Category Archives: Society

Qwertyman No. 212: Better than AI

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Qwertyman for Monday, August 24, 2026

MY RECENT column about my plans to harness AI in my Professional Writing class at the University of the Philippines provoked so many inquiries and reactions that I thought I’d share more of my ruminations, preparatory to a lecture on AI and writing that I’m scheduled to give at a conference in November. Feel free to disagree with and to interpellate me—some statements I’ll be making here might sound contradictory or even outrageous to some good people out there—so I can refine my arguments further. 

I’ll begin with the observation that the eminently practical Singaporeans have a strategic plan for promoting AI literacy toward what it calls “AI bilingualism,” i.e. domain expertise plus AI fluency. They don’t think AI should be taught as a separate course but embedded into what people are already doing. Citizens above 25 can avail themselves of free six-month subscriptions to AI apps. Singapore also hosts data centers under very strict conditions.

Can and should we go Singapore’s way? We’re still embroiled in the question over whether to allow a big data center like Pax Silica in—and rightly so. There are many key technical and ethical issues to sort out having to do with resource demands, legal frameworks, and people’s rights. 

That said, the realist in me expects that AI will be here to stay, whether we host it or not, like it or not, and there have audibly been many of those “nots” lately, in both public forums and social media. 

I can understand and respect this resistance. As an education professor studying AI reminds us, skepticism isn’t ignorance. It isn’t just technophobia; adopting AI isn’t as simple as getting used to a VCR, a cellphone, or even the Internet. Rejecting AI doesn’t mean you’re a Luddite, or you don’t understand algorithms, LLMs, and whatever it is they’re gushing about as though the heavens had parted and God’s open palms came out of the clouds showing “A” and “I.” I can see why even tech-savvy writers and artists will refuse to use it in their work on principle.

I myself use Claude in my nonfiction mainly to organize material, but beyond Google, I certainly won’t employ it in my fiction, precisely because I’m doing my best to avoid being predictable, which AI is in a sense all about.

(Am I not horrified by that image of Anthropic’s machine chopping up and digesting books for AI’s training? As an author and antiquarian book collector, of course I am. Will my outrage move the needle? Not by one degree; the harvest will continue, and its output will be so homogenized that we’ll be using it without knowing it. I think the original travesty, if you will, happened when those billions of trees were pulped and fed to the paper mills and printing presses so we could publish our precious books—but of course we don’t think of it that way.)

That doesn’t mean that in the future, writers and artists of unimpeachable integrity can’t or won’t find ways of integrating it organically into their work. It’s scary to contemplate, but AI will mutate to a point of familiarity and trustworthiness that it will be near impossible to deny or to ignore. Taking a page from physics, the controversial but eerily prescient futurist Raymond Kurzweil has anticipated a crucial juncture called “the Singularity,” when human and artificial will merge, likely through nanotechnology, and even boldly gives a date when that will happen: 2045. I’ll be long dead by then, so I’m not even going to worry about its implications.

But I will predict that in the lead-up to that point, at least in publishing, three streams will emerge. At the top tier will be 100% human-written books, which will come at a premium though not necessarily sell better (as it is, right now, many if not most such books don’t sell, anyway). In the middle will be hybrid human/AI work—the new and intriguing frontier we have yet to explore, which will be initially met with distrust if not disdain, but will come into its own. At the bottom rung will be 100% AI-generated work, especially popular fiction, produced by skilled prompters working for publishers who will be paying them no royalties. 

As I’ve often asserted, the notion that “human is always better” simply isn’t true. To begin with, the world is full of brutish, stupid, and even murderous people for whom the word “humanity” seems purely a biological description; granted, some such ogres become great artists, but the world is also full of kind, smart, and pleasant people who can’t write or draw for the life of them. 

In other words, the bar is so low that AI doesn’t have to do very much to surpass human capabilities. It can’t out-write Shakespeare or maybe even the class genius, but it surely can compose a better business letter than most ordinary people—who will be AI’s real base, not academics or creatives wringing their hands over whether and how to incorporate AI into their work. AI mainly empowers the inarticulate; the genuinely good will likely eschew it, or limit its use to the most rudimentary tasks like formatting.

AI cannot be the truth-seeker. It can’t even be the standard against which we rate our students’ or employees’ performance. AI doesn’t work 12-hour shifts or struggle to pay the rent or commute in heavy rain. AI doesn’t cost overhead, leaves, benefits, and profit sharing; it’s never absent, and doesn’t talk back, indulge in water-cooler gossip, or comment snarkily on your OOTD (at least not yet). In fact, it doesn’t cost a thing beyond a basic subscription, easily recovered from the savings on paychecks. Sure, it doesn’t have “soul” or that “uniquely human touch” that poets and painters love to wax romantic about—but honestly, did you get those the last time you called Customer Service and demanded to talk to a real live person? How many people truly manifest “soul” and a “uniquely human touch”? 

Studies have already shown that AI will consistently outperform people in certain specific tasks. What we need to find is what we can consistently do better than AI. The key question I’d like my students to ask themselves is, “Why should they hire me, and not AI?” 

Better than just resignation, my current position is one of critical acceptance: use it where it helps save time and effort with routine processes (but make sure students understand those processes first), and with organizing material following some supervening human design. 

As soon as I say that. I know I’m idly hoping that people will resist having AI do their “thinking” for them, and will treat AI as a mere assistant or executor. In many cases, the temptation to have AI do everything will simply be too great. But this is where the most important element of human agency comes in: not even in the design of the project itself, but in the decision if and how to use AI for best results. If you can write better than AI, that might be the best result yet.

(Image from itexperts.co.in)

Qwertyman No. 211: Saving the Newborn

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Qwertyman for Monday, August 17, 2026

GIVEN ALL the political, economic, and even meteorological turmoil we’ve recently been going through, I thought I’d write about something undeniably and visibly positive this week, if only to remind us that good things are possible if the “whole of government”—including even our fractious Senate—puts its mind to it. 

Full disclosure: I’ve been editing a book on, of all things, the Philippine Newborn Screening (NBS) program, and I’ve been so impressed by what I’ve come across that I requested and secured permission from its author, Dr. Carmencita D. Padilla, to share some highlights of that program. Dr. Menchit, as we call her, is no ordinary physician; a clinical geneticist and pediatrician, former chancellor of UP Manila and a key figure behind its National Institutes of Health, she was named National Scientist in 2023 for her contributions to medicine.

Back in 1990, Menchit had just returned from a fellowship in Sydney, brimming with enthusiasm about NBS, which had already been adopted and routinely practiced in Australia. 

What NBS addresses is this: babies can be born with any of almost 30 conditions inimical to their health, including congenital hypothyroidism (mental retardation and growth delay, with IQ loss possible as early as the second week of life), congenital adrenal hyperplasia (salt-wasting crisis, shock, death by the end of the first week), PKU, and galactosemia. 

