EDITORIAL - Wasted lives

One of the convicts had earlier topped the board examinations for civil engineering. A co-accused who was acquitted had graduated cum laude from the University of the Philippines College of Public Administration. Yet another accused, who was also acquitted, is in his senior year at the UP College of Law.

They are among the best and brightest of their generation. But now the civil engineering topnotcher will be spending the best years of his life at the national penitentiary for the death of Dennis Venturina in 1994. Those who were acquitted also spent years in the Quezon City jail before the verdict was handed down recently by Regional Trial Court Judge Jose Catral Mendoza, sentencing five members of the UP Scintilla Juris fraternity to imprisonment of 20 to 40 years. One of those convicted wept upon hearing the verdict, worried about his two children. Meanwhile, Venturina’s mother Myrna also wept, disappointed that five of the accused were acquitted.

So much grief, and all because college kids had a Neanderthal urge to get involved in a fraternity rumble between the Scintilla Juris and rival Sigma Rho. Venturina himself was set to graduate with honors from the UP College of Public Administration when he and several fraternity brothers clashed with the Scintilla Juris. Robert Michael Alvir, Danilo Feliciano, Christopher Soliva, Julius Victor Medalla and Warren Zingapan were also found guilty of attempted murder for the injuries suffered by Venturina’s fraternity brothers during the rumble.

Judge Mendoza said that because of pity he could not bear to look at the young men he had convicted to a lifetime in jail. While Mendoza’s verdict disappointed the victim’s mother, it was still better than the outcome of the trial of Aquila Legis fraternity members responsible for the death of Ateneo law student Lenny Villa. In Venturina’s case, at least, it’s clear that several people are paying for his death.

This case will serve as a warning to college kids with too much time on their hands that violence has no place in a civilized society. It should also prod school administrators to tighten rules governing fraternities. Parents must also work with school officials to teach the youth about responsibility for their actions. Unless decisive moves are made, we will see more young, promising lives going to waste.