The whole trouble with the Ateneo is that it is perceived (fairly or unfairly) by the Philippine public to be an elitist institution even in the best of times. The Ateneo, after all, is an expensive institution of learning to be a part of. Its fees are beyond the reach of the vast majority of Filipinos and, as such, members of its student body come from the crème de la crème of Filipino society. An Ateneo education brands you for life; essentially guaranteeing its students and alumni privileged access to an über exclusive social and business network that opens doors to society’s most plum and most lucrative opportunities and circles.
This reality should have been a key consideration in the public relations management surrounding a recent tragic incident in which varsity basketball players Rene Clert Baterbonia and Divine Adili died during a team activity in Baler, Aurora province. It’s Day 3 since the incident was first reported and a public clamour for answers continues to ratchet up. A lot of this noise fills what many have described as a communication vacuum of the Ateneo’s own making. Its official comms on the incident have so far been both thin and tone-deaf (as many critics point out). As a result, people have become reliant on social media posts, podcasters, and the sparse news “reports” from mainstream media outlets for information on the matter. This is a disturbing situation as it leaves the space open for people to politicise the tragedy.
A key personal presence in the midst of all this is the mother of Baterbonia, Rovelyn Baterbonia who has been consistent since Day 1 sharing her grief with the public (and to whom the media have swarmed around on account of her being the only individual directly impacted by the incident putting up a public face). Becoming a very visible public figure from the very beginning, plus the fact that no report of any direct face-to-face contact between her any high-ranking official from the Ateneo has so far surfaced (a fact the mother Baterbonia herself has been highlighting) has compounded the PR nightmare the Ateneo now finds itself in. Whilst the victims of the tragedy have a persistent human face available for the public to relate with, the Ateneo, on the other hand, has so far only faced the public behind its Blue Eagle logo — a symbol relevant only to members of its elite community.
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Al Jazeera correspondent for the Philippines and Asia-Pacific Barnaby Lo in a post on social media site X came forward to make a call already long-overdue by then…
With all due respect, Ateneo officials and its basketball coaching team need to say something already. It’s been a couple of days and we see the anguish of a mother who is looking for answers and closure. Why did Rene Baterbonia’s mother have to learn about her son’s death on social media?
Understand Ateneo wants to let the investigation run its course but they have people who were there when its student-athletes drowned and died. They can provide facts rather than let speculations and conspiracy theories run wild.
The more the school stays silent, the more it looks like they’re evading accountability. Whether they like it or not, it’s not an internal matter that they can sweep under the rug.
A cohort of celebrity endorsers sharing their respective two-cent feelings on the tragedy aren’t helping either. Former players, seemingly on behalf of their alma mater, appealed to the public for fairness in this time of grief citing their own experience training under similarly harsh conditions. However, these were met with scorn by a public, by then, already dug into perceptions they had already formed likely as a result of the PR debacle officials of the Ateneo had created — further testament to the imporance of timeliness in the field of PR management.
For his part, singer Gary Valenciano — an alumnus of La Salle (the famous singular rival of the Ateneo in most endeavours) — issued a particularly tone-deaf post on X…
Netizens were quick to zero-in on his leading statement — an opening remark that suggests Valenciano took the time to make it about himself first before getting to the important part of his message. Suffice to say, a proper PR response from the Ateneo would have distracted from the Amateur Hour din of messaging coming from these arguably well-meaning people. This is, after all, a collective of elite voices speaking elite sentiment to the powerless (the opposite of “speaking truth to power”). Already, the fact that Baterbonia and Adili really are, in the scheme of things, outsiders as far as the tony circles of the Ateneo community are concerned had gone a long way towards fuelling public speculation around how this matter may have been treated differently had the victims been insiders.
Indeed, the Ateneo needs to get its act together pronto if it is to stem the steady encroachment of noise and conspiracy theories into a space that it should have been on top of had it done things right the first time. With privilege comes greater responsibility — perhaps a responsibility the nature of which the Ateneo could have worked harder to understand better.
- How the political camps that presume to represent “civil society” might learn from the debacle the Ateneo finds itself in today - June 21, 2026
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- The public relations debacle the Ateneo finds itself in following the tragic deaths of Rene Clert Baterbonia and Divine Adili - June 11, 2026
Had it been a billionaire’s son like Chris Tiu, or an American missionaries’ son like Kirk Long whom the US Ambassador came to the UAAP games to watch play. There is that class angle indeed. It’s awful.
Even though it was part of a team-building activity, the facilitators present could have prevented the two from drowning. Yet see how the damage was grossly done. Moreover, if ADMU was responsible enough, they could have anticipated the dangers of what you may call ‘forcing’ the two do get into such an extreme act as the water condition may have worsened, leading to painful repercussions. But in the end ADMU must be responsible for such neglect! The very institution that claims to be a moral guardian is now the one who has violated its morals of upholding respect by allowing such an incident to take place! It can also be a dent against their sports training programs. In as much as I grieve with the families of the two boys, let those responsible for their deaths face the consequences of their irresponsible actions.
A friend of mine noted that basketball players aren’t soldiers and aren’t emergency first responders and don’t need to be “resilient” under duress the way such professionals need to be in highly-variable environments.
Basketball players only need to be trained to operate within the narrow physical landscape of a typical basketball court guided by well-defined and predictable rules that persist over long periods of time. Their goals are fixed targets (unlike the moving targets of soldiers and first responders).
Given the above perspectives, the need for such extreme training regimes may need to be re-evaluated.
I remember when I was still studying there, there was this issue with a tall Chinese “import” student named Ma Ming that reportedly was brought in only for the basketball team. And he was given only English classes so he wouldn’t have any problem staying. So, you guessed it, special treatment jus to augment the basketball team. Well, the official story is that he failed math, so he didn’t stay. But that was sort of a scandal then. It’s as if the school’s administration is so hung up on winning UAAP that they’ll put out all stops… even the questionable stops… to win the games.
One reason why I’m not a sports fan is that it’s full of these scandals and cautionary tales, some do anything just to win. But, back to the case of the two students, I believe a decision was made at the administration level that was so terribly lax, it allowed safety to be sidelined for the reported training.