A newborn with any of these conditions looks perfectly well: doctors and mothers will see no rash, no fever, no warning. Looking healthy, the baby will go home, with the disorder hidden for months, or even years, until the symptoms appear—by which time, it could be too late to reverse the damage. Ironically, if the problems are spotted early, there are treatments available, often as simple and as cheap as a modified milk formula for phenylketonuria (PKU), which causes irreversible intellectual disability if left alone.

So early screening of all newborns is key. The process itself is fairly straightforward: “puncturing the heel of a newborn, absorbing a few drops of blood onto a special filter paper card, and transporting the specimen to a specialized laboratory for testing.” These cards could be easily mailed to a central laboratory. In the early 1960s, an American microbiologist named Dr. Robert Guthrie—whose own son and niece suffered from developmental problems—created a test to scan blood samples for indicators of anomalies and proposed this solution. But the medical and scientific communities shunned him, until sufficient publicity forced them to see he was right.

It would take more than 30 years for NBS to reach the Philippines, largely through the efforts of Dr. Carmelita Fagela-Domingo, who had seen NBS working in the West and tried her best to persuade the Philippine health bureaucracy to adopt it, and Dr. Padilla, who finally succeeded where Dr. Domingo had initially failed.

What worked for Menchit Padilla was the support of people like Dr. Domingo herself and UP College of Medicine Dean Alfredo Ramirez, and subsequently other allies in both executive and legislative branches beyond academia. Together, the two women pushed for a comprehensive pilot study that could form the basis for official government policy. Padilla also met Dr. Guthrie, who encouraged her to persevere in the effort.

Twenty-four Philippine hospitals took part in the study as members of the NBS Study Group. Private donors contributed computers, video cameras, fax machines, and pagers. A Finnish company donated a refurbished NBS machine. By 1997 the program was well underway. What was needed now was for the DOH to take over for the program’s full implementation nationwide. By 2000, there were still less than 200 hospitals out of 3,000 birthing hospitals participating in the program.

What was needed was an enabling law. This is the part of the story that I find most instructive, given our current Senate, and which I urged Dr. Menchit to include in her book (which she did, despite her initial misgivings). 

Because they couldn’t afford a lobby group, Menchit took it upon herself to draft the bill—after enrolling for a Master of Arts in Health Policy Studies degree at UP Manila. (I wonder how many of our lawmakers would go that far to get things done right—but then of course they have millions to spend on staff.)

Versions of the bill were filed at the House and Senate early in 2003, but by mid-year, hearings had yet to begin. To get the bill certified as urgent, its proponents had to get the support of Sen. Juan Flavier, who warned them that it would likely take ten years to get the bill passed. Desperate, Padilla turned to Sen. Loren Legarda, who was still hosting a talk show; between breaks, Menchit filled her in and persuaded Loren to start hearings on the bill and to file her own version, which she did on August 1. I’ll leave the rest to Dr. Padilla’s recollection:

“With barely three days until the end of the 12th Congress, we were advised to lodge an appeal for an ‘urgent bill’ with the House Presidential Legislative Liaison Officer, Undersecretary Bernardino Sayo. 

“It was a Wednesday, 5 pm. We went to his office at the House of Representatives. After listening to our desperate appeal, which was supported with albums full of pictures of saved and not-saved babies, Undersecretary Sayo agreed to arrange for a certification of an ‘urgent bill’ to be signed by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo the following day Thursday at 10 am. We were advised to return to the House of Representatives the following day for the second reading at 4 pm, the last day of the session at the House. With the bill now certified as urgent, our schedule for a second reading was bumped up. House Majority Floor Leader Neptali Gonzales, fortunately for us, helped the bill pass the second reading in the midst of calls for adjournment from the floor. 

“Garnering a unanimous affirmative vote, the bill moved to the required final third reading the following day, Friday, the last day of the 12th Congress. I received a phone call at 6:30pm from the Chief of Staff of Senator Flavier, Mon Navarra. He said ‘The NBS bill was passed into law! We were able to do it in 10 months—not 10 years!’ And since the House had adopted the Senate version in its earlier deliberations, there was no need for a bicameral session. We just had to wait for the signature of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, which happened on April 7, 2004.”

The NBS bill, RA 9288, had itself become something of a miracle baby, giving hope to millions of newborns and the yet-unborn. Today well over 90 percent of Filipino newborns are covered by NBS, with a 100% rate targeted by 2028. Would that our government were so singularly and charitably minded in our other national priorities, especially for those already long born! 

(Top image from miraclefeet.org)

Qwertyman No. 210: A Grand Experiment with AI

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Qwertyman for Monday, August 10, 2026

TOMORROW, TUESDAY morning, will be the first day of the class I’m teaching this semester at the University of the Philippines in Diliman. I retired seven years ago, but as professor emeritus have availed myself of the option to keep teaching at least one course. I don’t have to, and sometime soon I might stop and take a proper rest, but I think it’s good for both my young students and myself to keep up what amounts to an intergenerational dialogue. 

Even in UP, too many courses are being taught by instructors just a few years older than the class. That’s good for communication and relatability of thought and treatment, and sure, the alternative of being lectured by your grandfather isn’t exactly thrilling. But I feel that now, more than ever, we need to bridge what the 1960s called the “generation gap” to make mutual sense of the world we’re living in, which is probably just as perplexing for me as for them. 

I usually teach at the graduate level, but for the first time in years (if not the last), I’ll be handling an undergraduate class, at my department’s request. It’s a course for seniors called Creative Writing 198: Special Topics (Professional Writing), which I myself designed and first taught over twenty years ago. It’s aimed at providing English, literature, and CW majors with the practical writing skills they hardly learn in school. They may know their Shakespeare and Salinger, their Defoe and Derrida, their Virginia Woolf and Virginia Moreno—but they can’t write an application letter, a news report, a feature story, a brochure, a speech, an AV script, or do a proper interview. 

In other words, they can’t write for a living, which is what the big, bad “real world” beyond graduation expects them to do. They get all starry-eyed about writing that great sci-fi or romance novel that will bring them international fame—and yes, who’s to say it won’t ever happen—but they’ll quickly realize that you need a day job to pay for all the instant noodles and pizza (not to mention the studio, the wi-fi, and the commutes) that dreams are made on. So—drawing on all my years as a self-styled “Swiss Army Knife” of writing—I designed CW 198, from which at least two generations of students have now emerged. I’m happy that many still write me back to say that it was one of the most useful courses they ever took. (To those who can’t study with me, you can take a look at my book, Windows on Writing, published by Vibal Press.)

I’m writing this not to advertise the course, which should be fully subscribed by now, but to share the anxieties and apprehensions that many teachers—from full professors down to the greenest instructor—are facing: how to teach writing in the age of AI. The last time I taught CW 198, AI was still something of a joke; I’d ask it to write something in the style of Nick Joaquin and it would throw up laughably pseudo-romantic garbage. 

I do recall, however, saying even then that AI was bound to catch up in time. That time has come, and we’re no longer laughing. The uncanny and frankly scary speed and precision with which AI has learned to mimic human writing—yes, your writing, if you feed it with enough examples—tell us that human thinking can’t be too difficult to approximate if not exceed. (Here, bring in your favorite senator, and you’ll see how low the bar is set. And it’s hard to accuse AI of being “soulless” when so many people and their productions are exactly that.) 

