A TRADITION CAN change its form without losing what makes it worth keeping. Accordingly, there are traditions that welcome students into a university, and there are traditions that make a university feel like home, connecting generations through shared experiences, lasting memories, and a sense of belonging that endures beyond the years spent within its walls.

At San Beda University (SBU), Integration has long served as both a rite of passage and an opportunity for students to immerse themselves in a community shaped by diverse people, values, traditions, and shared experiences.

For many Bedans, the occasion remains synonymous with the Red Baptism or widely known as ‘basaan’, the collective frenzy that, for years, defined the experience and made the rites memorable. Yet, as the University continues to uphold its commitment to Laudato Si’, the tradition has gradually taken on a different form.

What once characterized the occasion may no longer be as visible, but these changes invite a closer examination of what Integration has come to represent. Beyond the rites and customs associated with it, what is it about Integration that makes a student truly a Bedan?

Retracing the roots of Bedan Integration

Integration today may look different from what previous Bedans remember, but its earlier form was hardly the conventional university welcome. Before the pandemic, the rites were known for their messy and somehow extreme activities, where blindfolds, condiments, water, and a succession of challenges made up an experience that was as chaotic as it was memorable.

For those who went through it, being welcomed into San Beda meant being thrown into the thick of things, quite literally.

That familiar scene would eventually come to a halt. The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the University’s usual activities, including the opportunity for students to gather and take part in the traditional Integration rites. When campus activities gradually resumed, the tradition had to find its way back, albeit in a form that reflected changing circumstances and institutional commitments.

For Nathaniel Soriano, known by the name Nate, who experienced the pre-pandemic Integration firsthand, the memory extends beyond the activities that defined the day. What stayed with him was how easily the experience brought people together, even when they came from different backgrounds and had barely known one another. One particular memory captures this better than any description of the activities could: students gathered beneath a firetruck, taking a collective shower after going through the day’s challenges.

It was an unlikely picture of a university welcome, but one that Nate fondly remembers, reminiscing the melancholic feeling of his experiences with fellow Bedans as he navigated his collegiate journey.

He saw it in the way students welcomed one another and in the sense of belonging that emerged from sharing an experience they could all look back on. “I feel like that sense of belongingness was best encapsulated through that united shower under the firetruck, a shared jubilation that we made it through the grime together,” he recalled.

Persistence of tradition amid transformation

The return of Integration brought with it a familiar question: how could the tradition retain the activities that made it memorable while adapting to practices that no longer aligned with the University’s commitments? Although its form had changed, the intention was never to strip the occasion of everything that made it distinctly Bedan. Instead, the challenge was to preserve the spirit of the tradition while rethinking how it was carried out.

This transition became particularly relevant following the University’s formal commitment to becoming a Laudato Si’ University in October 2023. Grounded in the late  Pope Francis’ call to care for our common home, the commitment placed greater emphasis on environmental stewardship and responsible practices, extending even to the way the University conducted its activities.

For Integration, this meant reconsidering some of its more familiar practices, particularly the use of food condiments and the excessive consumption of water.

These adjustments, however, did not mean that the Red Baptism or the games long associated with the rites would disappear altogether. Rather, it was the manner in which certain activities were carried out that had to be rethought. The goal was not to abandon the traditions that students had come to associate with the rites, but to find ways of keeping them without compromising the University’s sustainability principles.

The 2025 Integration reflected this balance by ensuring that its activities remained aligned with the University’s environmental commitments. Familiar games and the Red Baptism remained part of the celebration, while condiment-based activities gave way to cleaner and more cooperative challenges, including obstacle courses and interactive booths. In doing so, Integration demonstrated that a tradition could evolve in practice without losing the sense of community that had made it meaningful in the first place.

Threads that weave a Bedan community

The years may have changed the way Integration is celebrated, but the occasion continues to bring students together in much the same way. Beyond the activities that fill the day, it is the interactions they encourage, the willingness to participate, and the opportunity to share in one another’s experiences that give the tradition its place in Bedan life. For Nate, this enduring sense of community is rooted in two qualities he considers inherent in Bedans: natural cordiality and tenacity in the face of challenges.

Having participated in the 2019 rites and later witnessed the 2025 celebration as a campus photojournalist, Nate had the opportunity to experience Integration from both sides. He observed that the difference lay largely in how the activities were carried out rather than in what the experience meant to those involved.

“Honestly, both initiations were special in their own right. The main difference was really just in the execution. Gone were the days of marinating students in condiments while blindfolded, but that didn’t make the integration any less meaningful,” he shared.

His shift from participant to spectator did little to change what he recognized on the occasion. Whether navigating the messy challenges or documenting the revival of the Integration Rites, he continued to see students making the most of the experience while helping one another along the way.

With the 2026 Integration taking yet another form, this time without the Red Baptism, the tradition continues to reflect a community that grows and adapts with each generation of students. What one batch remembers as an essential part of its Bedan experience may look entirely different to the next, yet students continue to find themselves among people with whom they share not only university life, but also the moments that make it meaningful.

Perhaps this is what allows Integration to endure: its significance cannot be confined to the activities that take place on a particular day or measured by how closely one celebration resembles the last. After all, Integration may immerse students to the Bedan identity, but it is the people they meet and the experiences they share along the way that make it home; for every Bedan, it is the many faces of one beginning.

(with Eunice Karen M. Buccat)