RIVERMAN’S VISTA | Huwat sa, Undang Kadyot: We Must Not Move On

QUEZON CITY (MindaNews / 19 June 2026) – In the days since Rene Baterbonia and Divine Adili died in the waters of Aurora, we have witnessed something that needed to happen.

The players spoke. Their accounts, given individually and at some personal cost, have brought us closer to the truth of what happened in Dipaculao.

Then came the Ateneo de Manila press conference, which was a disaster, cold and managed and insufficient. Then the town hall, which was better, because it allowed real voices into the room.

These are steps. But steps are not enough.

We must not move on.

Not yet. Not this way. Not until we have done what justice requires.

𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝒑𝒍𝒂𝒚𝒆𝒓𝒔 𝒂𝒓𝒆 𝒗𝒊𝒄𝒕𝒊𝒎𝒔 𝒕𝒐𝒐

Before anything else, let me say this plainly. Our Ateneo de Manila basketball players are victims. They did not plan this tragedy. They did not cause this tragedy. They survived it, and they carry the weight of survival alongside the weight of loss.

Anyone who attacks them, who calls them evil, who turns their pain into a target, is doing something wrong. It is at the very least ignorant. At its worst, it is cruel.

We must lock arms around our players. They have spoken now, and what they have said has given us a clearer and more painful picture of what happened in Dipaculao. We owe them our solidarity, not our suspicion.

But solidarity with the players does not mean silence about what went wrong. Those are two different things, and we must hold them together without collapsing one into the other.

𝑨𝒄𝒄𝒐𝒖𝒏𝒕𝒂𝒃𝒊𝒍𝒊𝒕𝒚 𝒊𝒔 𝒏𝒐𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒆𝒏𝒆𝒎𝒚 𝒐𝒇 𝒄𝒐𝒎𝒑𝒂𝒔𝒔𝒊𝒐𝒏

The coaches, team managers, and school officials are accountable. That is not a harsh thing to say. That is simply what it means to lead people.

When those in your charge are harmed under your watch, you answer for it. The surviving players have now spoken. We do not need two more weeks to begin understanding the contours of what happened and who bears responsibility.

I have said publicly that the fact-finding can and should proceed more expeditiously. Two weeks is too long when the basic facts are already coming into view.

Accountability delayed is accountability diluted. The families of Rene and Divine cannot afford to wait while institutions manage their timelines.

Let me be specific about what accountability means legally. I used to teach criminal law, though it has been many years. To refresh my understanding, I asked Atty. George Guerrero, a brilliant colleague from my law firm, to brief me on the relevant distinctions. What follows reflects that conversation.

The law distinguishes reckless imprudence from simple negligence. Simple negligence is a momentary lapse, a failure to exercise ordinary care. Reckless imprudence is something more. It is consciously doing, or failing to do, something that creates an unreasonable and foreseeable risk of harm to others.

The recklessness lies not in malice but in the disregard of consequences that any reasonable person should have anticipated.

The standard that applies here is that of a good father of a family. Under Philippine law, those who stand in a position of guardianship over students, whether de jure or de facto, are expected to exercise the diligence of a good parent. Coaches and team managers on a trip with their players are not merely supervisors. They are guardians. And the greater the risk they place their wards in, the higher the standard of diligence required of them.

From the testimonies of the surviving players, a picture is emerging. It appears the coaches deliberately placed the players in a situation they believed was controlled risk, perhaps even organized chaos, with the objective of team building: forcing the players to save each other, to trust each other, to forge the kind of bond that makes a great team.

The intention, one might charitably say, was not malicious. They were trying to build something. They were trying to make BEBOB, the team, into something larger than the sum of its parts.

But the sea did not cooperate.

And that is precisely where reckless imprudence lives. Not in evil intent. In the catastrophic gap between what the coaches assumed they could control and what the sea, indifferent and powerful, actually was.

If the players were brought into those waters without adequate safety measures, without proper assessment of conditions, without equipment and trained personnel ready for emergencies, then the coaches and managers did not merely make a mistake. They created the conditions for a foreseeable tragedy.

That is not simple negligence. That may well be reckless imprudence, and the fact-finding must pursue that question without flinching.

This is the essence of safeguarding, which all Catholic schools are mandated to apply in the light of the sex abuse of minors scandals. By extension, safeguarding extends to the circumstances that led to Aurora, including looking at the angle of the warnings from the wife and daughter of coach Tad Baldwin about his behavior.

