Campus voyeurs

Several years ago, I took a day off from work one fine day in December just to catch what has turned out to be only annual major midday event inside UP campus that holds back time and everyone’s breath for a few minutes. The occasion, referred to as the Oblation Run, has become so famous it has merited coverage from every major local television network as well as interest from droves of people, mostly alumni or non-UP students, who troop to the university for reasons we may never know.

The crowd starts to thicken around a quarter before 12 o’clock. Students cut classes, teachers give way to pleas from students, people clog all corridors and stairways, everyone pushes everyone around to get to a prime spot, camera-wielding viewers jostle their way to the front. The air is hot, there’s no place move, you trade breaths with whomever is beside you, everyone’s hungry, everybody gets restless. The campus is virtually a small mad and wild city. Girly --- and, well, manly --- shrieks become deafening as several completely nude men descend from a car and, from there, jog their way in the middle of the crowd enroute to a raised platform where they spend a few moments raising clenched fists while shouting chants of whatever theme or campaign or struggle their group advances. Mostly it’s about a critical current school-based issue like tuition fee increases or a persistent national concern like care for the environment or anti-corruption.


Photo courtesy of a website

In the middle of the chaos the last time I watched, when I was mindlessly staring a woman in her thirties sitting silently on the pavement across from where I was, I kind of thought how amusing it was for everyone in that place to shed off their shyness for one time and satisfy, in my theory, one’s natural voyeuristic tendencies. Every one in that place I’m sure has a different reason for being there. Some noble, some trivial. But in my limited thinking bandwidth, I got stumped trying to find out what other reasons could there be to explain people's brave presence there. I understand if someone cites "educational purposes or entertainment reasons," but for most, it's not far that a judgment game arises: How do I compare? How do I fare? Am I at par? Is everyone cut? Is that how I look when naked?

But those lines come most likely from the boys. The girls, on the other hand, have a far more hilarious take on it. More often than not, it comes in the form of a question. With waving hands and yelling voices, they come asking, "Where is it? Where is it? I see only hair! It's all hair!"