As I read the news of the death of Cris Mendez, I asked myself: What were his last thoughts before he died? How did he feel about being murdered slowly by the very people whose brotherhood he sought, and who promised him the glories their exclusive community offers? Did he beg his brothers to stop? Did he utter any dying words? Did he regret his decision to join Sigma Rho?
Did his initiators laugh at his pleas and think less of him? Did anyone among them feel he had overdone it? Or wonder why he had to inflict such pain on a fellow human being? Are they remorseful, or do they feel they are now compelled to lie because, anyway, they didn't intend his death?
The death of Mendez, far from being an unfortunate accident incidental to the rituals of entry among fraternities, invites a deep reflection into the shallowness of the foundations that bind many communities in our "premiere" university. It is also an occasion to think about the culture of institutionalized violence still pervasive in an establishment where future leaders of this country are trained.
Is the decision to join a fraternity a mark of dependency, or ignorance, or chauvinism, or opportunism? Or is it indicative of the failure of the university to provide avenues for a meaningful college life beyond the limited classroom experience? Does it evince a failure on the part of teachers to relate their academic work to the larger human project of reducing pain and suffering? What kind of environment has UP become that it regularly breeds people who will maim and kill one another because a brod was stared at by someone from a rival fraternity? What kind of mind-set is required to transform intelligent young scholars into thugs whose claim to fame is the number of rumbles they've been in and "hits" they've done?
I offer three proposals as we reflect on these questions.
First, I invite the UP administration to tap the intellectual resources of its diverse faculty to study ways and means by which the university can deal at an institutional level with the culture of violence that has long hounded this public institution. We owe it to the nation to justify why until now a segment of the best and the brightest in our country end up becoming unrepentant murderers. A university-wide summit on campus violence where explanations and proposals for lasting solutions are presented, debated and acted upon will be a good first step. The university should now realize that suspensions and expulsions are no match to the kind of entrenched culture it is up against. Needless to state, the students, and any faculty member, directly or indirectly involved in Mendez's murder should be prosecuted with uncompromising vigor.
Second, the university should consider selective bans on organizations with a history of violence. Only an unsophisticated lawyer incapacitated by doctrinal thinking will worry about the right to association of groups that have an identifiable involvement with brutality and murder. A reasonably focused ban to address the undeniable interest of the university to promote a peaceful academic environment can withstand a perfunctory constitutional challenge. The constitutional right to associate is not an absolute. It is part of the larger right to free speech and express oneself through organizing. I seriously doubt whether any group whose core tradition includes beating initiates to near-death--or death--in violation of a law designed precisely to penalize such activities, qualifies for constitutional protection. Those who have passing familiarity with this right will recognize its salience in the narrative of committed communities who have been stigmatized for their race, beliefs, gender and in many instances today, sexual orientation. A fraternity that commits murder even as it extols the virtues of non-violence and academic excellence has no protected speech value to communicate. By their acts ye shall know them, and not by their innocuous, noble-sounding mottos.
Third, the UP community must find the courage, whether in outrage or in hope, to convince the reasonable members of Sigma Rho to participate not only in condemning those responsible for this atrocity but in bringing them to justice. In addition, we must convince them to acknowledge the possibility, if not the fact, that the illustrious fraternity they have known and been proud of for its academic excellence and leadership is no longer the same organization, even though it still carries the same label. We must invite them into this conversation.
It is a testament to the tragedy of public education in this country that at a time when the academic standing of UP in the international scholarly community is faltering, we are faced with the baser, though nonetheless important, concern for ensuring that our students do not end up killing one another in some barbaric rite of passage.
As a scholar, I dream of an institution where students and colleagues can talk about ideas and their impact on the way we organize ourselves and attempt to become politically relevant; where we engage the young to theorize their society in order that they may become practical citizens; where we connect ourselves with the moral teachings of the past as we march half-blind into the future. As I think these thoughts and dream with romantic idealism, I hear the loud chanting to the heart-thumping drumbeats: "Iskolar ng bayan! Mamamatay tao!" (Scholar of the nation! Murderer!)
Florin T. Hilbay was the 1999 bar topnotcher and holds an LLM from Yale. He is vice chair of Bantay Katarungan and an assistant professor at the University of the Philippines College of Law.
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