HA?

Report by Cenon Pineda | Layout by Nikka Gutierrez

If you think campus journalism is all about free passes, late-night layout sessions, and arguing over Oxford commas. Congrats! You’ve lived a sheltered life. In the Philippines, writing for a school paper can feel like signing a waiver you didn’t know existed.

And in our history, there were student journalists who never came home—not because they flunked their subjects, but because power flunked humanity.

Take Lilosa Hilao, for example. Editor of Hasik at Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila. A writer that wrote truth and justice so well, the government thought of it as a sword, ready to slice down their necks. Her death wasn’t just the end of her story—it became the footnote of a country that didn’t know how to handle courageous youth except by breaking them.

Then there’s Emmanuel “Eman” Lacaba: poet, activist, student writer from Ateneo. A guy who could probably win a literary award from scribbling on a napkin. He believed in the power of words so much he carried them like armor—until his killers decided armor wasn’t allowed.

Two young writers. Two pens. Two brutal endings.

But this isn’t a story about them alone.

This is about what their stories reveal.

Come to think of it? Why do students have to die for telling the truth? It sounds absurd, doesn’t it?

That in this country, corrupt politicians and mass murderers are safer than students who just wanted to fight for truth.

Hilao and Lacaba were not the only ones. They’re just the most remembered. But their lives ask the question the nation still struggles to answer:

Why is truth so expensive here?

And why are students the ones paying for it?

So now that the kids who were brave enough to write the truth are gone, the assignment lands on our laps. Congratulations. Surprise quiz. No reviewers. No erasures. And definitely no “I don’t know, sir” allowed.

Because if we stop writing, the country wins its favorite game: Hide and Seek, where the truth hides and the government never seeks.

So pick up the pen. Or the keyboard. Or the cheap pencil your teacher said you must bring but you keep “forgetting.”

Doesn’t matter.

Just write.

Because in the Philippines, being alive is already a plot twist—might as well make use of it.

And if a ghost of a journalist drifts behind you while you type, relax. They’re not mad you misspelled “privilege” for the fifth time.

They’re just checking if you’re still brave enough to continue the story they never got to finish.

“Sige. Keep going. We died fighting for this, remember?”