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.