in chief Ricardo Dulay and The Spectrum, a monthly literary supplement with Aurelio Alvero as the literary editor. By this time also, the Varsitarian started to gain acclamations for its impartial stand on national issues during the height of the Hare-Hawes Cutting Law.
Staffers during the first two decades also included Paz Latorena, now acknowledged as a “literary matriarch” of generations of Filipinos writing in English and Sebastian Ugarte, who became publisher of the Philippine Herald. Old pictures of the first Varsitarian lampoon issue, the Pancitarian, and the Letran page, a collaboration between students of UST and Colegio de San Juan De Letran were also posted in line with the texts.
Highlights of various milestones in the past decades of the Varsitarian are set chronologically in the following panels. A single panel is dedicated to the World War II interruption of the publication of Varsitarian in the 1940s. The 1950s showed the radical changes in the paper’s format and content.
In the next panel, the 1960s held the Varsitarian as Asia’s biggest catholic weekly. Christening itself as ‘The Most Widely Circulated Catholic Weekly in Asia,’ the V tackled Church positions on controversial issues such as contraceptive use although it still had spats with stern Dominican authorities over censorship. During this era, female staffers began to take leadership roles. In March of 1962, Virginia Jean Marders Pope became editor in chief, the first female staffer to occupy the prestigious post.
The 1980s panel show the Varsitarian’s struggle against the publishing of anti-Marcos articles while the country was under Martial Law. The texts conveyed the danger to use the pen to air political sentiments, but the Varsitarian continued to rouse Thomasians to resist the repression of the regime, even with Martial Law lifted cosmetically in time for the first visit of Pope John Paul II to the Philippines in 1981.
The 1990s panel celebrates the various achievements of the newspaper in terms of content and coverage. In June 1991, the publication received an uplifting letter praising its return to the broadsheet format, with quality content and presentation of the newspaper. The Varsitarian was again praised in August 1991 due to its movement from local university news to national and even global scope.
The new millennium panel mainly presents UST’s pro-life advocacy and the Varsitarian’s technological advancements brought about by new age computers that the publication has utilized such as lay-outing programs, development in photography, and official website www. varsitarian.com.
Aside from the regular issues, text panels for past extra-editorial activities are also included in the exhibit. Known to many, the Varsitarian has also well established itself as an advocate of academics, literature, culture, and campus journalism. The publication’s extra-editorial affairs such as the longest running quiz bee Pautakan, the prestigious literary award-giving body Ustetika, the nationwide campus journalism fellowship Inkblots, and the coming Cinevita film festival.
According to Zulueta, the exhibit, other than coming up with a preliminary history of the Varsitarian, was organized “to celebrate the paper’s 79th anniversary while kicking off the celebration for the 80th anniversary of the Varsitarian next year.”
He added that the exhibit is the Varsitarian’s contribution “to the wider celebration of the University’s quadricentennial in 2011,” Zulueta said.
The exhibit is open to the public. Museum visitors may wish for a guided tour. They may call the Varsitarian (406-1611 loc. 8235) or the UST Museum (7811815).
Vol. LXXVIII, No. 8 • January 30, 2007
THE UNIVERSITY OF SANTO TOMAS IS THE OLDEST EXISTING UNIVERSITY IN ASIA
My childhood memories in the University of Santo Tomas in Sampaloc, Manila is worth sharing. We have relatives here within the surrounding vicinity of the university. In Kalye Langit is my aunt, my papa's sister who was the head of periodical section of UST Mrs. Fanny Llamas Baldovino ,recently the Brgy. Chairman was Jojo Llamas Baldovino her son . And in Dos Castillas St. Tita Ping Delfin Villanueva my moms sister and in Dapitan st. My mom's elder brother Atty. Arturo Diaz Delfin. So in Sampaloc I always feel at home. Recently I found out that one of the flower shop in Dos Castillas Extension St. Is owned by Jhay Llamas a member of the Llamas Clan FB group. But we where staying in Quezon city then , my birthplace before we transfered here in Iloilo as our permanent address .
I still remember those times when my father would bring me to the university church during Sunday masses and after which a play in the campus field is a most enjoyable activity. I remember him buying me always a box of raisins which was my favorite snack food as I am holding his hands while strolling in the green grass, remembered him saying that his papa Mayor Jose Fernandez Llamas use to be a professor of Law and a Spanish teacher in this university as prior and after his service as Mayor of Dagupan City .
Antonio Llamas Garcia was a professor in college Fine Arts and Dr. Modesto Llamas served in the college of Medicine.
Like wise Tita Fanny Baldovino serves as a the campus librarian before she migrated to the states and my uncle priest fr. Luis Jovellanos Llamas was a seminarian of this school as well. So two generation of Llamas have kept the tradition in serving the academe. While my mama and papa finish their law school at Far Eastern University . Nevertheless allow me to post tid bits of history of University of Santo Tomas the oldest university in Asia for your consumption UST a family tradition in the Llamas family.
