Next year will see a repeat of the living tableau that took UST back in time during the Quadricentennial celebrations.
“Velada Tomasina” will again be held on Jan. 27, 2014 as a part of a weeklong festivity for the University’s 403rd founding anniversary.
First mounted in 2012 as part of the Neo-Centennial Week that closed the 400th year festivities, Velada Tomasina sought to relive society in the 16th to 19th centuries. Velada means “soiree” or “evening party” in Spanish.
Next year’s event will have the theme “The Dominican Presence in the Philippines and the Birth of Tertiary Philippine Education.”
“[Velada Tomasina] will pay tribute to the presence of the Dominicans in the Philippines from 1587 until the late 1800’s,” Secretary General Fr. Winston Cabading, O.P. said in a memorandum last Sept. 5.
“It will highlight the influence of the beginning of tertiary education in the Philippines, as manifested by the University of Santo Tomas herself.”
Cabading encouraged Thomasians to wear barongs and Filipiniana costumes.
The 2014 Velada Tomasina will include lectures and audiovisual presentations on the story of the Dominicans in the Philippines in various fields of education, especially ecclesiastical studies, civil law, medicine, pharmacy, education and liberal arts.
Exhibits at the UST Museum and Miguel de Benavides Library will depict the influence of the Dominicans in Philippine culture. There will be a Eucharistic celebration and a religious procession in honor of the University’s patron St. Thomas Aquinas, and a whole-day food festival of Filipino and Spanish cuisines dubbed “Feria de la Tapa.”
A grand evening ball featuring UST administrators and faculty members will also take place. J.C.R. Obice