Not surprisingly, AI in education has been met with fear and suspicion, if not outright hostility. There have been reports of professors retiring early to escape the aggravation of having to chase after AI-assisted cheaters, and of having to sort out the natural from the artificial. All over the world, and all over academia, there have been movements against AI, or at least against its abuse and misuse—an aversion extended to all digital media. 

Sweden leads the world in moving back from digital screens to paper in its basic education; phone bans in school are now in effect in Denmark, Finland, France, and Italy, among others, as part of this “analog revival” to improve reading skills. Following such models as the University of Chicago Law School, the UP College of Law will now forbid law freshmen from bringing and using their digital devices in class, to encourage critical thinking.

I agree with these moves, especially at the foundational levels of education. At the same time, let me state what I think clearly: we reject or ignore AI at our own peril. It’s not going away, it will keep getting smarter, and our young people will be using it ten years from now with neither guilt nor shame, making precise prompts with natural fluency. I’m not saying that all the ethical questions will have been swept aside by then, but the major technical challenges (yes, with ethical dimensions) like AI’s enormous water and power requirements should have been resolved, likely with AI’s own help. 

That said, what am I going to do with my CW 198 class? I’ve decided that instead of banning it outright (which I suspect will be futile in any case) we’ll use AI—to see what it does and what we can do differently or better. I’ll have them do in-class writing to establish benchmarks, and then we’ll ask AI to come up with its own version. What AI says won’t be the standard by which papers will be scored, although it might be superior in some mechanical ways like grammar and spelling. We’ll see how AI shapes its arguments, against how we might approach the topic and present examples. We’ll put a premium on original thinking, on expressing individuality, focusing not so much on “getting it right” as on “making it mine.” 

I frankly don’t know how this will all work out, but at 72, I’ll be taking a privileged peek over the horizon, embarking on a grand experiment in the spirit of that poem recently recalled by “The Odyssey”: to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

(image from noveltymediaworld.com)

Qwertyman No. 209: The Pinoy Odyssey

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Qwertyman for Monday, August 3, 2026

LONG BEFORE “The Odyssey” became a must-see movie thanks to the tempest of reviews surrounding Christopher Nolan’s highly publicized iMax version (and to get this out of the way, yes, I’ve seen it), it was a must-read book for us as literature majors, alongside its companion epic, the Iliad. I don’t recall whose translation it was we used, very likely Lattimore’s, but like most students, we were reading it for the story, and as these narratives are meant to do, that story stuck in the mind. That’s the function of myth, what I call the eternal past, a kind of memory that feels we’ve all shared in one way or another, even if we were never there, separated by millennia and thousands of miles.

I appreciated the tragic grandeur of the Iliad, which I would bring up in class when I needed to talk about how great heroes fall and about how the epic seems to glorify war and warriors but actually shows how war dehumanizes us. There are many compelling scenes and situations in the Iliad, but I’ve always found the Odyssey more fascinating because, as the Beatles might have put it, it’s a magical mystery tour that takes its hero to every distant shore except, finally, his home, and even when he gets there, it’s no longer what it used to be; home may be a fixed place in the map of the heart but it’s never static, never just as it was.

I’ve often used the character of Odysseus to describe the modern Filipino, especially in my lectures to foreign audiences (just as I would tell Americans that “We were your first Vietnam” to make sure they would sit up and listen). If the Filipino diaspora, in which a tenth of our population has embarked for the farthest corners of the world, isn’t an odyssey of truly epic proportions, then I don’t know what is. 

It isn’t the departure that matters as much as the homing instinct—the desire to come home, however long or how far away one has been gone, for whatever reason. I’ve yet to meet a Filipino abroad who didn’t want to come home, at least for a visit. When they can’t, Filipinos do their best to recreate home or some semblance of it wherever they are. One of my most touching discoveries was a bar named “Kabayan” in a remote corner of New Zealand, which was open even in the mornings for Pinoy sailors who happened to drift along.

In that sense, Jose Rizal was an early Pinoy Odysseus, traveling the world a century before his countrymen did so in droves, neither for war nor economic opportunity but for knowledge, a journey brightened by dalliances with this Circe and that Calypso. As did the original, Rizal came home to find the place badly out of joint, in dire need of reform (although “reform” seems a kind description of what Odysseus did to his wife’s suitors). The big difference, of course, is that in Homer, Odysseus emerges scarred but triumphant, reunited with his family, the beneficiary of a peace enforced by the gods; Rizal’s happy interlude in Dapitan, on the other hand, ends with a son who dies soon after birth, his abortive entry into a foreign war, and his arrest and execution in a domestic conflict.

Rizal’s novels left us with the figures of Crisostomo Ibarra and Simoun—both returnees from overseas, the former initially brimming with idealism, the latter consumed by retribution. That they are the same man speaks to the extremes in which we find ourselves pulled today by our politics, misty-eyed with patriotic fervor over Alex Eala and the West Philippine Sea, and yet deeply divided and darkly cynical when brought down to our immediate realities. 

A visiting professor and former colleague at UP’s English department, Dr. Gerald Burns, found that from Rizal onward, we Filipinos have produced a tradition of what Burns calls the “repatriate theme” in Philippine fiction, involving a hero-figure who goes for an extended stay abroad, perhaps for study or work or both, and then comes home with a “boon,” some social good picked up from that sojourn, to be shared with one’s people. The balikbayan is full of progressive ideas—could be from that newly minted PhD, or that stint in Silicon Valley, or that research laboratory in Germany—and thinks that he or she can illumine a benighted motherland with knowledge, only to realize that new ideas and their bearers are unwelcome, and that the path to progress and liberation is dark, narrow, and treacherous. There are no gods who will make things easy, punish evil, or rectify wrongdoing. The Pinoy Odysseus comes home to find Penelope defiled or worse, having abandoned him; his house is teeming with reptilian politicians feasting on what remains of his wealth. 

The Nolan movie divided audiences and critics with its liberal interpretation of whatever it was that Homer wrote (to sum up my own reaction, I found it entertaining but not particularly enlightening, as I—perhaps from my burdensome position as a writer and reader—kept expecting the script to rise to the occasion). Its best service to us as Filipinos may not be to revive our interest in Western classical mythology—although there’s value in regrounding the present century’s infatuation with Star Wars, Tolkien, and Game of Thrones—but to make us think about our sense of home, and why we keep coming back to a place we sometimes feel should be forsaken. Is our Ithaca worth the long journey across monster-infested lands and hostile oceans? Who and what is it that awaits us at our door?

(Rizal image from RizalsofAbra on IG)

Qwertyman No. 206: The Unfinished Building

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Qwertyman for Monday, July 13, 2026

AS I noted in a Facebook post last week, attending a graduation at the University of the Philippines, as I did last July 5th, always brings a tear to my eye, especially when everyone sings “UP Naming Mahal” at the closing. No matter all the heartaches, disappointments, and challenges we may have gone through in UP as a student, teacher, administrator, and alumnus, and no matter all our disagreements over failed policies, missed opportunities, and misdirected priorities—as an institution, this university of the people remains immutably noble in purpose, an ideal constantly being realized. 

