When the shockwaves reached fever pitch that Ateneo basketball players had drowned – died – in a boot camp, my first instinct was to say that this will be a disaster for Ateneo de Manila. And true enough it was.
Ateneo de Manila University operates from a major handicap – its university president. I had personally witnessed how the man leads. Roberto “Bobby” C. Yap SJ is a man obsessed with controlling the public narrative by hook or by crook, and which he believes only he alone can shape (and that is why it is an obsession), when the institution he leads is in need of damage control.
His methods alone are shocking.
In the summer of 2019, I had wanted to write about the planned sale of two campuses owned by Xavier University Ateneo de Cagayan, the institution that has made me an Ateneo alumnus. Both campuses in Cagayan de Oro City are historic to the national consciousness. Xavier U Ateneo is the first of all Philippine Ateneos to become a university on March 22, 1958 (Ateneo de Manila became a university only in December 1959); the first university in the entire Mindanao; the first Catholic university in Mindanao.I established contact with Fr. Bobby as part of the information backbone of my writing. He was president of XU Ateneo. The phone exchanges were pleasant. He had even sent me historical documents, particularly the donation of the Ateneo campus by the then Bishop of Cagayan (de Misamis) to the Society of Jesus and for which Jesuit General Wladimir Ledóchowski responded to the then bishop by accepting the donation.
One day, Fr. Bobby asked for a pact with me, that all writings on the matter have to pass through him. He acted as a censor, even though at that time I was extraneous to XU Ateneo. Disclaimer: until 2018, I was university professor in the School of Graduate Studies.
Naturally I found the request strange. I was not his professional subaltern. In broadsheet writing, there is only one who can censure your writing and that is the opinion editor and/or the editor in chief.I obliged with his request, odd as it was.. The writing was published. But the information coming in after that was not favorable to Fr. Bobby. It was only then I fully understood why he wanted to censor my writings. In fact, he was hiding so much information from the public. I decided to end the censorship relationship.
As required by the current Jesuit General Arturo Sosa Abascal, XU Ateneo was mandated to hold consultations with faculty, staff, alumni and the Cagayan de Oro City community on the sale of the two campuses.
Fr. Bobby deviated. His consultations were by invitation only. A number of tenured faculty (some with PhDs) were not invited because they were deemed as potential oppositors and critics. One faculty who was invited questioned the process: the presentation of the sale plan took up most of the bulk; questions were entertained in the few minutes that was left.
Fr. Bobby’s “consultations” were designed to show that his plan to sell the campuses was popular. The truth was silenced. As the Manresa campus sits on a hill, a community of former university employees that lives on its slopes held a protest rally outside XU Ateneo’s downtown campus. They were part of those not invited and they had warnings of flooding from the hilltop’s runaway water.
Fr. Bobby conducted himself on the Adili-Baterbonia deaths in exactly the same manner: nothing was first heard from him for a stunned public searching for answers, for alumni getting confused by the day.
Instead, Fr. Bobby issued a gag order that prevented coach Tab Baldwin and the other athletes from talking to the public. By controlling the narrative which is a Bobby Yap forte, the public saw it as a cover-up. If human life is precious, Ateneo as a Catholic university failed to manifest that.
The twin tragedies happened on June 8. Fr. Bobby explained the reason behind the gag order on June 11. By then, the whole nation was in confusion. And then as university president, Fr. Bobby only spoke publicly on June 15, when a full week had already passed after the deaths. This is a man consumed by his so-called technocratic expertise but cannot handle crisis management.
In contrast, the Jesuit Provincial Superior Fr. Xavier Olin SJ’s statement, released days earlier on June 12, reflected widespread public sentiment: “We humbly acknowledge more could have been done in the way the tragedy has been dealt with and communicated.”
Fr. Provincial: please take note that no heads have rolled. We are talking about human lives here. In fact, Baldwin resigned instead of dismissed by Fr. Bobby. And while the “independent investigation” is now taking place, you must suspend Fr. Bobby from the office of president. Because in fact, his command responsibility must also be taken into account. The Jssuit Provincial is a member of the Board of Trustees.
Fr. Bobby is an autocrat. As such, he is too invested in the process. A retired Ateneo employee of many decades describes the controversial Bobby Yap management style:Before Fr. Jett Villarin SJ left as president, the then Loyola Schools undertook a lengthy process of consultations to come up with a strategic plan. But when Fr. Bobby took over, we had to repeat the process once again!
The transition process was so disorderly that many staff resigned. Those who stayed accepted this new set-up grudgingly, just working for keeps. This was when morale among employees dived, becoming dispirited and uninterested.
Other sectors were equally affected. Relations with the labor union soured, and notices of strike became common. During a Faculty Day event, the faculty stood up and read a manifesto raising their concerns from salaries to promotion and inadequate facilities.
Administering a Jesuit university may not be for Fr. Bobby. This is already Strike 2, the first one was XU Ateneo de Cagayan. Sadly, he has lost the moral authority to preach Jesuit values such as cura personalis and men and women for others.
Expect the Ateneo de Manila itself to die from this disaster, its lux-in-domino luster to lose its brilliance for some years to come. And that is because in the eyes of the Filipino people it has shown the opposite of its conscience and compassion to be in solidarity with the marginalized.
Where is Christ, Ateneo?
The views in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of VERA Files.
