Ateneo Immersion Scandal

Hm. Just finished reading about the Ateneo Immersion Scandal. Man, I'm so behind the times now. This piece of news is half a year old!

For those not in the know (like me a few hours prior), it was about this Atenean girl who, after going on an Aeta cultural immersion trip required by her Theology class, recounted her experience in conyo speak in her blog, chockfull of OMGs and complaints that only serve to reveal her sheltered existence.

Naturally, the world is out to get her, particularly her fellow Ateneans, who are flat-out pissed for the disgrace she's brought to the school. After all, who wouldn't feel the impulse to beat the everloving snot out of her after reading the runny mess of her blog?

Now then, allow me to play the devil's advocate here (because God knows I love that role so much it's almost intruding into fetish territory), and raise a few minor points. if I may.

See, when you're in the presence of friends, isn't it so, that you tend to remove your mind-mouth filter, and just blast away to your heart's content? When we're with the closest of friends, we cut loose and talk about the lewd, the foul, the politically incorrect, the horrible...anything and everything that's been occupying your thoughts as of late. This includes things you wouldn't and couldn't be caught dead talking about in a public setting. Why? Because they're your closest friends. You reveal your innermost being to them, taking solace and comfort in the fact that they will accept you for who you are, no matter how horrible you really are. The world, of course, does not. What Ms. Conyo had on her mind when she posted her blog was exactly that - a closed-door discussion with her friends about the TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS HEAPED ON HER POOR, MISERABLE SELF BY THE HARSH, UNFORGIVING UNIVERSITY.

The girl here was being completely honest. And I believe that one would find thoughts and rants just as bad, if not worse, beneath the indignant self-righteous fronts her persecutors put up. If THEY were put in a situation in which they would be disgusted out of their minds for 24 hours, whatever it may be for them, I'm pretty sure they'd let loose a two-hour tirade filled with enough expletives to make baby Jesus cry. Of course, if you post something on the Net, you do not have an absolute guarantee that they will not leak out. If you do not want something to leak out, write it on paper and hide it in the deepest, darkest recesses of your closet. But she posted it on the Net to share with her friends.

That being said, you cannot expect the Ateneo, one of, if not the, best schools in the country, to be completely free of those stereotypical elitists. Popular culture has exaggerated the presence of these elitists, or conyos, in the top schools like De La Salle and Ateneo. Many of us, upon entering these schools find those rumors to be unfounded - to a degree, at least. To our dismay, we come across someone, from time to time, who fits the elitist stereotype more or less. You cannot discount the absence of sheltered elitist pricks in these schools. It's just the way things are. Middle to upper class families will always have overprotective parents. These people are a product of their upbringing. But that being said, the girl is old enough to think for herself and be aware of the current state of things, socially or otherwise. It could be easy to blame her parents, but she has the responsibility to choose the course of her actions. She is smart enough to enter Ateneo after all. I find her behavior appalling and repulsive. But I am not going to judge her.

So sure, Ms. Conyo made an ass out of herself over the Internet. The remaining years that she has in the Ateneo will be spent enduring frigid glares and condemning whispers; and it's quite possible as well that the consequences of her actions will spill over into her professional career the way the past comes back to bite you in the ass. But what about the lynch mob? Aren't they humiliating themselves as well? Her attitude was sickening, and couldn't have been more wrong. But what about the mob surrounding her with stones in their hands? Do they seriously think that those things that she wrote down dictate her entirety as a human being? That it renders her beyond morality, beyond salvation, beyond redemption? So much so that she deserves public humiliation for the rest of her life, if not a few beatings, or even death?