31/08/2026
๐๐ก๐ซ๐๐ฌ๐ก๐จ๐ฅ๐ ๐จ๐ ๐๐จ๐ซ๐ฆ๐๐ฅ: ๐๐ก๐ ๐๐๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ฐ๐๐ฒ๐ฌ ๐๐ ๐๐จ ๐๐จ๐ง๐ ๐๐ซ ๐๐ซ๐ฎ๐ฌ๐ญ
A school is supposed to be a place where students come to learn and make new friends. Their relatable moments should be laughing at their teachersโ jokes, passing or failing tests, and cramming everything in one night. These things may be silly or trivial, yet it makes up many of the wholesome experiences of students during their studying years. However, the question started to shift from โHow am I going to finish these projects?โ to โAm I going to make it home alive?โ
In the Philippines, fear has slowly found its way into the corners where young people should feel the safest. The shooting at Ateneo de Zamboanga University last August 18, 2026 was a horrible reminder of that reality. It was already the second fatal school shooting in the country following the shooting in Tacloban City that killed three students last June 22, 2026.
Regardless, another thing that should also frighten us is not only the shooting itself, but also how many threats have come before and after it, and how people have begun to treat it as something normal to say and do.
After the recent shooting, different schools in the Philippines faced online threats. In Central Luzon alone, authorities have recorded 47 school-based bomb threat reports from May to July 2026. Meanwhile, the Philippine National Police (PNP) recorded 26 alleged bomb threats, 12 alleged shooting deaths, four stabbing incidents, two death threats, and two shooting incidents involving schools, along with the deaths involving school-based physical violence that resulted in the loss of lives of students and teachers.
This is a disturbing matter. People have become accustomed to hearing these kinds of threats and respond with, โItโs just a prank from those who got nothing to do with their lives.โ Many people have equated a minor inconvenience to resorting to violence and crimes, normalizing heinous acts rather than correcting them.
Moreover, these threats may be hoaxes, but the fear it creates is real. They force evacuation, put families, students, and teachers in trauma, and consume police resources. Every threat that becomes overlooked as the society grows accustomed to it creates an opportunity for a real act of violence to be overlooked.
The answer to these threats and violence cannot be indifference. A threat should not become normal or ordinary just because it happens every time. We cannot wait for the moment where threat has become a real-lived tragedy before deciding that it deserves an action.
The most disturbing part in its continuity is that the society would become a nest where animosity thrives. Students should not become accustomed to the danger that they will mistake gunfire for a drill, because threats should not become an attack before it matters.
A bomb threat does not have to contain a real bomb for an investigation to start; a shooting threat does not have to end up in bloodshed before people start taking it seriously; and students should not have to wonder whether their notifications will tell them to attend class or run for their lives.
Students should not survive school, but simply just go to schoolโa normal thing that if we take for granted could become an experience that would be hard to afford.
