DEATH IN THE (BROTHER)HOOD

Never have I witnessed a person turn purple and die right in front of me. I am wondering, though, if my seatmate in class has. He is a Sigma Rhoan, you see, and I am restraining myself from asking him all these floating questions I have in my head.

Sigma Rho is a UP Law-based fraternity. Sigma Rho alumni, if I remember correctly, include Senators Edgardo Angara, Juan Ponce Enrile, and Jovito Salonga, my most admired political personality. Their tambayan was by the UP Law parking lot. It is the fraternity my seatmate is a member of. My knowledge of the organization, I am afraid, stops there. I have no idea of their activities or their “track record”, so to speak. I do not know what brand of brotherhood they have with each other, let alone, how they treat people outside their brotherhood—and those who wish to be part of it.

Apparently, CA was one of those in line to join Sigma Rho. But before he could actually be called one of the brothers, he went to his final initiation rites two weeks ago and never came out of it alive.

CA, or Cris Anthony Mendez as he has more popularly become, was a fourth-year UP Public Administration student. He was a Student Council member. He was a son and a big brother. CA was all these before his life was put to an untimely end that weekend. His death resulted from countless physical traumas he suffered all over his body—hits and blows apparently from paddles during the hazing that “never” took place, in some undisclosed location, on a rite of passage that should not have happened or, at least, should not have gone wrong.

CA went about that weekend thinking that it would be the last night of his series of rites of passage for the fraternity. I am guessing he never really thought it would be his last night—ever. And that he would ever become another Alex Icasiano and Lenny Villa.

His unresponsive body was reportedly brought by a certain Dr. Cruz to Veterans Memorial that night. The hospital’s security guard, in a sworn statement, said that he saw Dr. Cruz, a resident doctor of Veterans, and his son, Miko, that night. The father-and-son tandem admitted CA’s body. The guard also noticed that the two were engaged in seemingly agitated and restless conversations between themselves. After a while, more vehicles came and, suddenly, the hospital grounds was populated by, at least, twenty more people—twenty men.

All these men left together. One live body less, that is. Deserted and abandoned by the men that brought it there, CA’s body was claimed by his mother the next day.

CA has since been buried. Rallies and vigils have taken place in his memory. Many things have happened in the three weeks since his death. So much has surfaced with which everyone has frenzied over. So much, that is, except the truth. Everyone has aired their minds, except the Sigma Rho brothers from which CA was hoping to be one of.

I say all these with apparent uncertainty. My facts could definitely be proven wrong. But there is a white elephant in the room. As unsubstantiated all the allegations could be, I cannot sit beside my frat-man seatmate and stay as silent as him and the rest of his brothers.

It would be an understatement to say that I have been moved and affected by CA’s death. And it is because of this that I have decided to write.

I find myself in the middle of this controversy. I walk the same pathways CA may have, even once, walked on during his years in UP. I walk the same halls past and present Sigma Rhoans have walked on and still do. Yes, there is, to some extent, an affinity. But as I walk, seemingly aimlessly, I look around hoping some clarity would devolve in my confusion.

I find absurdity in the matter not because I think that hazing is a dispensable rite of passage in a fraternity. I’ve heard a lot of people asking why fraternities have to hurt their neophytes before they allow them in their organization. This I do understand, believe it or not.

I could be criticized for my way of thinking, but I actually see what the role of hazing or inflicting pain—physical, mental, or emotional—is.

What exactly is this role, you ask?

Let me put it this way. Imagine yourself being scolded badly by your parents. Your dad whips out his leather belt and lashes you with it. All the while he utters obscene and terribly derogatory remarks at you. How do you think would you feel?

Helpless? Battered? Pitiful? Violated? Alone? Abandoned?

These exactly are the things hazing makes you feel. It is in these emotions that the fraternity makes its point on the subject of brotherhood.

You would instantly think that brothers, if they really are such, would not hurt their other brothers. But that is the thing, you see. Even before the neophytes could say that they are part of the brotherhood, they should actually believe that these men actually are their brothers.