More than 5,000 students graduated from Diliman last week, as well as many more thousands in UP’s eight other constituent universities across the country. Thousands came away with honors—raising the question of whether our students have really gotten that much better, or if our standards seem to be getting laxer; the debate goes on, although no one’s taking anything away from the laureates. This was, after all—as UP President Angelo Jimenez noted—the last pandemic batch to graduate, who entered UP in extremely difficult circumstances, tied down to Zoom, without the benefit of campus life for a significant period.

I sat at the grandstand in Quezon Hall as a professor emeritus among the university’s officials and guests, recalling how I had stood on the other side of that amphitheater more than four decades ago, wondering what the future would be like (short answer: 35 more years in UP). I would become a professor, an administrator, and a retiree, as deeply engaged in university affairs as I had been as an activist toting a molotov cocktail (which I never threw) at the Diliman Commune in 1971. 

That morning’s guest speaker was former Ombudsman and Justice Conchita Carpio Morales, whose biography I had written, so I was glad to run into her at the processional, and I urged her to give everyone a piece of her famous mind. “I’ll be gentle today,” she told me, smiling. Taking off on this year’s commencement theme of “Gumagalang” or “respectfully,” she spoke on the need for respect of the law at a time of great confusion over who and what to follow. 

“In a world increasingly divided by arrogance, intolerance, and indifference, the call to gumalang (respect) is not merely timely, but urgent,” she said. “As a magistrate, it pains me to see lawmakers alleged to be lawbreakers. Rules bent, redefined, or misinterpreted to suit individual or group interests. There is little paggalang for those who have limited or no voice at all. The powerless have become dispensable…. The rule of law is the bedrock of democracy. Sadly, in many parts of the world today, the rule of law is being disregarded…. Unfortunately, what we increasingly see today in many places is the rule of man, where the exercise of power depends less on the law and more on the whims, preferences, or interests of those who hold office.” At the same time, she emphasized that “respect” could not be used as an excuse for authoritarianism, or for stifling contrary voices. (And before you ask, no, I didn’t write or draft those words for her. Nobody writes CCM’s speeches but herself, and if you did, she’d very likely pepper your draft with corrections, as generations of her law clerks well know.)

That was particularly apt in UP, where the commencement ceremonies ended with the customary (by now) lightning rally, and while some slogans sounded rather tired, this year’s emphasis on fighting corruption gave it a particular urgency. UP Diliman’s graduation was taking place on the eve of the opening of the impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte at the Senate, titanic confrontation on both sides of which prominent UP alumni were ranged. 

The irony of the moment could hardly be overstated. Historically, UP has been known to be a bastion of dissent, a haven of nonconformists and rebels of all stripes and colors. I often cite the examples of then UP President Rafael Palma’s daughter Fe, who took part in the first documented student protest action in 1933, a boycott prompted by a tuition fee increase, and of President Manuel L. Quezon being lambasted for extravagance by a young hothead named Ferdinand Marcos. 

Since the 1960s and 1970s , UP has acquired—inaccurately, I think—a reputation for being a breeding ground of communists, a convenient target for such Red-taggers as the NTF-ELCAC and a good excuse for its billions in funds. (Which reminds me: they should set up an NTF-ELCAC to seek and weed out the corrupt.) People forget that for every Joma Sison we produced a Juan Ponce Enrile; for every Benito Tiamzon a Fabian Ver; for every Lean Alejandro an Alan Peter Cayetano; for every Lorie Barros a Pia Cayetano. 

As I emphasize whenever I can, even at the height of student activism, the radical Left was always in the minority in UP as it probably was elsewhere; we were just noisier, better organized, more determined, and literally ready to die for our cause. 

What the usual UP narrative also often ignores is the fact that many of us from the Left who survived the First Quarter Storm and martial law moved toward the liberal middle—indeed, some even to the far Right, becoming its ideologues, executors, and apologists. 

Surveying this year’s crop of bright and starry-eyed graduates, hundreds of them finishing with high honors, I wondered how many of them would, in the next twenty or thirty years, materially contribute to our people’s well-being, and also how many to its deterioration. I don’t think anyone goes to graduation with malice aforethought, but life has a strange way of shaping and testing character in a way that classrooms simply can’t. As we learned in martial-law prison, sometimes it’s the most seemingly inflexible who prove the most brittle and break.

At the ceremonies, pointed comments were made by some deans presenting their graduates about all the unfinished buildings on campus—the new Faculty Center has been a decade in the making, with the refurbishment of Abelardo Hall and the UP Main Library trailing closely behind. These delays can largely be traced to mismanagement under the old DPWH, a couple of projects possibly even tied to the Discayas. 

But it struck me that the truly unfinished building to contemplate is the university itself, in constant reconstruction under pressure from AI, global rankings, and the needs of the people it remains accountable to. Just having marked its 118th anniversary, it could yet be the Sagrada Familia of our national aspirations.

Qwertyman No. 205: Selective Religion

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Qwertyman for Monday, July 6, 2026

LET’S ASSUME that you’re one of the leaders—if not the Great Leader himself—of the Iglesia Ni Cristo (INC), with 3 million followers at your beck and call. You get word that one of your most prominent members, a sitting senator of the Republic, is going to be charged soon with plunder for admittedly pocketing P75 million in private donations without reporting it either as a campaign contribution or as personal income. 

But you don’t bother yourself with the legal niceties of the case; they’re not important. What alarms you is the fact that one of your staunchest protectors—and not just of the INC, but of the Dutertes with which your church has cast its lot—is facing prison. It’s not the legal case, not a technical matter of proving plunder; while the senator himself seems to be taking things in stride, making noises about his willingness to go to jail, you know that it’s more existential than that. 

It’s your own power that’s under threat, that’s being tested by the ingrate you helped to seat in the Palace. His presumptive successor, on whom you’ve bet all your marbles, herself stands to be impeached in the Senate for all manner of grave financial wrongdoing. You need your senator’s vote for her to escape the noose. Her once-formidable alliance is thinning by the hour—whether by their own commission (one has had to disappear to save his own neck, another is already in prison, also for plunder) or through deft politicking by unseen hands. 

There could be more desertions down the road, as the impeachment trial starts this week. You know these characters; they’ve all come to you for your blessings, your quid for their quo, and you know how fickle allegiances can be, especially under pressure. But you have your own pressure to exert. You need to remind them of that cordial but heavily nuanced conversation in your office, of the vast difference 3 million votes can make in the senatorial tally. (More on this later, but let’s get on with our scenario.) So what do you do?

You call the faithful out to the streets for a show of numbers, for the kind of visual impact that the network news and social media tend to magnify. You decide to hold this at the EDSA Shrine among other places for whatever symbolism it might carry, never mind that Mother Mary, so central to the EDSA spirit and experience, holds no special place of honor in INC belief. The night before, your organizers send out text messages ordering your people out to EDSA as early as 5 am; every “lokal” has to be represented. You know that you can rely on what your members have had ingrained into their minds and bodies: unquestioning obedience to authority. (Some of their T-shirts will declare this openly: “Obey and Never Complain”.)

