Ban the brotherhood of the whip

The last time, it was Guillo, now we grieve for Horacio. Another painful walk to the graveyard for a life barbarically ended in the name of a misguided brotherhood. As the song goes…When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn?

Three years ago, I gave this space for the story of Atty. Joaquin, a fratman, who related how he was bullied and deceived into joining a fraternity; how his life as a student became miserable thereafter; and how he became a lawyer even without the help of his fraternity. He concluded that the Anti-hazing law (RA 8049), which was enacted after Ateneo law student Lenny Villa was killed in a fraternity initiation rite, CANNOT prevent hazing. Now, with the senseless death of UST law student Horacio Castillo III, Congress must seriously consider the enactment of a new law that would totally ban fraternities, sororities and other similar organizations in schools. Parents send their children to school with the expectation that the school, as a second home, must provide not only a safe refuge, but an environment conducive to learning, free from violence, fear, bullying or any form of harassment.          

The present law seeks to regulate hazing of students by involving the school in the fraternity initiation process. It mandates that no hazing or initiation rites by a fraternity, sorority or organization shall be allowed without prior written notice to the school authorities, indicating the period of the initiation activities which shall not exceed three (3) days, the names of those to be subjected to such activities, and with an undertaking that no physical violence be employed by anybody during such initiation rites. The head of the school must also assign at least two (2) representatives of the school to be present during the initiation to see to it that no physical harm of any kind shall be inflicted upon a neophyte. While the law was obviously well-intended with the imposition of life imprisonment in case of death by hazing, it has proven to be ineffective with about one conviction in two decades notwithstanding the number of victims piling up.

In requiring school representatives to supervise fraternity initiation activities and in effect giving official recognition to fraternities, the Anti-Hazing law is actually an imprimatur, as it lays the initial step, to hazing. The school recognition allows fraternities to have at least a bulletin board or an exclusive corner in the school campus that gives them a stamp of legitimacy. Frat members can therefore openly recruit unsuspecting students. At times, parents would even allow their children to join because of the thought that a monitored initiation rite in an organization recognized by the school could not possibly do harm to their children. The sad truth is – fraternities betray students, deceive parents and mislead school officials, all for a misguided sense of brotherhood. 

The failure of the Anti-hazing law to check the evil it was intended to prevent is primarily attributed to the stark reality that these fraternities have not abandoned and will never abandon their traditional violent rites conducted in secluded places and kept secret by their code of silence. They fool their school representatives into believing that the initiation rites involve singing and dancing, or doing push-ups or moving a coin around the quadrangle with a finger, or reciting law theories. But a fraternity is a brotherhood of the whip and no one can be a brother through a song or a dance. Like the story of Atty. Joaquin and Horacio, there is a “welcome party” in some resort, residential house or uninhabited place, where the true fraternity rite, the barbaric hazing that makes brods out of sissies, is done without the presence or knowledge of school representatives.

These mostly Greek-lettered brotherhoods are projected as elite organizations only for the selected few where every member is a brother, right or wrong. Remember the two fraternity brothers who got P50,000,000 while sitting at the Bureau of Immigration? I wonder if they are already off the hook, with their highly placed fraternity brothers in government. To deserve this kind of elitist privilege, an applicant will not become a fratman just by memorizing the fraternity creed and playing monkey or donkey to entertain the initiation masters. Every neophyte must receive the same hits, kicks, and blows from the deadly paddle the founding fathers and the brothers before him withstood or died trying to. This will never change, for this is the very nature and core of a fraternity. Thus, every time an applicant joins an initiation rite, there is a chance that an anonymous text or call would inform a worried parent to go to a hospital to visit a dying child or a funeral parlor to claim a dead one.

How many more students will suffer the fate of Horacio Castillo III (Aegis Juris), Anthony Javier (Tau Gamma), Christian dela Cruz (True Brown Style), Ariel Inofre (Tau Gamma Phi), Guillo Servando (Tau Gamma Phi), Marc Andre Marcos (Lex Leonum), Marvin Reglos (Lambda Rho Beta), EJ Karl Intia (Alpha Phi Omega) and the other forgotten names remembered only when another neophyte falls to the blow of the paddle? There must be a law totally outlawing these fraternities in schools.

If it is not legally possible to totally prevent the students from joining fraternities because of the freedom to associate and the absence of a law prohibiting suicide, let them do it after they have graduated from school and have become professionals and parents too. But while they are still studying, let them enjoy an atmosphere of peace ideal for learning.

For as long as fraternities are allowed to exist in schools, another seat in the classroom is bound to be haunted; another student will be missed by classmates who failed to dissuade him from joining a frat rite; another mother will bury a child and suffer a pain so unnatural that no word was ever coined to refer to her situation. What do you call a mother or father left by a deceased child? Widow or widower? Orphan? None of the above, because it is not natural to happen. To lose a child in an accident or an illness is excruciatingly painful, but to lose one to the senseless blow of a fraternity paddle is indescribable.       

But it will not stop with the enactment of a better law. Officials in government, especially those who are frat members, should speak out against the ills of fraternities, at least in schools; teachers and school administrators must be extra-vigilant in implementing disciplinary rules on fraternity membership and recruitment; counseling services should be provided; well-meaning school organizations must be promoted and encouraged; parents should constantly pray with their children and keep on reminding them of the dangers of joining fraternities; classmates should bond together to dissuade each other from joining these brotherhoods; and every citizen witnessing any form of hazing must report to the police.

May all of us learn from the death of Horacio, the latest and hopefully the last victim of fraternity hazing.