The frosh mania is back. It’s the start of the school year where the DLSU freshmen, or collectively known as the frosh, start their journey in college. The upperclassmen are always there to watch the spectacle… and to nitpick on the frosh.

Fortunately for the upperclassmen, The current batch of frosh did not disappoint, nor the tradition was broken. Of course not all of them were buzz-worthy but some frosh students just were up to the task of continuing the silent frosh tradition - which I think they don’t have any idea of as of now.

I’ll tell you my share of frosh stories ‘08…

Br. Andrew Hall, about 1pm of 05-26. I was rushing to go to class when suddenly a bunch of frosh paraded themselves, um, in front of the hall entrance. If that’s not enough for you, they covered the entire hall entrance so I had to squeeze myself and beg the frosh for some excuse-me’s because I was trying to go to the classroom. The scenario was still the same when I got down to go to my next class.

The crowd in the SPS book is just amazing. See the picture above. It’s like a Divisoria-comes-to-La Salle event. The bookstore in the Razon Sports Complex is closed so the frosh have flocked the bookstore. It’s clutter all over the place. The simple task of buying the stuff that I needed suddenly became a race against time; a battle for breathing room. The SPS bookstore was one of the places that a sane person would not want to be trapped during the first week of classes. I came to the bookstore two times just to buy a notebook and a pack of index cards. The experience was next to horrible; at times worse than horrible.

The frosh fashion statement was quite amazing. Those are like the primary tell-tale signs to distinguish who are the upperclassmen and the frosh; that would tell who’s already accustomed to the ‘ordinary’ La Salle wardrobe. And it’s not most of the frosh. Taking it from the frosh’s point of view, they have to be understood They’re still in this stage that the urge to show-off is so high and their desire to impress college people is at the peak. Based from what I’ve seen last week, all I can say is… wow. Some of them who I saw in Br. Andrew Hall were almost dressed to party, not to go to school. I think saw this girl who was branded as ‘boots with the fur’ in this forum thread. I don’t know if I saw one attraction or there were multiple ‘boots with the fur’ girls, but man she was wack! I also saw one guy in SJ Walk who was wearing these neon-colored sneakers with the matching hip-hop outfit. I honestly thought that he was dressed, um, more to go to a dancing contest, not to go to a classroom. But they’re all cool stuff.

Another thing about frosh crowds gathering up… they only not pile up in hallway entrances, they also walk in bunches (or blocks in extreme cases) and it causes hallways to be blocked and walkways to be clogged. Although this might not be an issue in halls with larger corridors, it’s an issue to halls like LS and Miguel. I got bottled up once, rushing to going to a class in Miguel. The culprits: a group of freshmen clogging up the Miguel walkway. Reminiscent of F4 when they clogged the hallways in their act as school thugs in Meteor Garden. They also occupy majority the school canteens (especially Animo) most of the times, so I just decide not to buy food inside because of the people clutter.

So those are some of the stories that I can tell for now.

I know I also did one of those things three years ago, just goes to show that the traditional frosh has not been broken. Some of them may really be undesirable but it just reminds me one of those things that I did three years ago, when I was on their places. These mannerisms are really not enough to cause somebody to fail that bad, anyway. It’s just a sort of fanfare for the upperclassmen, I guess. They’re just nitpicking the identities that they saw in themselves some few years back.