Ateneans are in the midst of a massive, long-overdue frenzy of soul-searching. This is in the aftermath of the tragic deaths of basketball players Rene Clert Baterbonia and Divine Adili during a team activity in Baler, Aurora province and the Ateneo de Manila University (ADMU) administration’s botched public relations (PR) management following the incident. The debacle exposed an institutional dysfunction and a culture of denial that, as it looks now, festered for decades.
What plagues the Ateneo today is a profound superiority complex that could likely be an outcome of its self appointment as the foremost educator of “the best and the brightest”, the country’s “future leaders”, and a special breed called to be “men for others”. When an Atenean graduates, he comes “down from the hill” and then “down to the world”. Literally, in fact. Marikina valley, is at the foot of that hill where the ADMU sits. This is the site of those public schools to which Ateneo High School (AHS) seniors come down to educate their “underprivileged” students as part of the famous Tulong Dunong (knowledge assistance) programme of the AHS. This training sets the frame in the minds of these young men for how they would regard the world — the people they encounter down from their hill — over the rest of their lives.
Many generations of Marikina public students benefited from the Tulong Dunong programme. But, perhaps, some reflection is due for a reckoning around the cost of this in the form of the effect this may have had on the attitudes of generations of AHS graduates. Indeed one could see parallels between the let-me-come-down-and-educate-you mentality an Ateneo education may have inadvertently ingrained in its students and the this-is-all-you-need-to-know-at-this-time approach to PR management the Ateneo exhibited for weeks following the Baler incident.
| SUPPORT INDEPENDENT SOCIAL COMMENTARY! Subscribe to our Substack community GRP Insider to receive by email our in-depth free weekly newsletter. Subscribe to our Substack newsletter, GRP Insider! Learn more |
A predisposition to tell rather than listen is clearly at the core of what resulted in this massive PR failure and the big write-off in brand equity the Ateneo is accounting for today. Indeed, it is similar in pattern to the way the Philippine Opposition led by the Aquino-Cojuangco political camp habitually miscalculated public sentiment at massive scales and lost important consecutive national elections since the miserable fall of the administration of the late Philippine president Benigno Simeon “BS” Aquino III in 2017.
It is worth noting that the Ateneo’s administration, its faculty, and its student body were all closely-affiliated with that partisan camp — the Opposition post-2017 and the dominant incumbent camp in power pre that year. The Ateneo clearly contributed disproportionate thought leadership to this camp over the last several decades. Indeed, no less than the defacto “presidentiable” of that camp today, Senator Risa Hontiveros, is, herself, an alumna of the ADMU.
Perhaps the bizarre blindness to the pulse of Philippine society that consistently misled one campaign manager and/or strategist of the Opposition after another over many years can be attributed to this “thought leadership” or, more disturbingly, to the “Ateneo Way” it gained from its leaders by osmosis over that period where this decline was most acute.
The Opposition led by the usual suspects, those Aquino kids, the alumni that it continues to tap for “leadership”, and prominent communist intellectuals may do itself a favour by taking the opportunity to closely observe with eyes wide open the plight of the Ateneo as it desperately attempts to reform itself today. Perhaps lessons on self reflection and what it takes to effect authentic engagement with the Filipino public — voters down their hill — may serve it well over the coming months in the lead up to that next “important” election.
- How the political camps that presume to represent “civil society” might learn from the debacle the Ateneo finds itself in today - June 21, 2026
- WHO instructed Tab Baldwin to “limit” his public “apology” to just “four minutes”? - June 14, 2026
- The public relations debacle the Ateneo finds itself in following the tragic deaths of Rene Clert Baterbonia and Divine Adili - June 11, 2026