You beam with pride and pleasure as the crowds begin to gather at dawn, catching the drowsy city by surprise. You manage to choke off the city’s busiest and most important highway, convincing yourself and your own people that a day or two’s disruption of work and traffic is a mild inconvenience compared to the issue at hand. Ah, the issue—yes, let’s go with “selective justice,” which is clearly at work in the plunder case they whipped up against the good senator. Why him? Why now? What for? 

This was the senator bravely threatening to unmask the biggest crooks in the highest echelons of government—never mind that he himself was now being unmasked for palpably gross misdeeds. You trot out a small parade of notoriously unsavory politicians—but then who else have you got?—to amuse the gathering. Never mind the irony of an Imee Marcos crying “Walang uwian!” at the very place that sent her and her family packing off for Hawaii forty years ago (we don’t know if she stayed the night huddling with the INC masses—or went home as senators are wont to do after their speeches). 

Nowhere in this spectacle did God or religion visibly figure—what the INC’s conception of justice was, how the Dutertes and Marcoletas would spread God’s dominion over the earth, how individual INC members (especially senators) were supposed to discern right from wrong except by executive fiat, and how the reported INC practice of cornering certain lucrative government posts after elections fulfills God’s mandate. 

Sure, they can fill up streets, and hold parts of a city hostage for a few days. They can make it look like they centrally matter, and perhaps in some swing situations they do, as did the support they allegedly threw behind Bam Aquino last year. 

But here’s the bottom line. The INC’s reputed 3 million members comprise voters and  non-voters including children. Studies put the real number of voting INC members at less than 1.4 million, and even less in terms of who actually shows up at the polling booths. SWS chair emeritus Mahar Mangahas puts it at “around 5 percent” of all voters. 

Do they vote as a bloc? Yes—but not absolutely. The 2016 TV5-SWS Exit Poll showed that 77.2 percent of INC voters supported Rodrigo Duterte. SWS data also indicate that  around 20 to 25 percent of INC voters do not vote for church-endorsed candidates. So 75 to 80 percent do vote by command—but whether they do so because of obedience or because the INC tends to endorse popular candidates has yet to be determined. So the discipline and the reliability are there to some extent, but it’s a power that can be easily overstated and just as easily abused.

The greatest damage wrought by the INC in its EDSA excursion was neither to the traffic situation and much less to the case against Sen. Marcoleta. It was to its own image as a religious faith to be taken seriously as such, a body of belief driven by godly wisdom. By consistently supporting morally compromised politicians, it has revealed itself as a political instrument, manipulable and deployable, for reasons and purposes known only to its leaders. 

And that’s sad because I do have some INC friends, upright people for whom I have a deep respect, and whom I would be glad to hear from on the issues I raised above. I’ll promise them fair representation in this space—but they’ll have to speak for themselves and not their leaders, to the extent that that’s even possible.

Qwertyman No.204: The Anatomy of a Grievance

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Qwertyman for Monday, June 29, 2026

BARELY HAD we wrapped our heads around what happened to lead to the deaths by drowning of the two Ateneo athletes Rene Baterbonia and Divine Adili when we got the news of a mass shooting at the San Jose National High School in Tacloban, Leyte, with two teenagers allegedly responsible for killing three students and injuring many others.

Both events were met with shock and outrage, as was to be expected. Even in the long catalog of evils and misfortunes that we Filipinos have become familiar with, these did not exist. Healthy, star-quality athletes do not suddenly die; Filipino teenagers tied to their cellphones do not bring guns to school and shoot their peers dead. It was as if we had let new and unfamiliar monsters into our fold, and we were eager—indeed adamant—to give them a face, a name, and a motive. At the very least, we needed someone or something to blame, to ease our consciences. 

That consternation likely accounts for the plethora of suspicions, accusations, and conspiracy theories that emerged in the wake of these tragedies, ostensibly to throw light on “what really happened” but achieving the opposite effect of leading us even farther away from the truth. I myself have been mighty confused by some of these responses—who said exactly what, where did that come from, etc.—that I turned to AI (yes, I know, something that some of us trust even less than the cafeteria Marites) to help me sort things out; in this instance, I used Claude, which has proven to be a reliable assistant in my nonfiction work. (We can have another debate another time about whether writers like me should even resort to AI—at which I’ll ask if you’ve ever used Google or an electronic calculator, for that matter—but I’m hoping that this present discussion will offer proof enough that there’s room for mechanical assistance in human argumentation.)

Most troubling if not ridiculous of all have been a couple of memes I’ve seen claiming that Rene was beaten up and drowned by his fellow players and that the coaches merely looked on. 

These speculations apparently ride on the allegation made by Rene Baterbonia’s mother Rovelyn that her son’s death was no accident—a short step away from claiming that Rene was murdered, as some netizens have chosen to interpret it. But nowhere in her many interviews did Rovelyn clearly and verifiably say that “My son was murdered.” (And neither am I saying that she had no right to claim that had she wanted to, as the most aggrieved party entitled to her darkest fears and suspicions.) 

What the record shows is that, based on what she initially heard, she believed that Rene’s arms and legs had been weighted down (subsequently denied by the autopsy results), and that the dangerous exercise had taken place without informed consent (a continuing issue). She also took Ateneo to task for not communicating with her quickly and clearly enough (I think a fair charge). So no, Mrs. Baterbonia never said nor suggested that someone purposely killed her son. She does allege criminal negligence, which many people suspect, and a sorely inadequate response on Ateneo’s part, which I think even Ateneans admit in their heart of hearts.

What muddled this further was the CIDG’s reported statements, made more than a week after the June 9 incident, that the deaths were “not an accident,” apparently contradicting the local police’s initial assessment. That later statement, made by CIDG Director Robert Morico II on June 17 and repeated on June 18, was hedged as a presumption awaiting further evidence. It ultimately recommended, in its June 26 findings submitted to the Department of Justice, that an anti-hazing case should be filed against 11 individuals led by Coach Tab Baldwin, since the team-building activity constituted hazing under dangerous conditions. But “not an accident” resulting in homicide again doesn’t translate to willful murder—or a plot, as the DDS puts it, for Luzon to kill off Mindanao’s finest. It’s now up to the DOJ to move matters forward.

What this tells me is that in the absence of factual information, clearly and promptly disseminated, all kinds of malicious rumors will emerge and easily find sympathetic receptors and transmitters. (I suspect the counter-narratives would have arisen anyway—the trolls have to earn their keep, which means the fact-checkers and truth-sayers have to work at least as hard.)

The same miasma now threatens to engulf the Tacloban shootings, in which two teenagers carrying a .38 revolver and a Glock 9-mm were involved. The Internet was quick to spit out AI-generated pictures of Sens. Kiko Pangilinan and Risa Hontiveros coddling the two suspects, with Sen. Kiko being blamed for his sponsored law setting the bar for criminal responsibility at age 15 (the UN recommends a minimum of 14 years). 

