The more the Ateneo de Manila University (ADMU) releases statements about the Dipaculao drowning, the deeper it digs itself into its cold era. Cold, meaning detached from the sad and painful reality that the drowning has caused.

Two basketball players died. But ADMU seems to be focusing on… I’ve lost track of what, exactly—the survivors, I guess? After all, only two died. The rest of the ADMU family is still there and has to move forward amid criticisms that even its students and fresh graduates are enduring from outsiders—no thanks to the way it handled the deaths of Rene Baterbonia and Divine Adili.

Is this gaslighting? Which Google defines as “a form of psychological manipulation where someone repeatedly distorts the truth to make another person doubt their own memories, perceptions, or sanity. The goal is usually to gain control or make the victim dependent on the abuser's version of reality.”

ADMU panicked on the day of the drowning and deaths, as it could see its Blue Eagles Band of Brothers (BEBOB) going down the drain, no longer able to soar like an eagle. In a past interview, one of its basketball players said their training, which was then held in Baler, Quezon, was “super deadly.” At least one participant almost drowned in the past, but that was obviously not enough to alarm ADMU.

BEBOB became the team’s mantra in 2016 under head coach Tab Baldwin. The Ateneo Blue Eagles have won four University Athletic Association of the Philippines (UAAP) championships since then, including a three-peat from 2017 to 2019, and one more in 2022. Four victories in less than ten years. Not bad at all. So BEBOB worked. Until it didn’t.

2026 could have been another UAAP championship—a record five wins in less than ten years—if only Baterbonia and Adili had been allowed to live.

There’s an idiom that goes: “Don’t kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.” Only an idiot—please excuse my French—will use everything in his power to kill that goose. And why would he kill the goose? Because he doesn’t want to be overpowered by the goose? Because the goose has the potential to be one of the greatest basketball players of all time? Because the goose, for now, has no golden eggs yet to lay before him? Esep-esep pud ‘pag may time.

ADMU is lucky because, despite its current damaged reputation, there are still parents who believe that only ADMU can give their children the best education on this side of the world. Try applying for a job at one of the multinationals in Makati and see whom they’ll choose: the ADMU graduate or the one from an unknown provincial university.

There was a time when a Cagayanon newly arrived in Manila would be asked, “Where is Cagayan de Oro? How did you get here?” Oh—I flew like an eagle? The mere mention of Mindanao was enough to scare them away.

I hope Baterbonia didn’t experience the same kind of welcome in Manila. But then, he died. So he got it worse.