Rites of acceptance

AR Santiago, the son of former Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago, was reported to have been devastated by the cruel way he was interviewed by the UP College of Law panel which ultimately turned down his application. Some of the questions were said to be, “ How do you cope with your mother’s insanity?” and “Do you know how much your father bets in cockfights?”

Following the suicide of AR Santiago, some people began raising the issue of the appropriateness of the questions raised in that particular interview. The prevailing opinion seems to be that the interview panel went overboard and that the questions asked of AR were too personal and hard-hitting, and therefore have no place in an interview purportedly done to evaluate the aptitude of a person for law studies.

AR was treated shabbily, no doubt, but what most people do not know is that just about everybody else was treated the same dismissive way AR was treated. People are howling now simply because someone committed suicide afterwards; had there been none, the interviews would have peacefully treaded on till the next application season without so much an introspection among the law faculty in between.

Exactly what happens in those interviews? The applicant faces a panel of three or four people belonging to the law faculty. Questions are open-ended and could be anything under the sky. Some applicants would be asked to explain their thoughts on one particular thing and the panel would then proceed to skewer the sense of what the applicant has just said, taking pains to show the haphazard way the applicant thinks. It would not be a far stretch to say that the panel resembles the sophists as portrayed by Aristophanes in The Clouds in their enthusiasm to find holes in one’s statements.

The panel also freely dispenses with insults during the interview and it is not uncommon for an applicant to cry during the interview. In AR’s same batch of applicants, for example, one lady applicant was chastised for her odious brand of perfume. These unreasonable attacks are necessary because they supposedly show the applicants who can think on their feet under pressure.

People who never attended UP are naturally appalled at such displays of insensitiveness to other people’s feelings, but what they do not know is that such degrading treatment is quite de rigeur at the university when it comes to applications. The seeming callousness of AR’s interview reflects the larger organizational mindset that pervades the university.

The University of the Philippines hosts a lot of student organizations. Any student desiring to be accepted as a member needs to apply formally. The applicant is usually required to spend a required number of tambay hours at the organization’s tambayan, during which time he is supposed to ask all the members to sign on his so-called sig sheet. The sig sheet must be signed by all the members at the end of the application period. When an applicant asks a member to sign his sig sheet, he can be asked to do anything, say, crack a joke or tell who one’s crush is in the organization.

The real degrading treatment though comes during the talent night and the interview. In one regional organization’s talent night I was able to attend, the members of the organization, irked by the low production value of the applicants’ presentation, bludgeoned the applicants with insulting contumely. Some of the members of that organization are my friends, but until this day I cannot fully reconcile myself with how they treated those young insecure freshmen in such a cruel, insensitive way like vultures descending upon a dead carcass. (Or does the psychological insight of Hitler also works in this case: dress people in uniforms and give them roles to play and you will be able to unleash their cruelty?) When one lady began crying because of the invectives hurled upon her, one member of the organization had the graciousness to point out that in other campus organizations she would be treated far worse.

There are, I am sure, many such instances happening all around the campus. Also rumors of risqué rites especially in sororities and fraternities abound. I also have heard from one applicant that a certain Christian student organization regularly brings its applicants to girlie and gay bars purportedly to expose and inoculate them against temporal temptations. When I first heard of this particular silly application requirement, my first impression was why not proceed to other more damnable sins like, for instance, seducing one’s married professor or interning with a drug syndicate. Now those two will give one quite an exposure to evil.

Cruelty, insensitiveness and degrading treatment of applicants are, mind you, all prohibited by law. Republic Act 8049, otherwise known as the Anti-Hazing Law, is unequivocal in its definition of outlawed hazing. Hazing, according to RA 8049, is “an initiation rite or practice as a prerequisite for admission…placing the recruit, neophyte or applicant in some embarrassing or humiliating situations such as forcing him to do menial, silly, foolish and other similar tasks or activities.” The law says that the applicants need not be whacked blue with a paddle in order to be legally considered as having been subjected to hazing. UP students do not realize this when they rail against fraternities hazing applicants. Hazing does not necessarily mean being physical; acting contrary to good morals may constitute hazing.

What is truly sad about this state of affairs among the university’s campus organizations is that it apparently elevates one’s being thick-skinned into a competitive edge, nay, even a desired virtue. Applications like this if left unchecked can degenerate into pakapalan ng apog. ( Perhaps this explains away some of the politicians who come from the university.)

A person’s pachyderm quality as an indicator of potential merit is misleading. It can sometimes be serviceable in separating the chaff from the grain, but it can also hurt other people deeply. Surely, the good minds at the University of the Philippines can devise something better than mortifying people.