There are many other aspects to this case, including that of gun ownership, but let’s focus for now on this age-of-criminal-responsibility thing, which Pangilinan’s DDS detractors want to bring down to 10. Again, to be clear, Kiko stated that the law as it stands doesn’t automatically absolve the juvenile shooters from responsibility; they remain accountable in various ways, and cannot simply be released.  

If they used the same AI they used to malign the senators, the DDS propagandists would have discovered that the UK, which does use age 10 as its baseline, has a higher crime rate than other European countries using 14-15. The Nordic countries start at 15 and are among the world’s safest. (North Korea reportedly sets its bar for criminals at 6.)

We seem so eager to establish at what age young offenders can be punished that—as horrendous as the Tacloban shootings were—we forget the far more numerous and grievous crimes committed every day by adults in this country that go unpunished. 

In any case, the most sensible response I’ve read to the Tacloban shootings came from a Facebook poster named Raffy Magno, who said that “There is something deeply troubling about a society that is quick to demand the harshest punishment for young people, while celebrating convicted plunderers, tolerating corruption, and rewarding leaders who normalize violence.

“Young people do not grow up in a vacuum. They learn from the values we model, the behavior we reward, and the systems we build around them. Violence rarely begins at the moment it becomes visible. It is often preceded by bullying, social isolation, neglect, untreated trauma, and countless missed opportunities for intervention.

“If we want children to reject violence, then we must also be willing to examine the ways our society excuses, glorifies, and profits from it. We cannot celebrate violence among adults and expect young people to learn a different lesson.”

The call for justice begins with raw and strong emotion, but ultimately it has to be dispensed with cool and thoughtful reason.

Qwertyman No. 203: Camara v. DENR

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Qwertyman for Monday, June 22, 2026

I WISH I could say that this is a welcome break or a pleasant diversion from the infernal politics rocking the Senate (which thankfully seems to have settled down, at least for the time being, with the miscreants licking their wounds), but it’s neither pleasant nor a diversion, as it reminds us that real problems remain out there that demand both governmental action and civic awareness to resolve.

As an opinion writer, I receive a fair number of messages requesting that I highlight certain issues and causes, and while many are patently trivial and self-serving enough to easily ignore, some pique my interest because of their strategic implications for our future—not even just ours, but our children’s and grandchildren’s.

One of those messages came from Philip Camara—whom I don’t know and have never met, but who introduced himself as a Zambales resident and Executive Director of the Institute of Area Management (IAM). He had served as the DENR Undersecretary for Field Operations under the late Sec. Gina Lopez, before the mining lobby gutted her appointment.

Philip himself may have been out of a job, but he continued his advocacy in private by founding the Zambales-based IAM, an NGO that promotes “areaism,” an alternative community development framework that emphasizes resource management and governance by geographic area than by sector.

This month, Camara and IAM—along with minor Placida Natividad C. Montefalcon and “generations yet unborn”—filed a petition for a Writ of Kalikasan and Continuing Mandamus before the Supreme Court against the DENR and the Mine and Geosciences Bureau (MGB). The petition also asks for a Temporary Environmental Protection Order (TEPO) for immediate interim relief while the case is pending.

What’s the issue? Philip says that “Living in Zambales—where there are highly destructive watershed-based mines and where the political dynasty acts with impunity in its pro-extractive corporate activity—gave me little choice but to take legal action. This action challenges what we call ‘Sectoral Rationality’—the bureaucratic practice of approving mining and dredging projects based on short-term revenue while assigning a value of ZERO to environmental destruction and public health burdens. Backed by hard 2024 and 2025 scientific data from Zambales, our petition argues that this framework is now explicitly illegal under the new PENCAS law (RA 11995), which mandates natural capital accounting.”

In other words, Philip claims that the DENR and MGB have been approving potentially destructive projects without taking their environmental and health impact into account. This runs contrary to the new Philippine Ecosystem and National Capital Accounting System (PENCAS) Act, signed into law in 2024 to factor the environmental costs and benefits of projects into development planning and align the Philippines with international environmental accounting standards. So when you put up a mine, you don’t think about just how much money it’s going to make for the short term, but also what it’s long-term impact on the environment and the community will be.

The “writ of kalikasan” that the petition is praying for is a Philippine legal remedy for environmental protection, based on the constitutional right to “a balanced and healthful ecology” under Article II, Section 16 of the 1987 Constitution. Created by the Supreme Court in 2010, it’s a pioneering remedy that few other countries have. The idea is to give citizens a fast, powerful tool to stop large-scale environmental damage without getting bogged down in ordinary litigation.

The writ has a scale requirement that comes into play when the environmental harm is large enough to “prejudice the life, health, or property of inhabitants in two or more cities or provinces.” It can’t be invoked for local or isolated environmental damage, like a factory polluting your backyard—it has to cross jurisdictional boundaries, which Camara argues is the case in Zambales, where the contamination and erosion produced by mining reaches out toward Pangasinan. 

You don’t even have to be directly affected to be able to file a petition for the writ before the Supreme Court (and yes, such petitions go straight to the SC, bypassing the judicial bureaucracy, in recognition of the writ’s importance). It’s worth noting that the petition is also being made on behalf of “generations yet unborn,” taking a page from the landmark 1990 Oposa v. Factoran case premised on the argument that natural resources such as forests belong not just to the present generation but the future as well. If it agrees, the SC can then compel the respondents (public or private) to stop the damaging activity, protect or rehabilitate the environment, monitor compliance, and submit reports. 

The Camara petition rests on the legal notion that the 1995 Mining Act (RA 7942) requires that mineral exploration be “rational” without actually defining what “rational” means, effectively assigning a value of zero to watershed destruction, shoreline collapse, food contamination, public health damage, and harm to future generations. It cites two scientific studies to back up its claims as to the critical nature of this negligence. A 2024 toxicity study in Sta. Cruz, Zambales found nickel enrichment factors, cancer-risk, and hazard values exceeding international safety thresholds, and contamination reaching local rice crops. A 2025 erosion study in San Felipe, Zambales found dredging within the “Depth of Closure” zone, shoreline retreat of about 16 meters per year, and projected losses of ₱3.88 billion by 2030. 

There are globally adopted scientific methods and measures in place to establish “rationality.” Leaving it vague and undefined—we hope not intentionally—opens doors to misinterpretation, abuse, and corruption. Far worse, it will destroy the future, with the law standing by in complicit silence and virtual approval, if this loophole remains unplugged.

So thank you, Philip Camara, for bringing this to our attention—but more importantly, I hope it reaches sympathetic ears at the Supreme Court, whose favorable judgment can make a tremendous difference for those “generations yet unborn.”

Penman No. 486: The Ghosts of Our Fathers

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Penman for Sunday, June 21, 2026

TALKING ABOUT how memory softens loss in Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez writes that “He was still too young to know that the heart’s memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good, and that thanks to this artifice we manage to endure the burden of the past.” 

