The Reckless Youth

April 25, 2026

I’ve been thinking about the news of a UP student, Alyssa Alano, killed a few days ago in Negros Occidental. She was only 22 years old.

The military says she was armed, and was part of an encounter. The NPA says she was not a rebel, that she was a civilian. There are no survivors from her side - nineteen dead in all. There were no reported casualties from side of the military.

I don’t know Alyssa. I don’t know what she was doing there, or what exactly happened in those final moments. But I do know this: in a situation like this that involves the military and its history of unjustified killings of innocent civilians, where the facts are contested and the tragedy so one-sided, the burden of proof cannot rest on the dead.

It must be placed on those who pulled the trigger.

That means more than statements and blanket denials or affirmations of human rights. It means evidence. It means transparency. It means accountability that goes beyond internal reviews.

And until that happens, it is not unreasonable — again, given the circumstances and the history — to ask hard questions, to expect real answers, and to say that any presumption of innocence on the part of the military does not apply.

That said, there is one other thing that I really want to write about.

I’ve seen comments and questions about Alyssa herself. What was she doing there in the first place? Why put herself in that kind of situation? Wasn’t that reckless? Is she not then, partly to blame?

There is something deeply unsettling about that line of thinking. Because it shifts the focus from what was done to her, to what she might have done to deserve it.

And again, as far as we know, she had done nothing wrong.

She was young. She was idealistic. She was a leftist involved in advocacy work — spending time in farming communities, participating in immersions, engaging in campaigns around land and labor issues.

None of that is a crime. If anything, it is something we should want more young people to do.

Because the truth is, the young should not be faulted if they are a little (or a lot) reckless and rebellious. Not necessarily careless nor foolish (even though I know from experience that the youth are certainly those many times), but willing to go where others won’t. Willing to ask questions that are inconvenient. Willing to step out of their comfort zones to see the world as it is, not just as it is told to them.

Back in the 1980s, when I was in UP, I was part of the UP Student Catholic Action (UPSCA).

A central part of that experience was something we called the Barriowork Program. Every semestral break, we would go off to live for a few weeks with rural and urban poor communities. Not as visitors. Not as observers. But as guests.

We slept where they slept. Ate what they ate. Worked where they worked. It was an immersion program, and the hope was that we would come out of it with a better and more personal understanding of lives and realities less fortunate than ours.

This was at the height of the Marcos dictatorship, and it would not have been a surprise if local government and military officials asked - what are you UP students doing here?

I remember one night in Tayabas, Quezon where I had been assigned. We were sitting with a small group of farmers, sharing lambanog.

I was beside one of them who was perhaps in his thirties or early forties. At one point, he turned to me and said: “Alam mo, maswerte kayo. Nagaaral kayo sa UP. May kinabukasan kayo. Yung mga anak ko, hanggang dito na lang sila. Gaya ko, magiging magsasaka lang.” (“You know, you’re lucky. You’re studying in UP. You have a future. My children… this is as far as they’ll go. Like me, they’ll just end up as farmers.”)

I wanted to disagree. To tell him that farmers are not “just” anything. To reassure him that no, he was wrong. Because his children could be anything they wanted to be.

But even then, I knew that his version of reality was more grounded than mine. So I just stayed quiet.

That moment stayed with me, and I’ve shared it many times over the years. It continues to inform how and why I do the things I do today. It made the value of education real — not as an abstract idea, but as something unevenly distributed, something fragile, something that does not reach everyone in the same way.

Of course, there is nothing wrong if children grow up to become farmers. Or fishermen. Or workers. Or OFWs. What is wrong is when they grow into what they become not by choice, but by force of circumstance. And what is wrong is a society that insists on undervaluing their contributions and worth.

We often say that education is the great equalizer. But that only holds if access is real. If opportunity is real. If the distance between where you are born and where you might go is not already mapped out for you.

And maybe that’s why students like Alyssa choose to go where they go.

Not because they are reckless or stupid in the way critics imply — but because they are trying, in their own way, to understand that distance and how to bridge it. To listen. To learn. To care enough to be there.

You can disagree with their politics. You can question their methods. That’s part of any healthy democracy.

But to suggest that they deserve what happens to them because they chose to step outside the lanes — that’s something else entirely.

That’s not critique. That’s indifference, even ignorance.

And if we start there — if we begin to believe that the young should know their place, stay quiet, and unquestioningly follow all rules — then we lose something far more important than any single argument.

We lose the very instinct that allows a society to question itself.

We lose the willingness to imagine something better.

And we lose the kind of courage that, however imperfect, still tries to bridge the gap between those who have a future, and those who are told they do not.

The kind of courage that most often can be found only in our reckless youth.