I left my bag at the Ateneo foodcourt last Friday and it was stolen. I have literally all the important papers and documents there – registration forms, official receipts, supervisor evaluations for my OJT, my yearbook clearance, my DOST requirements, and my ATM card. I was hopeful it would be surrendered to the Office of the Student Affairs, but I have been checking there twice everyday since Monday and my bag, even just the contents, was still nowhere to be found.
Cases of stolen belongings within the AdDU campus are not new. The university had released two memos before but the stealing continued. Many of these cases were not reported, particularly because there is no office to report them to, or that reporting does nothing at all. Worse, stealing has become almost a second nature to the students; they don’t like it, but they tolerate it almost to the point of patronizing it.
Whenever a person loses something, the immediate reaction from a typical somebody is Ba’t mo kasi iniwan. What this common and reflexive reaction implies though is captured in a follow-up expression Alam mo namang may mga magnanakaw dito. And the worst is, this ends in Wala na yun or Di na yun mababalik.
These statements show 2 important points, which I think are recognized by most, though not necessarily expressed, to be the general case in reality. One, that stealing is rampant and unavoidable. Second, that you can’t do anything about it, so just blame it on bad luck.
This is, to say it bluntly, a sick way of thinking, especially in an educational institution. Because if we take on the point of view of the one who steals, his mind may be thinking along these lines, “since nobody cares and since nobody is doing anything about it, it must not be that serious. So, if something was left, that would be solely the fault of the one who left it, and so it is perfectly OK for me to steal it. I’m sure they won’t run after me. They never do.”
I do pray that the university would deal with this stealing incidents more seriously. Memos and warnings do not solve anything. Ateneo students are still human beings and they are bound to forget sometimes. But this does not excuse anyone from treating stealing as something reasonably valid in any case. Stealing, for christ’s sake, is in the commandments, and the Ateneo must do something about it!
On another note, I also do not understand why the bag should not be returned. Any sane person would somehow realize how important the things are in there, maybe not for him, but for me, personally. He has absolutely no use for them, whether he is a student, a janitor, or a passboy. Perhaps the only thing valuable there is the bag itself, a Penshoppe sling bag, but it costs only 600 pesos. The person must either be a kleptomaniac or a wandering demonic minion.
It’s almost a week now and no clues yet to where the bag is, or who might have have it, or whether I can still get it or not. If I can’t find it, I might not be cleared from my scholarship and I don’t know how I’m going to deal with that. I am naturally an optimist and I want to believe people are innately good, that Ateneans in particular are good, but 7 days and still zero? I might start rethinking that aspect in my personal world view.
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