Brotherhood of thugs

Thirty-year-old students with grenades. Are they getting master's degrees in terrorism? The Philippine National Police is still looking for a student of the Technological Institute of the Philippines who lobbed a grenade at the school's campus last Thursday. Witnesses said the student, who looked like a pimply 30-year-old, had been barred by the school's guards from entering. The student apparently belonged to one of the warring fraternities in the TIP.

The blast killed mechanical engineering student Dhian Rey Navarro, the 22-year-old president of the TIP's Confederation of Frater-nities and Sororities. Forty-four other people were rushed to hospitals, some of them in serious condition. Among the wounded was a member of the Samahang Ilocano fraternity, who admitted that his group had a brawl with members of the Batangas Varsitarian on the eve of the explo-sion. He said a further altercation on Thursday morning could have led to the grenade attack in the afternoon.

Fraternities are supposed to foster brotherhood, to give youths a sense of belonging. In recent years, however, a number of fraternities in the country have been fostering anything but brotherhood. Some of these fraternities specialize in vandalism -- you see their groups' names painted on walls in Metro Manila. Others have the neanderthal notion that excellence over other fraternities means beating their rivals in brawls. Still others get a kick out of humiliating and torturing helpless neophytes in violent rites. This was how Lenny Villa and several others lost their lives. In one particularly brutal case, a hazing victim was decapitated.

Since such criminal acts are done for the honor and glory of the fraternity, education officials should consider a system whereby violence-prone fraternities can be outlawed after a certain number of infractions, or depending on the gravity of the offense. With lives at stake, school administrators can't afford to treat students with kid gloves. When fraternity members start lobbing grenades in crowded campuses, something must be done to differentiate the thugs from the rest of civilized society.