It’s human nature — moreso among Filipinos — that we prepare extensively for special events. So at Silliman, the Founders Day preparation mode is getting more palpable.
Various places in the campus are getting spruced up, as the University again opens its gates to students for another school year, and as the Founders Day (more correctly called Founders Month) comes nearer.
I find it interesting that Silliman students and administration alike are again in a frenzy as the academic year starts, and the Founders Day is happening this week. Some observers even think that Silliman could have started its school opening earlier to give students and administration more time to get ready for Founders Day. To make any major event worth holding, the preparation and planning ought to start as early as possible.
In the case of Silliman’s Founders Day, a Founders Day planning committee was formed months earlier, before the close of the previous academic year. For example, the FD Committee must have debated as early as May or June about this year’s theme: Embracing the Future as God’s Gift.
As I walk around the campus, I see many painting jobs being carried out, construction of buildings (like the Senior High School) being sped up, and the whole campus getting cleaned up and beautified.
At the Hibalag booth area, the sports field by the University Gym, students and hired workers were hurriedly building the various booths of fraternities and sororities, student organizations, and academic units.
Right after the Committee on Student Organizations of the SU Student Government raffled off the locations for each booth, many student groups quickly set up makeshift foundations, often made of bamboo and coco lumber, and posts and roofs were set in place. Then the walls and special exhibits and display accessories were completed at least a day before the Aug. 19 opening. Students had been milling around the area, even as many of them had yet to fully enroll for the first semester. That shows how much vested and interested students are in their booths.
On the second floor of the Student Center, candidates for the Miss Silliman pageant were seen practicing their routines, and trying to get used to wearing their ‘killer’ eight-inch ramp shoes for couple of hours on end. The ladies’ super-high heeled shoes click- clacked to the cadence of the ramp music, loud and furious, and super high energy. The contestants were being coached on ramp catwalks and twirling and dramatic poses. The ladies were subjected to hypothetical questions, made to write and memorize speeches, trained to speak publicly with confidence, and with “perfect Silliman” English. The pageant contestants had to read up on current events, and be aware about socio-political phenomena, even when they had not even started attending their first classes of the semester (as there were several rehearsals to comply).
The Miss Silliman pageant, considered the longest-running campus-based beauty pageant in Asia, requires more than a pretty face and a gorgeous body. This is a marathon of showing off one’s wit and elocution, talent, intelligence, personal advocacy, and the ability to hold one’s composure and poise under extreme public pressure and harsh spotlights.
Miss Silliman clearly doesn’t have the prestige of a Miss Universe or a Binibining Pilipinas pageant, but insiders believe the Miss Silliman pageant can be more rigorous and intellectually- demanding than the more popular beauty pageants. (Hmmm, really?)
While most students are hustling out to get their enrollment documents completed, student leaders are as busy prepping for programs and activities to entice students (especially the freshmen) to join specific sororities and fraternities and extra-curricular organizations, or to decide on their academic path.
Silliman has dozens and dozens of student organizations, like this year’s top-ranked Medical Students Association, Pan Hellenic Society, Aces and Lilies, Rhoans, Alpha Phi Omega, and Herodotus that want to bolster membership as early as the first few weeks of the school year. Membership in a student organization is a way of life of a serious Silliman student.
In fact, I think what makes Sillimanians a bunch of loyal alumni is their membership in or loyalty to their student organizations, especially their sororities and fraternities.
When I dropped in a few times at the SUSG office recently, student leaders were very busy prepping for a smooth school year opening, and getting ready for the SUSG-initiated Founders Day activities.
This early in the new school year, the SUSG has been tasked to organize major events as the Miss Silliman pageant, the street torch parade (which I think is now called the parade of lights or something), and the Hibalag booth activities.
In previous years, the SUSG also was in charge of the cheering and cheerleading contests, which has been eliminated by the Administration from the list of traditional activities due to CoViD-related health and safety concerns. Thanks, Dr. X! (Hey, what CoViD? In 2023?)
On the other hand, the top political arms of the two main student parties that have been vying for SUSG supremacy start spying for potential leaders and election candidates, although SUSG elections are slated much later towards the end of the school year yet.
The Ang Sandigan of the dominant CAUSE Party, and the Student Renaissance Young Life of the opposition SURE Party continue to be on the lookout for outstanding or potential student leaders.
Silliman has a great student leadership and preparatory program and system. Extra-curricular involvement is one of Silliman’s strongest points. Academic excellence is the other.
Already, some alumni from various places in Negros, Cebu, Bohol and Siquijor, even from Mindanao and abroad, have started to trickle into Dumaguete for the Founders Month.
The more I go around the campus, the more Founders Day preparations I notice going on. Which makes me think: Is Silliman now more focused on student activities or on academic excellence?
Maybe it’s both, why not? It’s like having your cake, and eating it, too, right? Or maybe not.
Happy 122nd Founders Day, dear Silliman!
Sansen Lee Vendiola