At the same time, accountability and compassion are not opposites. Both can be true. Both must be true.

This is why I welcome the way the students, through the Sanggunian, other student organizations, and especially a group of concerned seniors (the Ateneo Seniors Alliance), have responded to this tragedy. They have spoken truth to power and have been unflinching in asking for accountability.

I expect the graduates this weekend to voice their sorrow and anger, maybe even have a historical lightning rally for the first time.

I also want to praise The Guidon for its comprehensive and intelligent coverage of this sad event and its aftermath,

𝑭𝒐𝒓𝒕𝒓𝒆𝒔𝒔 𝑨𝒕𝒆𝒏𝒆𝒐 𝒎𝒖𝒔𝒕 𝒇𝒂𝒍𝒍

Accountability is not only for what happened in Aurora. It must also be for the failed response of the university to the incident. For example, as noted earlier, the surviving players have been relentlessly attacked in social media and they blame the failure of ADMU communications for that.

Why did that happen?

Let me say something that alumni and friends of Ateneo de Manila have been saying quietly for years.

The culture of institutional self-protection, what many have long called Fortress Ateneo, has done real damage. It has made the school smaller, colder, and less trusted by the very communities it claims to serve.

The turnstiles are a symbol of this. So are the CCTV cameras that surveille more than they protect. So is the reflex of the communications office to manage, contain, and deflect rather than to speak plainly and embrace those who are hurting.

There are things Ateneo de Manila can do right now, before any formal process concludes. Fire the communications director whose instinct has repeatedly been to protect the institution rather than the truth. Take down the turnstiles. Begin acting like a community rather than a corporation.

These are not radical acts. They are what a Jesuit university that believes in cura personalis should have been doing all along.

Someone asked me recently how Ateneo de Manila can move on from what happened to Rene and Divine. My answer was this: there must be accountability. There must be personnel changes. Compensation must be given to the families. We should seriously consider withdrawing from the UAAP for one season. And yes, we must dismantle Fortress Ateneo.

Because here is the truth that should stop us cold. Fortress Ateneo is not just a management failure. It is a contradiction of everything this university teaches. Magis, the call to do more and be more. Cura personalis, care for the whole person. Being persons for others. Trust in people. Love for the poor.

These are not decorations on a website. They are the core of the Ignatian tradition that gives Ateneo de Manila its reason for existing. A university that builds walls, surveilles its students, and manages its image at the expense of truth has betrayed those values. Not partially. Fundamentally.

We cannot teach our students to be persons for others and then build turnstiles to keep others out. We cannot preach cura personalis and then issue cold, lawyered statements when two young people die under our care. We cannot claim to love the poor and then let the family of a poor boy from Talacogon wait for answers while the institution protects itself.

The press conference the day before the town hall was a disaster. The town hall itself was a good moment. The lesson is obvious: speak to people, not at them. Accompany, do not manage. The whole of Ateneo de Davao understood this. That is why their response, led by Fr. Karel San Juan SJ, landed so differently.

𝑨𝒑𝒑𝒍𝒆𝒔 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒐𝒓𝒂𝒏𝒈𝒆𝒔, 𝒃𝒖𝒕 𝒐𝒏𝒆 𝒖𝒔𝒆𝒇𝒖𝒍 𝒄𝒐𝒎𝒑𝒂𝒓𝒊𝒔𝒐𝒏

People have been comparing Fr. Bobby Yap SJ and Fr. Karel San Juan SJ. That comparison is unfair in one sense and useful in another.

Fr. Bobby and Fr. Karel are different people, different personalities. Fr. Karel is publicly expressive and instinctively communal. Fr. Bobby is quieter, more introverted, more pastoral in the one-on-one sense. What was expected of each of them, given their very different circumstances, was also different. Comparing them as individuals is comparing apples and oranges.

But we can compare how their universities responded. We should compare that.

Ateneo de Davao took a whole-of-university approach. It reached outward. It embraced. It welcomed the broader community into its grief and its response.

Ateneo de Manila hunkered down. It issued statements. It managed. It protected.

That difference made all the difference.

I want to be clear about Fr. Bobby. I have known him for 50 years, since we were freshmen together in Cervini Hall in 1976.

My wife Titay and I, both his classmates, love him unconditionally. He is a good man. He is kind. He officiated a mass when my mother died during the pandemic, and that tells you something about his heart.

Fr. Bobby’s first instinct, to approach this tragedy pastorally, to accompany the families, was right. It was the instinct of a priest who knows what it means to sit with suffering. But what happened next fell short of what institutions owe to the public.

