Loyalty Day 2024

On Thursday we’ll celebrate Loyalty Day in UPLB. This year we began early, Friday, October 4. Before noon the Trade Fair was open.

We now interpret October 10 as the commitment of constituents 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 pay a visit and initiate reunions. I understood these during my first year in service. Historical awareness will come later, not immediately.

Today I find the logical link between then (World War I volunteerism) and now (general mirth, pledges of loyalty and unity) 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. 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 as certificates of candidacy are filed, our ruling blocs carry the banners (though sometimes veiled, sheathed, or temporarily denied) of their choice foreign patrons (US or China) as they continue to court their favor and 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 U.S. 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. Arbor Day—Tree Planting Day, an acknowledgement of our dependence and need for trees and ecological balance—was pegged at June 25 since 2012. 

1918, 2012, or 2024... 106 years, and we have yet to come to our senses.