As I’ve discovered from my friends and from people I know, father-son relationships are often fraught with conflict and tension, especially from those childhood and growing-up years when emotions are raw and expectations run high. There’s a host of theories to explain the problem—Oedipal competition, the emotional detachment of fathers, bars set too high, among others—but whatever causes the pain, it tends to linger, until we learn to relinquish our grievances to time and age.

I’ve been more fortunate in my experience, but I’ve asked three writer-friends to share theirs, and to embrace the ghosts of our fathers that will stay with us for the rest of our lives.

Butch Dalisay

I’ve often written about my dad, Jose Sr., whom I grew up idolizing not just because he was intelligent, but also because he was very resourceful or maabilidad, as they say. He was well known in Romblon to have been the province’s smartest young man at that time. And he would have gone on to a law degree and a distinguished career by everyone’s reckoning, except that his family was poor. And while my mother was someone who came from a family of means in Romblon, shortly after they married and had me, the first of their five children, the family fell on hard times when he lost his job. 

He worked for the Motor Vehicles Office. He worked for the Department of Public Works and Transportation as a clerk, but there were very difficult periods when my father took on jobs far beneath his competence. He did not think it beneath him to work, for example, as a barker for jeepneys just to put me and my siblings through school with the help of my mom, who was a postal employee.

I hero-worship him despite the fact that he was deeply flawed. He was a gambler, which probably explains why I’m an avid poker player to this day. I could remember the smell of the pancit that would announce a night of winnings, but more often than not, he would come home quiet early in the morning, and I kind of understood what had happened. Once he brought home a brand-new Singer typewriter to encourage the young writer in me, only to have it vanish when he couldn’t keep up with the installments.

It was my father who introduced me to reading and writing. He was an excellent writer himself, and the governor of Romblon relied on him to write his speeches and to become a kind of secretary and recorder for this and that. It was a role that he would play all throughout his life, even in his old age, as a barangay official, someone who would help people in our village in San Mateo with their paperwork. He introduced me to reading because there were many things to read in the house, Time magazine and Reader’s Digest, and soon books. 

He was a gentle, loving man who adored my mom Emy and took good care of us in ways more than money could. My wife Beng and our daughter Demi cherished him. When he died of an aneurysm at age 73 in 1996, I was crushed, and I treasure the times when we meet in my dreams, walking on the shore of our hometown in Romblon. 

I owe him the gift of words, which I am now passing on to others.

Krip Yuson

Armando Sison Yuson came from Lingayen, Pangasinan. He tried to be an Air Force pilot before World War 2, but cut out at some point. His father wrote poems in Spanish and Pangasinense, as I’ve been told by writer-friends from the region. 

I can’t really share much or anything else about my dad, except that we had a falling out when I was 16, after he became too religious and wanted everyone in the family to pray the rosary every day to start the evening. I couldn’t do it after the first few days, and said so. Nothing he said could change my mind. It broke his heart, and he blamed everyone, including himself, for allowing his firstborn to enter UP after graduation from San Beda, proving his fears right that I had joined an atheist university. My doubts about faith actually began a year earlier, and were resolved when I read Robert Green Ingersoll at the UP library: “Give me the storm and tempest of thought and action, rather than the dead calm of ignorance and faith. Banish me from Eden when you will, but first let me eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge.”

My dad (called him that because he was an Amboy) and I never became close again. As an early barkadista, I spent more time away from home. He passed away when I was 32. I tried writing a poem on him for almost a year, but gave it up. The following year, 1978, I was on my first week at the International Writing Program in Iowa City when I felt his presence in my Mayflower Apartments room as I was turning in. I recall saying out loud, “Dad, must you follow me here?” 

I couldn’t sleep. A poem started in my head, a triplet of a stanza, immediately followed by another, and another. Before my memory could give out on more lines, I got up and started pounding away on my typewriter. The lines followed until I completed the poem. My first experience of automatic writing. When I checked the page in the morning, I decided there was nothing I had to revise. It became one of my most favorite and most anthologized poems. Here it is, written in 1978. 

Father (from Sea Serpent, 1980)

Must everything begin and end 

with tension, as with father and son,

the memory of games and sins between?

In the hospital I watched your heart

tighten its flutter across a screen, a moth

blipping from breath to breath

and finally arriving at a pinpoint

of dark, the last light a feint

that threw me off your sorry hint.

Entering your deathroom I came

upon a sad peace, bent toward time

And kissed you; you were him.

Pressed your hand and in a wild

appeal to chance thumped a child’s

blow upon your chest, a field

I wanted to revive and roam

upon some more, though the dusk of the dream

hurried me along toward half a home.

Sarge Lacuesta

My father, Amado Lacuesta, Jr. quit his high-profile job at one of the country’s pioneering investment banks to become a full-time screenwriter. I don’t know if it mattered that there were four of us kids and that I was just entering high school. But because of his life decision he showed me a life that was so rare and so special that I
felt privileged to be a part of it. I would tag along to his tapings, his shoots, and his brainstorming sessions as his semi-official sidekick. Never mind that it was a school night or that the discussion—or worse, the proceedings—were not really appropriate for
someone my age.

It’s been almost 30 years since he died of a heart attack at the age of 49. I was 26—so long ago that I don’t really remember many details of him anymore. That’s more years without him than with him, so that is fair. I am also older now than he ever would have been, and there’s a lot of disconnect between who I am now and the son that I was.



But what has rubbed off on me during our years of father-and-sonhood has stayed, for better or for worse. I am overly critical of others and blind to my own faults like he was. I remember him critiquing a writing exercise I performed for him when I was ten or eleven years old, mainly by laughing at my cliches and tired turns of phrase. I am as idealistic and often as detached from reality as he was. At EDSA, he used his own car—the only car we had—to physically block the path of the tanks that were rumored to roll into White Plains Avenue.

Now I am my own father, in every sense of the phrase: I’ve lost a large part of him, but a large part of him I can’t help but carry around.

Charlson Ong

My father Conrado was a rather laidback fellow whom I think would have been more successful in another time and place. As a second-generation Chinoy born and raised in Binondo, he ended up as a business person—and, in my recollection, a rather reluctant one. He was always too trusting of friends and spent on not a few turkeys, like real estate that disappeared after landslides and high tides. I always thought his passion lay elsewhere.

In hindsight he passed on some opportunities that might have led to bigger prospects but I guess he was never the sort who ‘bore into the money hole’ as the Chinese would have it. He perhaps never had the drive or risk taking personality, content to raise a comfortable middle class family—we were three kids, I was the youngest—with vital help from our mother. There never much issue between us, as I was youngest and when I was born in 1960, my parents were more or less settled. I know he worried for me because of my interests but never interfered with my life choices, I feel he regretted not being able to leave behind enough for me to engage my whims without having to worry about livelihood.