Transparency. Accountability. Clarity of communication. The ability to speak to many different publics, not just one. The courage to unite a fractured community rather than wait for it to settle on its own.

Priests are expected to be pastors. But institutions are also expected to be institutions. Fr. Bobby has been doing the pastoral work. The institutional work has lagged.

𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝒉𝒂𝒓𝒅 𝒄𝒉𝒐𝒊𝒄𝒆𝒔

Some options on the table are uncomfortable. They need to be said anyway.

Ateneo de Manila should consider voluntarily withdrawing from the forthcoming UAAP season. Not as punishment. As a statement of what matters. As a way of saying that before we return to competition, we need to return to accountability. It would be painful, and the surviving players want to play. But it might be necessary.

On the question of compensating the families of Rene and Divine: this must be handled with great care and great speed. I would recommend mediation. Not litigation, not negotiation driven by lawyers protecting institutional assets.

Mediation, with the families at the center, guided by people they trust. Compensation freely and generously offered is an act of care. It is not an admission of guilt in the legal sense. It is an acknowledgment of moral responsibility, and that is what the families need to see.

There is also a leadership question. Fr. Bobby’s term ended in May. The Ateneo de Manila Board of Trustees meets in August to decide on retention or succession. Father Provincial Xavier Olin SJ will have a pivotal role in that decision. I will not tell the Society of Jesus what to do. But I will say this: the decision they make in August will send a signal, and the community will be watching. What kind of Ateneo do we want to be? That question deserves an honest answer before August comes.

𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝒑𝒐𝒍𝒊𝒕𝒊𝒄𝒂𝒍 𝒄𝒐𝒏𝒔𝒆𝒒𝒖𝒆𝒏𝒄𝒆𝒔 𝒘𝒆 𝒄𝒂𝒏𝒏𝒐𝒕 𝒊𝒈𝒏𝒐𝒓𝒆

I will write more about this later, after Rene’s funeral, but let me name it now. This incident has political consequences. Institutions like Ateneo de Manila do not exist outside of politics, and in the Philippines, what happens to a school that educated presidents and senators and chief justices is watched carefully by people with many different agendas.

We must respond dynamically in the months and years ahead. We must not let others define the story for us. We must tell the truth faster than the manipulators can distort it.

It is not too late.

Here is what I want Ateneo de Manila to hear. It is not too late.

Abandon Fortress Ateneo. Come out from behind the walls, the cameras, the communiques. Be again the institution that shaped so many of us because it believed in something larger than itself.

The panaghoy is still in the air. Rene’s mother’s cry is still echoing. Divine’s family is still waiting.

Huwat sa. Undang kadyot.

We must not move on. We must move forward, together, with accountability leading the way and compassion following right beside it.

In my earlier column on this tragedy, Panaghoy, Amping, Puhon, I wrote that the truth should be running toward Rene’s mother Rovelyn, not the other way around. A grieving mother from Agusan del Sur should not have to extract answers from one of the wealthiest institutions in this country.

That was true then. It is still true now. And it will remain true until Ateneo de Manila decides to stop managing and start answering.

Amping. It is the word we say when we send someone off, but it is also the word we say when we choose to stay. Take care of each other.

Lock arms around the players who survived and carry survivor’s guilt alongside their grief.

Lock arms around the families of Rene and Divine, who should never have to fight alone for truth and dignity.

Lock arms around a society that is watching to see whether our institutions can still be trusted to do the right thing.

Amping is solidarity made into a daily word, and it is what this moment demands from all of us.

Puhon, this school will be worthy of the grief that is being asked of it. Puhon, the families will receive not just money but recognition. Puhon, the players will heal. Puhon, this never happens again.

But puhon requires us to act. It is not a prayer for patience. It is a prayer that commits us to doing what it takes, right now, so that someday, God willing, we can say: we did not move on. We moved forward. And it mattered.

[Dean Antonio Gabriel La Viña is from Cagayan de Oro and is a professor of law, philosophy, politics and governance in several universities, including in Mindanao. He has been a human rights lawyer for 36 years. He is currently the managing partner of La Viña Zarate and Associates, a member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, and Chair of the Jurisprudence and Legal Philosophy Department of the Philippine Judicial Academy. Dean Tony is founding president of the Movement Against Disinformation and the founding chair of the Mindanao Climate Justice Resource Facility and the Mindanao Center for Scholarships, Sports, and Spirituality.]