On Monday this week, Ateneo de Manila University president Roberto Yap, SJ faced the media and spoke these powerful…

On Monday this week, Ateneo de Manila University president Roberto Yap, SJ faced the media and spoke these powerful words: “To the families of Rene and Divine, we see you, we hear you, we acknowledge the unbearable pain of your mourning, we know that the grief you carry right now is compounded by an anger that is entirely natural, justified.”

“On behalf of Ateneo de Manila University, I am here to say simply and directly, we are truly, deeply sorry. We apologize to the families and the entire community for the agonizing pain of this tragedy,” Yap said, adding, “two young men entrusted to our care did not return home, and that fact breaks our hearts. No explanation, context, or words can undo that loss. We face this moment with absolute humility and we ask your prayers and your forgiveness.”

The names Yap mentioned were Ateneo Blue Eagles student athletes Rene Baterbonia and Divine Adili, who both drowned during a training activity held by the school’s basketball team at a beach resort in Dipaculao, Aurora province, on June 8. Baterbonia was 18. Adili, a Nigerian national, was 21.

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Despair and disbelief

No words, indeed, can assuage the grief felt by the families of Baterbonia and Adili at the shocking loss of their sons. Yet the words spoken by Yap would have gone some way toward providing comfort and demonstrating empathy to the families in their hour of despair and disbelief, especially because the remarks also included an acknowledgment of responsibility and accountability by Ateneo for what had happened to the young men placed under its care.

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Unfortunately, the words came seven days too late. Yap’s expressions of deep commiseration should have been said on day one of the tragedy, when the nation first reeled at the disturbing news of the young cagers’ deaths, and then grew increasingly frustrated as details of the incident were way too slow to come out.

The sense of haze and confusion that clouded this tragedy from the beginning was largely Ateneo’s doing. In the immediate aftermath of the incident, its initial impulse was seemingly to contain the damage by hunkering down and limiting information provided to a bewildered public.

According to authorities, the drowning occurred at around 2:40 pm, when the athletes were swept out to sea by rip currents and Baterbonia and Adili were unable to swim back to safety. It was already Monday evening when Ateneo released its first statement, a brief message “confirming the passing” of Baterbonia and Adili and asking for “privacy and space for all those grieving.”

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Complete silence

Other than mentioning a “drowning incident,” the statement provided no explanation for how exactly the two student athletes died. More grievously, there was complete silence on any notion of accountability—on whether an investigation would be launched, first of all, or at least a commitment to immediately review school protocols governing such student training activities that had now proved fatal.

Ateneo’s quick retreat into silence and circumspection backfired spectacularly, triggering a firestorm that, in barely a week, sent the institution’s standing and credibility into free fall. The public was rightly incensed when it heard from Baterbonia’s mother herself, inconsolable in her anguish, that she had to extract details about her son’s passing in piecemeal ways. Ateneo would eventually claim that it had immediately reached out to Baterbonia’s family and offered extensive assistance—but in the first hours when the school was conspicuously uncommunicative other than through carefully crafted statements, the impression was of an institution betraying its vaunted liberal, progressive values for a cold, impersonal, corporate response when crisis hit.

Legal liabilities

Ateneo’s seeming inclination to limit its exposure to potential legal liabilities by ducking from view extended to the school’s decision to prevent Tab Baldwin, the Blue Eagles head coach, from speaking publicly about the incident. Baldwin needed to be the one face above all answering questions about the apparently grueling training program he had designed and run for years. And yet for days afterwards, even as the entire country was deep into mourning for Baterbonia and Adili, Baldwin was nowhere to be found or heard. He would emerge only with a recorded apology, and a well-timed resignation on the day Yap was finally able to summon the remorseful words he should have said, profusely and without hesitation, right after the tragedy.

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That reluctance to display urgent, forthright compassion has been disastrous for Ateneo, and an additional heartbreak for the families of Baterbonia and Adili. With authorities now looking at possible homicide for the deaths, Ateneo owes it to both the two students’ families and the public to be more forthcoming and responsive—to give clear, honest answers about what happened, to fix the oversight lapses that sanctioned an unsafe student training program, and to hold to account those responsible, either through negligence or active agency, for this terrible tragedy.

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