Ateneo dodges bullet

BY JOJO ROBLES       DECEMBER 26, 2018

The elitist and reliably anti-administration Ateneo de Manila University avoided a major crisis with its decision to dismiss a junior high school student shown in a viral video attacking another in a school bathroom last week. The Jesuit-run school really had no choice except to kick out the student, a taekwondo champion, who had apparently been using his martial arts skills to demand submission from his fellow students.

It took the better part of last week, however, for the school to decide the case after the videos of the bullying went viral on social media. I can understand the hesitation: While it claims to enforce a zero-tolerance policy against bullying, Ateneo had always reserved the term “bully” — along with “dictator,” “killer” and other choice epithets — for President Rodrigo Duterte.

It must have been so difficult for Ateneo administrators, led by its president, Father Jett Villarin, to admit that the bullying they routinely accuse Duterte of perpetrating was going on right under their noses. And that the occupant of Malacañang could in no way be blamed for it.

Just the week prior, the Ateneo community applauded when Manila Archbishop Luis Antonio Tagle, in his own continuing screed against Duterte on behalf of the Philippine bishops during the first of the simbang gabi masses, denounced all forms of bullying, which he loosely defined as the use of superior power against the helpless. What Tagle said in his homily was: “Do not use your power to disrespect… to coerce others.”

And then by Tuesday, the Ateneo bullying story broke. And Church leaders and the Jesuit school administrators were “bullied” by an undersized 14-year-old martinet into silence, even before they could repeatedly regurgitate Tagle’s statements and weaponize them against Duterte.

(While most of the right-thinking anti-Duterte crowd was silenced, I understand that its lunatic fringe tried valiantly to pin the school bullying incident on the President. A retired former comedian blamed Duterte for somehow inspiring and instigating the whole sordid affair, but was met with stony indifference even by her Yellow peers.)

The anti-Duterte politicians checked the direction of the wind of public opinion, found it unfavorable to them and took a collective vow of silence that would put the Trappist monks of Iloilo’s Guimaras Island to shame. They knew the people were enraged by the Ateneo incident and that it was useless and unprofitable – perhaps even suicidal – to go against the tide.

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But going back to Ateneo, no one outside the school’s Jesuit comunity can really say why it took the administrators that long to decide the case. But what’s more important is that they decided the way they did, or they would have caused possible irreparable damage to the school itself.

It didn’t help that Ateneo, when it did release a statement on the dismissal of the precociously dictator-like young man (who could not be held criminally liable for his psychotic-adult’s behavior because the law has decreed him to be underage) was deathly silent on reports that their taekwondo champion had already been the subject of three prior and eerily similar complaints of bullying but did not act on them. The school, in a public statement released by Villarin last week, also glossed over allegations about the possible liability of the other students caught on camera in the bathroom video and other places in Ateneo where similar incidents also took place, as well as the student (or students) who uploaded the recordings on the internet.

It was as if the university was dragging its feet on the matter, for whatever reason. There was no summary ruling, no quick response to assuage the fears of the alumni, the parents, students and the rest of the community.

I agree that some clemency must be shown to the offender, who is, after all, still 14, never mind if he seemed to have learned how to comport himself from the Marquis de Sade. This is why I accept the idea of a penalty of dismissal — which will allow him to enroll in any other school that will take him — instead of the more extreme penalty of expulsion.

God help the young man’s new schoolmates, however, if the administrators in his new school do not keep an eye on him from his first day in his new surroundings. The people who run what will be the kid’s new academic home will have to verify, as well, with Ateneo if it’s true that he had an older brother who was also dismissed for similar bullying offenses – something that Ateneo again did not mention in public because they were only so happy, it seems, to get this problem out of their hands.

As the father of young men myself, I certainly hope that this kid learns his lesson and eventually becomes a productive and law-abiding member of society. It would be such a waste to throw his entire life away simply because he’s having so much fun living out his Napoleonic fantasies.

Credit should also be given to the young man who was mercilessly bullied and beat up in the bathroom. The parents of the student declared that they were so proud of their boy, who would rather suffer a broken nose and a busted mouth instead of submitting to the bully’s demands to worship at his feet – I agree that that was a class act by the victim and his parents, who could have so easily run crying to the media, for example, instead of remaining silent and incognito.

As for Ateneo, the school only proved that it can be expected, in the end, to protect its cash flow and its tattered reputation, which is as it should be. No money-making enterprise, especially one as lucrative as the country’s most expensive Jesuit-run school, can be expected to sacrifice its survival for something as nebulous as principles.

Like the Yellows themselves, Ateneo and the Jesuits may pretend to serve some higher purpose and protect their own. But that’s only until the pressure gets too intense – and then they protect their own interests first.

https://www.manilatimes.net/ateneo-dodges-bullet/487988/