MY Twitter feed is full of anger and disgust at what happened to Horacio Castillo III, a law student who died from injuries allegedly sustained in a hazing incident.
I can imagine the pain felt by Horacio’s parents. I haven’t seen the pictures but my daughter told me the boy’s body was bruised beyond imagination. At first, my reaction was: “It’s the danger that’s part and parcel of joining a fraternity.”
You see, I joined a sorority when I was in college so for me, hazing was “normal”. It’s not normal to beat a person to death but I believed in the premise that brotherhood and sisterhood comes at a price.
In college, I took a boy who suffered an injury while undergoing hazing to the hospital. I will not go into details and won’t make excuses for my actions.
After what happened to Horacio, I now think, “I should have gone to the police. He could have died.”
There’s no excuse for violence in any form. I was a stupid girl wanting to impress other people at that age. I am now outraged at my own actions.
I looked at Horacio’s Twitter page and saw that he seemed to like tennis and football. It’s with deep regret that I say sorry to his parents, even if they never read this, because I indirectly contributed to the culture of violence that killed their son. No one should die at the hands of his “brothers”.
Ateneo law student Leonardo “Lenny” Villa also died three days after hazing rites.
A name I will never forget is Arbel Liwag, who was in college at the same time I was. He died after initiation for membership to a University of the Philippines fraternity. Arbel and I had mutual friends, although I never met him. The incident that took his life happened about a year before the incident I was involved in. I even met one of Arbel’s fraternity batchmates after he died.
I wasn’t a mother when I brought that boy to the hospital, or when Arbel died. I thought it was “normal” to be a casualty of something as sacred as membership to a Greek letter society.
Life is sacred. A parent’s love is sacred. We aren’t gods to play with people’s lives. I cannot imagine how it is for anyone to hold someone’s life in his or her hands and say, “I’m going to beat this person until there’s no life left in him.” Paddling is the most common form of hazing. Each member is officially given about two strokes for the neophyte. If the fraternity has 100 members, you do the Math. The paddle is not a stick. Being hit with it is painful.
Sadly, hazing sometimes goes beyond paddling. Some fraternity members use belts and even their fists. Usually, the neophytes are in their underwear when they are hit and verbally insulted.
Hazing doesn’t just happen in schools and universities but also in elite military units, gangs and other groups.
I say we harness the outrage over Horacio’s death to have hazing banned in the Philippines. There’s no reason another person has to die because of this. Hazing is illegal and barbaric. Wanting to belong to a group should not come at such a price. Let Horacio be the last one to die this way.
Look up the #JusticeForHoracio hashtag on social media to see how you can help.
Image credits: Image of Horacio Morales III is reprinted from his Facebook Page