Ateneo’s Sanggunian slams Irene Marcos invite to campus, demands apology

“It is the university’s central space for creative, adaptive, and independent thinking — values that the Marcoses systematically destroyed during the darkest era in Philippine history,” it said. (File photo: Areté/Facebook)

The student council of Ateneo de Manila University (ADMU) slammed on Monday, April 8, the attendance of Irene Marcos, daughter of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos, on the launch of the school’s Areté’s Amphitheater last Sunday.

In its statement, the Sanggunian ng mga Paaralang Loyola ng Ateneo de Manila (Sanggu) described the young Marcos’s presence at Ateneo’s “premier creative hub” as “nothing but ironic.”

“It is the university’s central space for creative, adaptive, and independent thinking — values that the Marcoses systematically destroyed during the darkest era in Philippine history,” it said.

The student body also said it was a “grave insult and vehement mockery” to all martial law survivors and martyrs to invite Marcos’s daughter in the same place that staged Dekada ’70 and Desaparecidos — the two plays that depict the abuses suffered by Filipino people under the administration of her father.

“Arete’s invitation of a Marcos appears as a form of shameless compliance to the very movement that the Ateneo vehemently opposes, the erasure of Martial Law crimes from history and from the present discourse during the campaign period of the 2019 Senatorial Elections,” Sanggu stressed.

Due to this, the student council demanded the Areté administration to issue an apology and explanation for the incident.

“We affirm that the role of Ateneo is not to condone the fabrication of lies, but to be a pillar of human rights in a society that celebrates the mockery of the truth,” it said.

It continued, “The Marcoses simply wish that the Filipino people move on. To that we dare say, never — not while Filipino patriots walk the halls of our universities, not while our student activists continue to fight, not until justice has been delivered. The Ateneo and her children will never forget. We will never forget.”

In 2014, ADMU president Fr. Jose Ramon T. Villarin, SJ made a public apology following criticisms of the attendance of former First Lady Imelda Marcos at an event for the school’s scholarship foundation.