HISTORY
THE UNIVERSITY OF SANTO TOMAS IS THE OLDEST EXISTING UNIVERSITY in Asia.
In terms of student population, it is the largest Catholic university in the world in a single campus. The institution was established through the initiative of Bishop Miguel de Benavides, O.P., the third Archbishop of Manila. On July 24, 1605, he bequeathed a modest amount of his personal funds for the establishment of a “seminary-college” to prepare young men for the priesthood. Those funds, and his personal library collection, became the nucleus for the start of UST and its library.
The founding of the University of Santo Tomas followed on April 28, 1611. The original campus was located in Intramuros, the Walled City of Manila. UST was first called Colegio de Nuestra Señora del Santisimo Rosario, and later renamed Colegio de Santo Tomas, in memory of the foremost Dominican Theologian, St. Thomas Aquinas.
In 1624, the Colegio was authorized to confer academic degrees in Theology, Philosophy, and the Arts. By November 20, 1645, Pope Innocent X elevated the college to a university. In 1680, it was subsequently placed under the royal patronage of the Spanish monarchy. It was King Charles III of Spain who granted it the title of “Royal University” in 1785, for its exceptional loyalty in the fight to defend Manila against the British invaders.
On September 17, 1902, Pope Leo XIII made the University of Santo Tomas a “Pontifical University”, and by 1947, Pope Pius XII bestowed upon it the title of “The Catholic University of the Philippines”.
The continuing increase in enrolment prompted the administration, in 1927, to transfer the university campus from Intramuros to its present site in the Sampaloc district, which covers a total of 21.5 hectares. Since its establishment in 1611, the university academic life was disrupted only twice: once, from 1898 to 1899, due to the Philippine revolution against Spain; and, a second time, from 1942 to 1945, when the the Japanese Occupation Forces during the Second World War converted the UST main building into a concentration camp.
As it prepares for its 400th year by 2011, UST plans to establish campuses outside España Boulevard, Manila. A campus will rise in Sta. Rosa, Laguna, and another is forthcoming in General Santos City. Through these campuses, UST will continue to provide Filipinos with the characteristically high quality of Catholic education.
The Varsitarian at 80 Exhibit
The struggle and the glory
By Andrew Isiah P. Bonifacio
In a message to the first issue of the Varsitarian on January 16, 1928, the UST Rector Magnificus, Fr. Serapio Tamayo, O.P., expressed his “firm conviction” that the publication would “catalyze students” to become good writers.
Seventy-nine years later, the good Dominican seemed to have his belief confirmed. A year shy of its pearl anniversary, the Varsitarian, the official student organ of UST, has consolidated a solid reputation as the campus paper that has formed several generations of top Filipino journalists, writers, artists, and leaders.
Those whose names have graced the Varsitarian’s staff box include Vice-President Emmanuel Pelaez, Manila Mayor Arsenio Lacson, Archbishop Artemio Casas, Sen. Francisco Tatad, Governor Juan Frivaldo, Dr. Vicente Rosales, Ambassador Ricardo Endaya, Commission on Higher Education chair Fr. Rolando de la Rosa, O.P., Press Undersecretary Isabel de Leon, and Akbayan chair Ronald Llamas.
The country’s top writers, artists and media leaders have been editors and staffers of the Varsitarian: National Artists Bienvenido Lumbera, F. Sionil Jose, Daisy Avellana and J. Elizalde Navarro; Jullie Yap-Daza, Diego Cagahastian, Celso Carunungan, Doris Trinidad, Gloria Goloy, Neal Cruz, Tony Lopez, Antonio Siddayao, Teodoro Valencia, Jose Guevarra, Jess Sison, Jose Burgos Jr., Amado Macasaet, Mario Hernando, Rey Panaligan, Wilfrido Nolledo, Cirilo Bautista, Ophelia Dimalanta, Federico Licsi Espino, Jose Flores, Jose Villa Panganiban, Rogelio Sicat, Bella Abangan, Eric Gamalinda, J.C. Tuvera, Cristina Pantoja, Sister Delia Coronel, I.C.M., Fr. Albert Alejo, S.J., Fr. Norberto Castillo, O.P., Fr. Gilbert Centina, O.S.A., Cenon Rivera, Teofilo Montifar, Danny Dalena, and countless others.
How the Varsitarian grew to become the country’s most respected campus paper is documented in the exhibit, The Varsitarian at 80: the Struggle and the Glory, which runs until Feb. 15 at the UST Museum of Arts and Sciences.
The exhibit charts the history of the Varsitarian from its foundation in 1928 up to the new century, a Herculean task.
