Because December 16 falls on a Sunday this year, the UP Oblation Run was held last Friday. As in the previous years, the Alpha Phi Omega fraternity used the event to air UP students’ sentiments on campus and national issues. This year, masked APO members who participated in the Oblation Run carried placards of the Student Alliance for the Advancement of Democratic Rights in UP (STAND-UP) calling for Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s ouster.
Other placards denounced government corruption and enforced disappearances and asked for more state subsidy for education and the suspension of tuition increase.
According to the article “Buns on the run” (Sidney Ventura, Kampus Magazine, November 1997) reposted on the website of Alpha Phi Omega UP Diliman chapter, the Oblation Run was first staged in 1977 when an APO member ran naked at the A.S. lobby to promote the APO-sponsored play “Hubad na Bayani”. The play was dedicated to APO member Rolly Abad, who was killed in a rumble a few months earlier.
The gimmick was a hit, so the fraternity decided to do the Oblation Run every year on its anniversary, December 16.
“We do this in memory of our brother, Rolly Abad” Raymond Linsangan of APO was quoted as saying in the article. “But we also do it because we want UP students to remember the principle of the Oblation, which is the youth offering itself to the nation.”
An Inquirer article on the Oblation Run presented another version of its origin:
[UP College of Law graduate and APO Member Kevin Roldan said the run started in 1977 to protest the banning of the movie, “Hubad na Bayani,†which depicted human rights abuses in the martial law era.
In the past years, the Oblation Run carried campus issues such as tuition increase. Last year, it also campaigned against tuition increase and Arroyo’s charter change.
In 1995, Oblation Run fratmen carried placards condemning the death of Sigma Rhoan Dennis Venturina and calling for a stop to fraternity violence. Venturina, like Abad, was also killed in a rumble.
Here are some links to Oblation Run pictures, videos, blog entries, and backgrounders:
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