Independence Day.
Independence from what?
For a student-athlete, it could mean independence from a Catholic university that couldn’t face the families of its two dead basketball players, so it was reduced to releasing printed statements calling the team-building incident an accident. Hmm. That wasn’t team-building. That was team-killing.
Independence from a video featuring the university’s basketball coach, posted after Rene Clert Baterbonia’s remains had already been transferred from Manila to Davao. Related: Mindanao grieves Agusan Sur cage star
Independence from a Catholic university that failed to live up to its very own “Persons for and with others” once fingers began pointing at it as the culprit. This is the same university that protested loudly against extrajudicial killings.
With the flood control scams, politicians receiving “maletas” stuffed with millions, Vice President Sara Duterte’s impeachment case, and all the other challenges the Philippines faces, Ateneo de Manila University (ADMU) had always been one institution that fought for human rights, defended the less fortunate, and sent immediate help where it was needed most, especially during disasters.
But this time, it couldn’t fight for, defend, or help Baterbonia and Divine Adili and their bereaved families. It was too busy defending itself.
ADMU’s brand changed overnight. It went from a selfless “persons for and with others” to the most selfish, indifferent, and detached university, devoid of any emotion and colder than ice. There was no apparent sympathy or empathy from its side. Only self-preservation and self-protection. It didn’t help that the printed statements’ background and the color of the chairs behind Tab Baldwin’s video were all blue.
That has always been Ateneo’s color: blue. Thus the Blue Eagles, soaring high.
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Its only hope now is for public anger to fade into “who cares,” because history has proven that the Filipino’s memory is short. We even turned BBM into PBBM, despite the notoriety of his father, former President Ferdinand Marcos Sr., and the billions the Marcos family allegedly stole from the national treasury.
So yes, ADMU will survive. Once it resumes fighting for human rights and all its other advocacies, Filipinos will again look up to it as the epitome of justice, fairness, and charity.
Kawawa naman ang Pinoy: always the victim, seldom the victor, with the elite controlling the whole narrative.
Where do the bereaved families of Baterbonia and Adili go from here? To the courts, of course. ADMU is known for producing the best lawyers in the country. Surely it will defend itself like no other.
This is not the first time ADMU has been embroiled in a deadly controversy. On February 10, 1991, Lenny Villa died from injuries sustained during a three-day hazing for the Aquila Legis fraternity, composed of Ateneo Law School students. The fraternity is not officially accredited by ADMU. Still, the initiation rites killed Villa. But the university survived.
Will ADMU drown with the drowning that killed Baterbonia and Adili? No, it won’t. It may even win this case by blaming everyone else: the men’s basketball team’s corporate sponsors, the coaches, the other basketball players, even nature itself—Dipaculao’s rip currents and huge waves, the weather, and the Mindanao earthquake that happened earlier that same day, June 8, 2026.
