The annual alumni homecoming is the first Saturday of every December.

Short of walking the winding Fr. Masterson Drive, if you want a trip down more than just memory lane and through history without waiting for December, then why not take that detour on your way to the Rizal Library – both old and new – right to the University Archives.

The University Archives, while sounding somewhat bookish (but it’s not) is arguably one of the most interesting places on campus as it houses not just every Ateneo publication since 1915 but also reports, year books, term papers, and memoirs of past and present students, faculty, administrators, and Jesuits. There’s the Ateneo Room that is home to mementoes that recall the high points in the school’s long and rich history. There are some Rizaliana including the statue of the Sacred Heart that our National Hero Dr. Jose P. Rizal carved out of wood in his final days. And there are copies of La Solidaridad, pictures of the old Ateneo campuses in Intramuros and Padre Faura, and the complete history of the various seals of the university including quite a few that are unknown to most Ateneans.

Unlike some who go to the library to take naps, here in the archives, you’ll be hard pressed to fall for those forty winks as the entries will keep you entertained not because of some obscure trivia that will make you feel cool but because this is about a heritage that is yours and ours. Grandfathers and uncles like those family stories spin it during reunions. You know… handed down from generation to generation.

And speaking of trivia, did you know that the archives have been around since 1958? And that the late Jesuit Fathers Leo A. Cullum, John N. Schumacher, and Horacio V. de la Costa started this keeper of Ateneo lore?

Now you know.

And you know the saying about those not learning the lessons from history will repeat them again? True to a point but here… they are from a bygone era when the world was a much simpler place before the digital age took away the attention span of the youth of the day.

And it’s pretty obvious as some 200-plus people per month, mostly students at that, make use of the facilities.
Edmundo Nolasco, alumnus and former guerilla fighter back in the Great War, comes here from time to time. Not just to research but also because it’s a good way to spend idle days reading up on history and stories that have been lost to time and faulty memory.

As for me, it isn’t just mining them for sports facts and trivia, but because it gives me the opportunity to re-tell them to a new generation who think of history as only a subject.

In many ways, it’s a homecoming.

The University Archives are open from Monday to Friday from 7:30-12noon and 1-430pm and Saturdays from 8-12noon.