Inflicting pain on them is simply a tactic to make them realize that whoever they are—affluent, rich, popular, powerful, influential, or not—they are kaput. They will always need someone to pick them up when they are browbeaten.

The neophytes are stripped off of whatever pride they might have had. Without it, they could easily find it in themselves to reach out and ask for help.

It is mostly when a person is so down, helpless, weak, and in fear, as when he is subjected to hazing, that he longs for someone to pick him up. After hazing, the brods supposedly aid to the downtrodden neophytes, at a time when they are poor and vulnerable. It is in this vulnerability that they will most effectively realize that, truly, their brothers will be there for them through thick and thin. It is in that moment of defenselessness that the neophyte would most clearly see the importance of brotherhood.

As I see it, hazing is not mainly to command respect. It is definitely for the establishment that the group is for brotherhood—that this brotherhood is well beyond respect. It is always going to be about trust and loyalty.

If there is some other reason for hazing, that I do not know. If there is, I would find it harder to understand. May I would start to think that all those other reasons are only unreasonable rationales. Lame excuses for the otherwise inhumane acts of violence.

However, for whatever noble cause it might be, losing a life from hazing is a completely different matter. If there becomes a casualty from it, then its supposed objective will be in vain.

What good will it do to teach a brother how to become part of the brotherhood, if there will be no brother to speak of? If that brother does not live to be part of the brotherhood?

I look and see if I could ask my seatmate these questions. He is not there. He didn’t go into hiding. It is just that we have moved on to the next semester. We don’t have a class together anymore. It took me this long to have the courage to have myself heard, only to find my questions still left unanswered.

* * *

After three months, what is most disturbing is the fact that CA’s case is turning out to be another forgotten story. It has seemingly become too stale for our taste.

Most of the involved have gone back to their normal way of life. I have seen Miko in campus again, attending his classes. The former hot and intriguing news on CA has been overlapped by the Estrada Plunder Case, Glorietta and Batasan Bombings, and the Malacañang Bribe Scandals.

The loss of CA’s life is truly heart-breaking. His death is turning out to be a waste as no one is learning from it, as it seems.

I’ve learned several things, though. I have learned that no matter how much a life is actually worth, people could not care less. That no matter how incriminating evidence and circumstances can get, some people’s conscience still does not kick in. That no matter how important fraternity brotherhood is, as they say it is, its benefits do not go beyond the grave. That no matter what exclusive brand of loyalty there is in a fraternity, it will always be overrated.

WHEN A LITTLE ANGEL COMMITS SUICIDE

Upon hearing the news that a 12-year-old girl hung herself in their shanty because of extreme depression and poverty, I could not find words to console myself. What has this society come to?

Two things: 1. This society is so poverty-stricken that the hopelessness and desperation in the air drive even innocent children up the wall.

2. This society has media so liberal and free that it has taught even the most naive how to commit the most inhumane and unimaginable acts of violence.

I can only have a bruised heart for this little girl, Mariannet. I could not imagine how miserable she felt that she thought that the only solution to her woes is to end her short-lived life. No, I could not imagine. I never could. But I could speculate of how it must have been for her and her family.

Their family's finances must have been in such a real mess. They were not able to have their meals. The children were not able to go to school. Or if the children did go, they had no books and school supplies with them.

Their relationship with each member of the family must have been deteriorating because of their financial crisis. The mother and father frequently fight. The children gaze into empty space, in an attempt to drown out the yells and heated arguments between their parents.

It must have been an ultimately dreary day. Mariannet's tears fall, as desperation and hopelessness settles even deeper in her young soul. She, with her frail and weak built, readies a makeshift noose. She makes that one last step and hangs herself.

Her story is truly heartbreaking. If a poor little 12-year-old girl, who's supposedly still optimistic of the world and full of hope, had it in herself to end her own life...we should all have it in our selfish and to-hell-with-them attitudes, to kill ourselves as well. It is, anyway, our fault...for culturing a society that allows little angels like Mariannet to fall onto the ground.