With a tray of food in both hands, you carefully survey the cafeteria, your eyes moving from side to side.

You walk by each table, concluding there is no familiar face, no accommodating smile. It is 12:21 pm. The weather is hot and you are hungry.

You spot an empty bench after walking a distance. It will do, you tell yourself. A minute after you have settled down, the once empty bench starts filling up. You start feeling uneasy as new occupants give you stares that could kill.

With your food untouched, you stand up, walk away, and confirm a truth: The bench culture wasn’t just a myth after all.

Raining Higad

Territorial benches are located in different parts of the university. One such bench can be found in the windy spot between the SEC B and SEC C foyers.

“The Higad was formed [in] 1999,” says Reggie Belmonte (IV AB Comm), who spends at least 10 hours a week in their particular bench. “[It was formed] by a group of friends who used to hang out in the quad [where caterpillars were abundant]. They moved to the current location when the rainy season hit.”

According to Reggie, Higad has a history of being a place for people who love music and art, explaining why it ended up assimilating the Ateneo Musician’s Pool (AMP) bench in 2006. AMP was lacking an org room in MVP due to its temporary loss of accreditation. Most of the former occupants of the Higad were part of AMP. Through mutual friends and common interests, current occupants are all girls from private Catholic high schools while another bench nearby is occupied by mostly AMP members.

Trying to distinguish the old Higad from the new, Reggie jokes, “None of us who sit there now are musicians outside of our respective showers.” She adds, “But we’re all big fans of local music. And the funny thing is that we got to know people from ‘Old Higad’ primarily through the music scene, and not because we hang out in their old tambayan.”

Spot down South

About five meters away from Higad is another group occupying a wooden table full of vandalism. Mostly inside jokes are scribbled on the table, but one is as clear as a warning can get—and it is not a joke—“Freshmen piss off!!!”

They call themselves the South Bench. Similar to the Higad bunch who relocated to SEC, the South Bench used to hang out by a plastic bench outside the Gonzaga cafeteria. Initially composed of freshmen from the Alabang carpool four years back, friends of friends gradually increased their number.

“The bench was simply ‘passed on’ to us by the previous owners since they were already graduating,” says Kat Diaz (IV BS CTM). South Bench was a name they gave themselves and marking their territory meant writing their names all over the wooden table.

“There’s really no common factor that everyone has except that most of us are from the south,” says Kat. “We’re really more of just a barkada who hang out in a certain bench.” Franz Ong (IV BS Comm) adds, “We do anything, really, from eating, talking, hanging out, studying, and sleeping because the bench is like our own little spot in school.”

Both Kat and Franz agree that their bench is where they can unwind from the stress of school primarily with people they really like.

Trespassers beware

The bench culture has been in the Ateneo for decades. In 1985, The GUIDON published an article by Sandra Drayco that enumerated the prominent benches then.

Take, for example, the group who used to inhabit the benches allotted for students waiting to be picked up at the administration building at Xavier Hall. Like the South Bench, most of them were also carpool mates, but from the Greenhills and Makati areas. They were tagged as the “admi-kids” who would generally talk about clothes, cars, and parties.

Another mentioned was a group of people who, like the former Higad, used to hang out in the quad (now the Zen Garden), thus the label “quad-people.” Drayco describes them as those who “chat, play backgammon, jam, have their futures told by tarot and playing card readers, court, eat, sleep, and study there despite the cascade of dry leaves, bird droppings, and higad.”

Some of today’s bench occupants agree that having a stereotyped reputation is one of the disadvantages of having a regular place to hang out. Reggie says, “People most likely think we’re all a bunch of vapid, fashionista bimbos with no substance. We aren’t.” Kat adds, “It sucks that at some point you become branded as something because you are part of that bench [even if it is not true].”

What is true, however, is that when benches are occupied, occupants can become very territorial. “The whole point of having a bench in the first place is not having to deal with people you don’t want to deal with,” says Reggie. “When you’re part of a bench, you cultivate a specific relationship with the people who share it with you, and you develop a balance that you all agree with.”

Kat says, “So when a complete stranger sits at our bench, he’s sure to get some dirty looks.”

Myth untold

According to Sociology and Anthropology Lecturer Czarina Medina, a bench culture is not extraordinary, since people who are placed in a new environment will always be looking for something familiar in the unfamiliar. She points out that the usual victims of those who want to belong are freshmen.

“The danger when you belong to groups lies when you cannot dissociate yourself with the group because there are times when your own identity is eaten up by the identity of the larger group,” says Medina. “You’ll get lost.”

Tugon President Maika Surio (IV BS CTM) agrees. Comparing hanging out in an org room to having a bench, Maika says, “In the benches, you have to conform to a certain stereotype. In org rooms you could be anything because you are together for the same purpose and not necessarily because you have the same personality, likes, or interests.” She adds that a simple bench would not suffice for an organization like theirs, partly due to file storage purposes.

Medina affirms, however, that whether you choose to spend your time in benches or in org rooms, as far as you are in control and you know that you are with a group that answers to your need of having company and friends, you are also serving your purpose of becoming a friend to someone else.