MEDIUM RARE

You can run but you cannot hide. If you can hide, for how long? Not that those words would reduce a professional killer, a gun-for-hire, an experienced assassin into a gentle kitty-cat. Still, there seems no probable explanation for the spate of violent crimes – what the usual policeman would put down as “isolated incidents”—that have left us peace-loving citizens shocked and horrified. Should we blame the three-year Covid experience? Disease disrupts. What about the Russian-Ukraine conflict, the China-US rivalry? Poverty, social malaise, global inflation have turned (some of) us into savages. It’s not murder as usual if the victims are duly elected officials sitting on top of their local governments or, more worryingly, college students whose only ambition is to join a fraternity and be a member of the “brotherhood.” It’s almost a cliché that politics is dangerous to politicians, but the same cannot be said of young men dying to join a Greek-letter org. The PNP chief assured governors, mayors and their ilk of all-out assistance should they feel that their lives are under threat. Yet it did not appear that the fatalities were unprotected; in fact they were gunned down in spite of their convoy of bodyguards and security men, not all of whom were safe from the assassins’ bullets, either. As for the two known hazing victims, students of Adamson U and the University of Cebu, the question is: Why were they singled out for torture and physical humiliation? The unwritten law among a certain tribe of frat men is to inflict the same pain you suffered at your masters’ hands last year, this year is your turn to get even. To get more even, the initiators pick on the good-looking guys, the scholars known for their high grades, the meek little lambs who’ll do anything to placate their torturers. From this perspective, let future joiners beware and avoid the trap. What’s a frat for but to “initiate,” welcome newbies? What can the police do about hazing until a casualty or casualties have surfaced? The law has been toughened, but it’s not their job to police initiation rites like a nanny. Hazing also happens at the police academy, you just don’t hear about it until a cadet or plebe dies.