Graduating students in their togas walked out of commencement exercises and joined a protest on the Ateneo de Manila University campus on Friday, June 19, demanding accountability from the institution after the deaths of two students — Rene Baterbonia and Divine Adili.
The walkout, which drew students, faculty, alumni, and staff, was organized to push for institutional accountability. The protest unfolded simultaneously with the graduation ceremony at the Blue Eagle Gym, creating a striking image of celebration and dissent coexisting on the same campus.
"What struck me about that image wasn't the contradiction between commencement and protest, but their coexistence," wrote Ava Dumaup, a Rappler volunteer and third-year AB Communication student at Ateneo, in a first-person account. Dumaup was among the Atenean interns asked to help cover the event for Rappler's Research and Data unit.
Dumaup described the day as emotionally charged, with two simultaneous narratives unfolding. On one side, students celebrated years of study and friendship. On the other, they insisted that joy couldn't erase the pain that brought people together that afternoon.
"There is something deeply moving about students standing at the threshold of departure, and choosing, before they crossed it, to remain present for a community in distress," Dumaup wrote.
She noted that the protest wasn't about hostility toward Ateneo but about a deep attachment to it. The frustration and disappointment, she said, were inseparable from a profound investment in what the university has been and could become.
"Every chant carries years of investment in what Ateneo represents; every placard reflected not only outrage but also a deep desire for accountability, care, and change," she wrote.
The deaths of Baterbonia and Adili have sparked grief and anger within the Ateneo community. While the source didn't provide details on how they died, the call for accountability suggests concerns over institutional failures.
Dumaup, who initially approached the assignment as a journalist, found herself unable to separate her role from her identity as a student. "It became increasingly difficult to draw a clean line between myself as a journalist and as a student," she said.
She described the afternoon as a mix of anger and hope. The anger came from loving a community enough to feel wounded when it was wounded. The hope came from seeing people refuse indifference.
"I witnessed students, faculty, alumni, and staff choosing engagement over apathy and accountability over complacency," Dumaup wrote. "I witnessed people insisting that care for a place must involve the courage to confront its shortcomings rather than avert one's gaze from them."
Ateneo, one of the Philippines' top universities, has a history of student activism. The walkout echoes past protests on campus, including those during the martial law era and more recent calls for social justice. But this protest was unique — it came on graduation day, with students choosing to mark their departure by standing with a community in distress.
Dumaup ended her account emotionally exhausted but with an unexpected sense of hope. "What remains with me tonight isn't simply the memory of a protest, but the reminder that communities are often defined not by moments of agreement, but by how they respond to moments of crisis," she wrote.
The protest, she said, showed a collective willingness to remain invested and imagine something better. "There is, I think, a quiet kind of hope in that — a hope rooted not in certainty, but in the belief that people who love a community deeply enough will continue to demand that it becomes worthy of that love."