james.soriano

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PUBLISHED: Student & Campus Section, Manila Bulletin, 10 July 2008 Issue (page G-4)

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The 71st season of the UAAP kicked off last weekend with a match-up between the Montagues and Capulets of Philippine collegiate basketball: the Ateneo Blue Eagles and the De La Salle Green Archers.

While the game attracted the most hype, I thought it was a horrible slugfest characterized by missed shots and bad execution. Then again, I guess I could put a positive spin to it and use words like “epic” and “dramatic” to describe what transpired. After all, the teams were neck-to-neck until the final minute, and both sides gave outstanding efforts. In the end, however, the Blue Eagles won it with free throws and a key defensive play.

But it is not so much the result that I want to make a point about.

Rather, I want to talk about the spirit that animated everyone, from players to courtside spectators to spectators on couches. Ateneo-La Salle basketball games are always big events, whose tickets run out as soon as they start selling, and whose courtside seats are well-attended by the who’s-who in society.

Also, the games themselves seem to bring out something special in everyone. Fans of the same school cheer together when momentum is on their side, and get down on their knees to pray when it’s not. People, young and old alike, get on their feet when big plays are made. As one community, you feel either the exultation of victory, or the anguish of defeat. This is when I realize that it is here where the rivalry is at its best: when people come together to celebrate the spirit of competition.

And then, people go too far.

Any good rivalry has an element of respect. Ideally, after a spirited bout, both teams congratulate each other in the spirit of sportsmanship, and all traces of ill will are left on the court. It is, after all, nothing more than a sports rivalry.

Now I’m not saying that these institutions don’t have any respect for each other. Not everyone is a hooligan, and I’m sure that most people who come from either school have their share of friends, relatives, or business partners on the opposite side of the fence.

But I am saying that sometimes it gets a little out of hand.

We claim that the other side won because they paid the referees. We sour grape when one university ranks higher than the other. We reinforce stereotypes we have of people who come from the opposing school, so much so that it’s almost racism. There are instances in which we would prefer that our companies do not hire, or that our kids do not associate with, people coming from the other side. And it is here that I begin to ask myself: all this, for a sports rivalry?

Then again, this seems to be the way the world turns, anyway. The tendency is to discriminate on basis of irrelevant things like sex, skin color, or affiliation. And therefore, it really isn’t so strange that we do the same thing with athletic competition.

But when you think about it, it is precisely our history of making big deals out of differences that has turned our world into the way it is now. Racism still exists because we hold pre-conceived notions of other races. Religious intolerance still propagates because we like to emphasize that we’re on different paths, not that we’re on the same mountain. And the list goes on.

Which leads me to question, why did we have to complicate our lives this way?

Granted, any rivalry has its good and bad sides. And I guess it is a testament to people’s sanity that this one has remained in relatively the same place. But at the same time, some wounds still run deep. What I’m not so sure of is whether there is any real reason why this should still be the case. And it is then that I wonder at the capacity of people to make mountains out of molehills.

But that is not to take anything away from the fact that at its essence (meaning on the court), the Ateneo-La Salle rivalry is still something we can all look forward to and enjoy.

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PUBLISHED: Student & Campus Section, Manila Bulletin, 3 July 2008 Issue (page F-4)

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Everyone has some form of rude awakening as a college freshman. Usually, it comes in the form of a shockingly low score, a terror professor, or a reprimand for a rule that you never knew existed. Other times, though, it comes from the people around you, a.k.a. the upperclassmen. This was what happened exactly a week ago, when I found out that the term “bench culture” was not only used to refer to a Japanese method of increasing strawberry yields.

It was after a morning class. A couple of blockmates decided to meet up at a convenient spot where some empty benches were located. Empty as they were, the group sat on them. A few minutes later, a couple of upperclassmen sat next to the group. Shortly after, a friend got shoved off of the bench. Verbal abuse began flying in our direction. The group endured this for some time more while waiting for the last few people, but when they shoved another one off the bench, the block left.

A friendly upperclassman later told the block that the bench, apparently, belonged to a certain set of students.

Up to last week, I had never encountered “bench culture” as a phenomenon that existed beyond fictional American high schools often portrayed on film. But while I find it surprising that it exists in a university setting, I have nothing against it. People are entitled to their benches if it’s important to them.

What I don’t get is why they couldn’t have just come up to us and politely asked us to leave.

Instead, hurtful remarks, empty threats, and threatening glares were resorted to. While not necessarily civilized, yes, sometimes that’s effective. But isn’t there a better way of doing things? I mean, we’re all sensible, mature individuals, presumably. We can talk things over.

But maybe, just maybe, what happened merely mirrors the kind of society we grew up in. A society where such high premium is placed on “pakiramdaman”, and confrontation is generally frowned upon. And sometimes that’s a good thing. Some problems are better solved when left alone.

Other times, it’s the kind of thing that gets problems to fester like a cancerous pimple. That’s not to say, though, that we don’t know when a situation calls for talking things over. But it seems to me that we always tell ourselves that we’ll resolve our issues face-to-face “eventually, when the right time comes”- yet often kingdom comes faster than the right time does. And that’s when the pimple blows up.

But in real life, it’s a lot less clear-cut.

In college, a bench is something you sit on. Outside, benches are symbolic of norms, values, and accepted practices. Not all of them are sound, but it’s not always worth your skin trying to challenge them. Take for example the scenario of being pulled over by a policeman for a violation of traffic rules (presumably they exist in this country). Telling the policeman that he is the epitome of the social maladies that afflict the country would hardly lead anywhere productive. Let’s face it- we would rather pay him off and save the hassle of being late, not to mention recovering the license. Yet it is precisely when we keep silent about these things that they tend to propagate.

But everyone has some form of rude awakening as a college freshman. Usually it’s borne out of some sort of ignorance on our part. And like foreigners settling in a foreign country, it’s our job to find out and adapt to the prevalent culture.

But when rules are unwritten, it’s not good to expect us to read what we can’t see. That is how things get lost in translation. Like when people don’t respect the “bench culture” because they don’t know there is one.

But if this is how the real world works, then I guess we just have to deal with it.