Senator mulls requiring students to declare frat membership upfront
MANILA, Philippines — Senate President Juan Miguel Zubiri on Monday proposed for universities to require students to declare any affiliation with fraternities or sororities before enrollment.
The suggestion came after Zubiri pointed out that school administrators have a blind spot policy-wise in preventing hazing against students part of fraternities “that are not school-based” or are based in communities.
“Do you think to improve the law, we need to now compel students who enter universities to mandatorily declare that they are members of fraternities (so that schools would know)?” Zubiri said in a mix of English and Filipino during the hearing.
In a previous Senate hearing into the death of Adamson University student John Matthew Salilig — who allegedly died from the hazing rites of Tau Gamma Phi — lawmakers, schools and higher education officials admitted difficulties in stamping out hazing despite stiff penalties.
READ: Explainer: Will stiffer, broader penalties on fraternity hazing prevent deaths?
A legal representative from the Philippine Association of Colleges and Universities (PACU) welcomed Zubiri’s suggestion and said this would help schools with a blanket ban on fraternities to identify students part of community-based ones.
PACU legal representative Maya Jajalla said that while schools exercise the principle of in-loco-parentis — or when schools act in place of the parent — schools cannot be “an insurer of its students against all risks.”
Students’ activities in community-based fraternities are essentially outside its jurisdiction, Jajalla added.
“It would be an act of injustice to penalize schools when students are doing activities outside (their) custody,” Jajalla said.
Schools still hold influence
However, Sen. Francis Tolentino, chair of the Senate committee on justice and human rights, said that schools still hold some measure of influence over students even if they join community-based fraternities.
Tolentino said that he read screenshots of a group conversation among members of Tau Gamma Phi - Adamson University who warned each other to “act normal” on campus following Salilig’s death.
“This can be proved by the police. I read all the screenshots of their group chat. One of them said, ‘Basta tayo sa Lunes, pagpasok sa school, normal lang tayo. Walang iimik’ (For us on Monday, when we go to school, let’s act normal. No one says anything),” Tolentino shared.
“That means they still have respect for the school they will go to even if they are community-based,” Tolentino added.
The Department of Justice has indicted seven members of the Tau Gamma Phi fraternity for violating the Anti-Hazing Act over the death of Salilig and over injuries sustained by neophyte Roi Osmund Dela Cruz. – with reports by Kristine Joy Patag
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