A DUEÑAS TRADITION : JUG

FD BOYS ON JUG

Early 1970s

FD men never had detention. They had jug.

As soon as you enrolled at Fr Dueñas Memorial School, you quickly learned an FD tradition unfound in your prior schools. You could be punished with jug.

Jug meant you had to stay behind when school was out and do manual labor. It usually involved work on the campus grounds. For many years, jug meant getting a machete and whacking away at the tångan tångan surrounding the school. The school had a lot of land, but a lot of it was covered over with the stubborn tångan tångan and other bushes. Thanks to jug, a lot of that was cleared away.

Besides clearing the ground, jug could include almost any other kind of manual labor.

The thing was, nobody could explain what the word "jug" meant.

I couldn't even get a straight answer from one of the teachers who used to give out jug liberally. Years after he left Guam, I asked Capuchin Father Knute Kenlon, an FD teacher for many years, what jug meant. He said the three letters stood for "Jesus Universalis Gaudia," Latin for "Jesus the Joy of the Universe." Instinctually, I knew not to believe his answer.

Others thought jug stood for "Justice under God," or "Judgment under God." For a time, Brother Gregory, a Marist, was school principal so we said it stood for "Justice under Gregory." Of course we knew that couldn't be the real meaning, since jug existed long before Brother Gregory became principal.

We think jug only started with the Capuchins, who took over Fr Dueñas in 1959. We can't be sure, but maybe Fr Peter (Aloysius) McCall started jug. Fr Peter had a lot to do with new traditions at FD, including starting the sports teams and calling them the Friars. Fr Peter came on board in the early to mid 1960s.

JESUIT SCHOOLS

JUGEES AT A JESUIT SCHOOL IN THE U.S.

The term jug actually came from Jesuit all-boys high schools in the US.

When the Jesuit teachers punished the boys, the punished were put "sub jugum," Latin for "under the yoke" or "under the burden." Jesuits in those days really stressed the learning of Latin, to promote vocations to the priesthood and also because knowing Latin is academically rewarding.

A yoke, or jugum, typically bound two work animals, such as oxen. Boys under jug also worked in pairs or in teams, doing manual labor around school.

So, from the Latin jugum (yoke) came the shortened term jug. The person getting jug was jugged and became a jugee.

Since Jesuit high schools were common in the New York-New England area from where the Capuchins sent to Guam came, some of them having been educated in Jesuit schools, the New York Capuchins adopted the term jug and used it at FD.

Had I known this historical origin of the term jug, I would have told my FD teachers who did jug me, "But Christ said, 'My yoke is easy and my burden light.' Put me to work in the air-conditioned library."

MOWING THE LAWN AT FD

Late 1960s