He loved cars and, I’d like to think, singing. He was a very good baritone who took lessons in his younger years with an operatic singer. But he had difficulty with the Italian and French lyrics and eventually gave it up. But some Sundays he would sing Chinese ditties while our mom, a piano major, accompanied. In long drives—before the time of car stereos , cartridges,  cassettes, Spotify—during the 1970s and ‘80s, he would sing to himself just to stay wake driving while I pretended to sleep. But the songs embedded themselves into my psyche—romantic ditties of the 1950s and art songs of the 1930s while China waged its war of resistance against Japan and warlords. Whenever requested to sing Chinese songs, I draw on this repertoire of oldies.

He had an innate heart condition we now refer to as “athletes’ heart.” He had a health crisis as a younger man in his 30s but once it passed gave he gave in to his epicurean instincts and a two-pack-a-day smoking habit. By the 1980s he had his first heart attack but there was nothing much the technology of the time could realistically do.

In October 1987 he had his second attack. I was scheduled then for my first trip to China for the premiere of Eddie Romero’s Hari sa Hari—a co-production between the Philippines and China about the Sultan of Sulu and his embassy to the Ming emperor.

I thought my chance to go to China had passed, but my father recovered briefly and sent me on my way—I always felt he wanted me to experience the old country. But shortly after I left he suffered his third attack. This was before the the Internet, so for the week that I was in China I was blissfully unaware that he was fighting for his life. 

When I returned, I had to rush to the hospital and upon arriving, I found out he had just passed away. He was 57. I did not witness his final days, but the lore remains that while he was in and out of lucidity, he had some clear moments, and when our plane landed in Manila he was supposed to have uttered—his tongue had receded by then—that ‘They have alit, my youngest is home.’ Until this day I can never recount that tale without tearing up and I was able to mourn him only through some of my later fiction. Still whenever I am bamboozled to sing, willingly or otherwise, I know that his voice is there.

Qwertyman No. 202: Oh, Ateneo

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Qwertyman for Monday, June 15, 2026

WITH SO much already having been said and posted about last week’s saddest story—the tragic drowning of two Ateneo student-athletes in a training activity far off-campus—it seems pointless to add anything more. But as a former university administrator (with that other big school at the other end of Katipunan Avenue, the University of the Philippines), I feel compelled to think aloud and wonder what we should and could have done had this happened to us across the street.

The Ateneo university administration has been roundly (and I believe fairly) scored for not saying and doing enough in the immediate aftermath of the apparent accident to establish what happened, determine accountabilities, and provide sympathy and support to the bereaved. What drowned in Aurora were more than two boys and their hopes; into the depths went their school’s hard-won reputation for a culture of caring.

Institutional mindsets would reflexively call this “damage control,” but “damage control” sounds profoundly inappropriate and inadequate in these circumstances—the greatest damage done was that to the families of Rene Baterbonia and Divine Adili, and it is permanent and cannot be undone. Even to a people inured by tokhang, the heartrending video of a mother’s grief cuts to the bone.

The damage to the university’s reputation is substantial but, in the thick-skinned way these things go, fleeting and survivable. What people are calling for is justice, and let the damage fall where it may. In an academic universe increasingly driven by global ratings, a university’s reputation should seem to matter more, but where in the statistics do factors like compassion count? 

I know how difficult it is for academic bureaucrats to respond to a crushing crisis like this. My old job at UP, aside from teaching English and creative writing, was that of Vice President for Public Affairs, which meant that I was both the university’s spokesperson and shock absorber, the one who had to face the likes of Ka Tunying at seven in the morning to answer questions about all the rich kids in UP, fraternity hazing, communists on campus, and UP’s squatter problem.

It was understood that I was there to help promote and protect the university’s image, at a time when that image was being battered from both right and left, often from critics at the very top of the same government that we were dependent on for our annual budget. For the sake of that budget—which had its own critics—we had to tread a thin line between cooperating with authority and preserving our autonomy and academic freedom, a process fraught with conflict and, yes, sometimes hypocrisy, as when we had to smile in the face of politicians we would otherwise have cursed. While each little and isolated case may have been challenging and disturbing, eventually they all became administrative routine, necessarily tolerable.

But for every institution, there comes a defining moment when more than budgets or reputations are at stake, when its very spirit itself is under question and under threat. That moment seems to have arrived for Ateneo, a great university unlike many others, even unlike UP, founded as it is on Christian and indeed Ignatian principles that include magis or the striving for excellence for God’s greater glory and cura personalis or caring for the whole person. As Fr. Pedro Arrupe, SJ put it, a Jesuit education aims at producing “men and women for others.” UP has its “Serve the People,” but its secular character imposes less of a spiritual and more of a political mission on its community.

This is why the Ateneo administration’s seeming inadequacy of response to the accident, beyond its terse initial announcement, comes as a perplexing disappointment to many, on top of the awful pain and grief caused by the deaths themselves. In the very least, a statement providing more details of what happened, committing to a thorough and impartial investigation, and offering support to the affected families would have eased many initial concerns. 

Ultimately an institution’s image is made more by what it does than what it says, but the saying is also part of the doing. I would have arranged an immediate meeting between the Ateneo president and team coach and Rene’s family—and at least by Zoom with Divine’s—for them to personally explain what happened and to make the necessary amends.

Despite efforts to politicize and capitalize on the issue, I myself believe that what happened was a terrible accident, albeit a preventable one, with better foresight. Almost exactly a year ago, I lost a good friend, Don Rodis, to a rogue wave and riptide that pulled him into the waters off Los Cabos in Mexico; one minute he was just strolling on the beach, the next he was gone. 

That’s nature at its indifferent and cruelest worst, which, beyond preparing for, we can do little about. Human nature also arises spontaneously, in the shock, grief, and even anger that followed the accident. But human agency is something else—the “what could and should have been done’s,” both before and after the event.

I can imagine, as administrators would have instinctively responded, that Ateneo’s academic and athletic managers first called the lawyers in to find out who was responsible for what and what the university’s liabilities were. It’s a logical institutional reaction, but again Ateneo could have risen above that to show true compassion, which should come instantly and unbidden, without lawyers or preconditions. I have no doubt that the likes of Fr. Flavie Villanueva, Fr. Albert Alejo, or Fr. Robert Reyes would have rushed to and embraced the grieving mother if they could. 

(It has been a bad week for Ateneo in more ways. The athletes’ deaths obscured the passing of another prime Atenean talent, the poet and professor Rofel Brion. Rofel once said that “I write mostly about small, ordinary events, and in doing so, I capture them. I hold on to them and never let them go. And this, I guess, is how I pay homage to them.” This was his way of living the Ignatian principle of finding God in the ordinary. )

I have many friends at Ateneo and have even taught there—once as a substitute for the late Prof. Doreen Fernandez when she was unwell, and another time as the holder of its professorial chair in creative writing. While not particularly religious myself, I am a strong believer in its mission and in its products. I appreciate its efforts to diversify and to bring in more poor scholars into its fold. 

If Ateneo is as great as its history suggests, it will use this instance to reflect deeply on what it wants to be, and to be regarded as. I have no doubt that with sincere introspection and self-criticism, it will find the best ways to do right by the families of Rene and Divine, to run a fit and humane athletics program, to set the right policies and put the right people in place, and to reassure its community that it has recovered its true Ignatian spirit.