S11:1992 am on Saturday, November XNUMXth, and Lincoln Matsusei Akamine was already standing in front of the Unicamp Gymnasium. A statistician graduated in XNUMX, he got married the previous Sunday and had already agreed with his wife, Ingrid, that their honeymoon in Angra dos Reis needed to end on Friday, as he wouldn't miss the alumni meeting for anything. . Lincoln was the first to arrive, after leaving Ingrid in Rio, where they live, and crossing Dutra in the early hours of the morning. “My strongest friendships were made at Unicamp”, he explained. It would be a Saturday full of stories.

Half past nine, and hundreds of former students were already gathering to collect their badges. Reinaldo Oliveira Rocha, who was with his wife Gláucia, was throwing the party for his Mechanical Engineering classmate, Roberto Padilha. The couple had already sent numerous period photos to the Unicamp Portal blog, but Reinaldo brought his favorite in hand, in which he appears receiving his diploma from Zeferino Vaz, founder of the University. “I worked for 30 years at Telepar [a telephone company in Paraná]. I wanted to fish after I retired, but my wife didn't let me. I’m an administrator at her clinic,” she said. “I didn’t want a man in pajamas in the house,” replied Gláucia, a gynecologist and obstetrician who also graduated from Unicamp.

The opening ceremony and tributes to former students began with less delay than the registration queues had predicted. Instead of speeches, brief and sincere welcome greetings. Only the rector José Tadeu Jorge extended a little, still to make the spirit of congregation clear. “A personal satisfaction in this meeting is seeing two honorees who lived with me in the student residence, at a time when arriving at Unicamp was physically an adventure. I remember the effort to obtain, without success, an Ensatur bus”, said Tadeu, himself honored by Agricultural Engineering. “In a little while we will have a barbecue to satisfy, perhaps, the longing that is touching your hearts the most: Bandejão. You never imagined that your heart, and not your stomach, would be so touched by Bandejão”, he joked at the end.

Professor Jorge Yoshio Tamashiro, warmly greeted by the Biology crowd in the stands, lived with the dean in the republic in the Vila Nova neighborhood and considered the reception he received as an honoree natural. “I come from ancient times, from the first class at Unicamp, and here I am to this day as a teacher. I was the only one in biology in the republic, the others were all in food engineering. We had to go to parties together on the Ensatur bus, we played 'naked' every Wednesday afternoon and the medicine, exact sciences and social sciences courses weren't so separate. I met a lot of people. And it’s been nice to see people again, some old ladies, some chubby.”

Also from the first class on campus, Rogério Antunes Pereira Filho, honored by the Faculty of Medical Sciences, had the option of studying medicine in Botucatu, but chose Campinas due to his father's influence. “We didn’t even know what Unicamp would become. Today, seeing this greatness of the university, much greater than our expectations, gives us great pride. I have been a professor at FCM since 1972, I have a son who graduated and another who did his residency here, and a daughter at Dentistry in Piracicaba. My wife, Adriana, is in the third class of Medicine. I wanted to flirt with a freshman girl and it ended in marriage. My family and I have lived at Unicamp all these years with great joy.”

“It’s great to see friends again and I hope this meeting doesn’t just happen every 40 years”, said engineer Cesar de Camargo Galli, amused, grateful for the honor given by Mechanics, which he considered simple and rewarding. “I am from the first class, which participated in the founding of the college. It was a time of pioneering spirit that required a lot of determination, which helped us a lot in acting as professionals. I remember the figure of Zeferino, a builder and a conflict manager, who taught us about the need for effort to obtain our achievements”, acknowledged Galli, who had a career as an engineer but today dedicates himself to coffee and peaches in his farm in the Campinas region.

Much younger and graduated from the Institute of Geosciences in 2002, Mario Lamas Ramalho was chosen to receive the honor by former students because of his good grades. And, interestingly, he made reservations about the criteria. “I see this event as a demonstration of the University's affection for its students and also as an opportunity for criticism: Unicamp values ​​grades too much, when the learning process is not worth it just for that reason. The issue is the experience. Seeing happy alumni is the most important thing.”

Visibly moved was mathematician Ivam Resina, who left Imecc many years ago to teach in Presidente Prudente, but remains popular among his old colleagues. “He is a genius”, praised in passing teacher Maria Teresa Rodrigues, organizer of the meeting, who kept a Resina booklet until recently giving it to a student who was unable to learn calculus 3. “Since he left in 1991, he has been the first time I return to Unicamp. I'm scared by her size. This meeting brings emotion and longing, returning to the place where I studied and worked for 25 years is not just anything.”

In the first class at Unicamp, which entered in 1967, only two students made the choice and graduated in Mathematics: Ivam Resina and João Frederico Meyer, Joni, who ran Imecc until a few days ago. It was Joni who presented the honor to her fellow graduate. “The Engineering course was held in a wooden shed, the rest was sugarcane fields. On a rainy day, there were no classes”, said Resina, when the rector Tadeu Jorge stopped to greet him and added: “What we mostly did was suck sugarcane”.