The Ateneo group of universities has been having a bad year.
First, there was the drowning of Rene Baterbonia and Divine Adili during the team-building of Ateneo de Manila University’s (ADMU) men’s basketball team in Dipaculao, Aurora on June 8.
Then came the shooting at Ateneo de Zamboanga University (AdZU) on August 18 at the Junior High School building inside the Kreutz Campus in Barangay Tumaga, Zamboanga City.
The shooter, a Grade 8 student, managed to slip past school security while carrying a Glock 22 .40-caliber pistol and a 9mm pistol fitted with a conversion kit that made the handgun look like a rifle.
He wore a body camera to film the attack from his own point of view, so it looked like a video game. He killed himself right after the shooting, making him one of the two fatalities. The other was a Grade 10 student. Twenty-three were injured—one with a gunshot wound, the rest hurt in the chaos.
While everyone else is playing pickleball, this AdZU student perhaps preferred to make a video game morph into reality. Operative word: perhaps. Because only he could answer that big question: why?
This shooting spree happened barely two months after the San Juan National High School shooting in Tacloban City on June 22. The shooters: two students, aged 14 and 15. Three high school students were killed and 20 were injured—15 with gunshot wounds, and five hurt in the stampede.
While the ADMU team-building activity allegedly tried to copy the training of the U.S. Navy SEALs, the student-shooters in the other tragedies somehow ended up copying video-game plots.
These incidents have exposed a massive failure in how schools protect their students. The institutions only seemed to care after everything went completely wrong, proving that our schools are no longer the safe places they’re supposed to be.
Will parents now prefer to homeschool their children?
The pandemic lockdowns made us realize the world could still function while everyone stayed home—studying, working, and shopping online, with only essential workers allowed to go out. No one wants to return to that monk-like existence, but it did heal us and Planet Earth—fewer vehicles on the road meant less pollution.
The extroverts did manage to sneak out to see—and silently party with—family and friends. Hush. And no one noticed? Hmm.
We notice things that are not within the current norm. Hence the outpouring of anger and sympathy for Baterbonia and Adili, and for those killed and injured in the two high school shootings.
They involved young students. These make us recall what kept us busy when we were their age: sleepless nights to prepare for exams and finish school projects, or staying up to have fun and party. How has that typical student life regressed into team-building drownings and shooting sprees?
And here comes the generation gap, with my generation playing patintero, hide-and-seek, tumbang preso, bato lata, shatong, piko, Chinese garter, holen, pick-up sticks, jackstones, badminton and pelota. Obviously, no video games then.
