A month has passed since the tragic deaths of Ateneo de Manila University (AdMU) men’s basketball team players Rene Baterbonia and Divine Adili, which have prompted intense reactions on social media—with one camp making all sorts of speculations and allegations while the other calling for restraint, sobriety, and respect for the grieving parties. Grief hardened into outrage, outrage into conviction, and conviction into stories that many are unwilling to abandon.
How exactly did they die? Sans any investigation by the competent authorities, no one can say for certain, except for those who were present there. Foul play seems to be out of the question.
Was due process followed in this activity in accordance with university regulations, and were parents and guardians duly informed of its nature? What is the University’s operationalization of an “independent and impartial investigation?” Those questions await the findings of investigators and the university to answer eventually.
In 1968, a group of Ateneans wrote that “We find the Ateneo today irrelevant to the Philippine situation because it can do no more than service the power elite.” Criticism of the institution has since grown, with some describing it as focused on “branding, bureaucracy, control.”
This is the crisis that the institution needs to confront and reform, returning to a more humane posture rooted in compassion. Even humane responses to tragedy must be cleared through leadership that seems immobilized by fear of legal and financial repercussions from any admission of responsibility.
Although some would argue that AdMU has a different world, you couldn’t lose it in the land where Filipinos are. While there is much to be established in the investigation, one clear reality emerges: despite its privilege, prestige, and calculated public relations, the university did not safeguard its students from physical harm and systematic exploitation under its administration.
The university’s relative insulation and privilege as an institution do not exempt it from social injustices affecting its community. Instead of evading the necessary discomfort, AdMU must face these issues squarely and be held accountable for allowing such neglect for their students’ safety to fester under their watch.
Lives of these student athletes have been deemed expendable by a collegiate sports culture that has morphed into a hypercapitalist and corporatized enterprise—and to what end? School spirit for an institution that cannot pay faculty and staff living wages. An institution that stays mum when students are threatened, endangered, and silenced, such as the expression of dissent or abuse within the school system. Again, for what? For the sheer entertainment of those who cannot otherwise be bothered to confront what ills us collectively.
If we find ourselves in this framing of the entire situation, anger and frustration are understandable responses to a grave injustice. To allow those emotions to shape our grief may be viewed as lacking composure, but let’s not deny it to the Ateneans themselves and from the memories of these student athletes—young people killed by a system that values business more than the lives of its constituents.
At the same time, this tragedy has attracted opportunists. The deaths of these student athletes have been co-opted for political posturing and online spectacle, with some exploiting the families’ sorrow to advance their own visibility or personal agendas, and reducing their deaths to petty divisive symbols in “Luzon-versus-Mindanao” and “AdMU-versus-AdDU.”
In the ensuing days and weeks, narratives have been asserted with unwarranted certainty despite incomplete information. Claims and conclusions have been drawn before all the circumstances are understood. Others appear more intent on defending their preferred version of the events. As a result, the complexity of grief and the individuality of the victims disappear in an endless search for sides to protect and enemies to condemn.
Such conduct is no less offensive than institutional indifference. There is something predatory about those who rush in after a tragedy to exploit outrage for personal gain while rarely offering quiet support to the living who must bear the loss. When we allow ourselves to be drawn into narratives built on conspiracy theories, biases, or unverified claims and treat some voices as inherently more credible than others without basis, we do a disservice not only to the dead but to their families, who are still mourning and waiting for answers.
Justice requires openness to facts that may challenge our preconceptions. Their deaths must not be weaponized to inflame geopolitical disputes, to direct hostility toward AdMU students, or to fuel further hatred in a nation already burdened by more than enough of it. Investigations are ongoing and some allegations may be proven accurate over time. The most responsible course for those grieving and stunned is to permit the truth to emerge through careful inquiry rather than force it prematurely into sensational narratives some have already embraced.
This is not to say that we should just remain silent, but one way to honor their deaths is also to continue clamoring for accountability until they are fully exacted. It is so much better than hollow and elitist expressions of courtesies with no purpose other than maintaining the status quo.
The families of these student-athletes deserve facts instead of hearsays, accountability instead of performative gestures, and compassion instead of opportunism.
The living deserve dignity. The dead deserve truth.