“Coming up with a survey that will do justice to the rich history of the Varsitarian is like coming up with a synopsis of the Bible or of War and Peace,” said journalist, editor and Varsitarian publications adviser Lito Zulueta.
Pages of history
The Varsitarian at 80 consists of panels of yellowing pages of the paper showing the evolution of the Varsitarian masthead as well as detailing the highlights for the paper and the history of the Philippines across eight decades.
The progression of each panel roughly approximates the process of newspapering, from editorial brainstorming to the execution of the articles and the laying out of the pages.
Retaining the original layout, the first panel contains the front page of the very first issue of the Varsitarian.
Featured in the page are news articles for the second semester of the school year, including Fr. Tamayo’s congratulatory message to the publication.
During its debut, the paper’s emphasis was on literary works, some of which were written by Jose Villa Panganiban, the first associate editor. Most of the preliminary issues published sayings, anecdotes, letters to the editor, movie schedules, invitations, as well as “academic problems and their solutions.”
Although the first editor in chief of the paper was Pablo Anido, a Medicine student, Panganiban is considered the founder of the Varsitarian since a campus paper was his idea and he headed the lobby to convince the Dominican authorities to establish one. Panganiban later on became an accomplished linguist, a print and broadcast journalist, the director of the National Language Institute (now the Komisyon ng Wika), and the author of the classic work on the standardization of the national language, Tesauro Pilipino-Ingles.
The next panel charts the meteoric rise of the Varsitarian as UST’s official publication for its first 20 years. Summarized in bold texts were the publication’s firsts such as The Quill, the UST Literary yearbook under former editor in chief Ricardo Dulay and The Spectrum, a monthly literary supplement with Aurelio Alvero as the literary editor. By this time also, the Varsitarian started to gain acclamations for its impartial stand on national issues during the height of the Hare-Hawes Cutting Law.
Staffers during the first two decades also included Paz Latorena, now acknowledged as a “literary matriarch” of generations of Filipinos writing in English and Sebastian Ugarte, who became publisher of the Philippine Herald. Old pictures of the first Varsitarian lampoon issue, the Pancitarian, and the Letran page, a collaboration between students of UST and Colegio de San Juan De Letran were also posted in line with the texts.
Highlights of various milestones in the past decades of the Varsitarian are set chronologically in the following panels. A single panel is dedicated to the World War II interruption of the publication of Varsitarian in the 1940s. The 1950s showed the radical changes in the paper’s format and content.
In the next panel, the 1960s held the Varsitarian as Asia’s biggest catholic weekly. Christening itself as ‘The Most Widely Circulated Catholic Weekly in Asia,’ the V tackled Church positions on controversial issues such as contraceptive use although it still had spats with stern Dominican authorities over censorship. During this era, female staffers began to take leadership roles. In March of 1962, Virginia Jean Marders Pope became editor in chief, the first female staffer to occupy the prestigious post.
The 1980s panel show the Varsitarian’s struggle against the publishing of anti-Marcos articles while the country was under Martial Law. The texts conveyed the danger to use the pen to air political sentiments, but the Varsitarian continued to rouse Thomasians to resist the repression of the regime, even with Martial Law lifted cosmetically in time for the first visit of Pope John Paul II to the Philippines in 1981.
The 1990s panel celebrates the various achievements of the newspaper in terms of content and coverage. In June 1991, the publication received an uplifting letter praising its return to the broadsheet format, with quality content and presentation of the newspaper. The Varsitarian was again praised in August 1991 due to its movement from local university news to national and even global scope.
The new millennium panel mainly presents UST’s pro-life advocacy and the Varsitarian’s technological advancements brought about by new age computers that the publication has utilized such as lay-outing programs, development in photography, and official website www. varsitarian.com.
Aside from the regular issues, text panels for past extra-editorial activities are also included in the exhibit. Known to many, the Varsitarian has also well established itself as an advocate of academics, literature, culture, and campus journalism. The publication’s extra-editorial affairs such as the longest running quiz bee Pautakan, the prestigious literary award-giving body Ustetika, the nationwide campus journalism fellowship Inkblots, and the coming Cinevita film festival.
According to Zulueta, the exhibit, other than coming up with a preliminary history of the Varsitarian, was organized “to celebrate the paper’s 79th anniversary while kicking off the celebration for the 80th anniversary of the Varsitarian next year.”
He added that the exhibit is the Varsitarian’s contribution “to the wider celebration of the University’s quadricentennial in 2011,” Zulueta said.
The exhibit is open to the public. Museum visitors may wish for a guided tour. They may call the Varsitarian (406-1611 loc. 8235) or the UST Museum (7811815).
Vol. LXXVIII, No. 8 • January 30, 2007
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