Among the many traditions associated with Ateneo, perhaps none is more famous than its mantra. It is a call for students to leave the comfort of privilege and serve communities beyond the university's gates. It is an admirable ideal, and it has shaped generations of leaders committed to service.
Among the stories that captured the Ateneo community this year was that of Divine Adili, a 21-year-old Nigerian center known as "The Big Man," who was among Ateneo's promising young basketball talents, and Rene Baterbonia, the young basketball standout from Agusan del Sur who fulfilled his dream of studying in Loyola Heights. His journey—from playing on improvised courts in Mindanao to earning a place in one of the country's most prestigious universities—became a powerful reminder of what opportunity can achieve when talent is given the chance to flourish. Yet their story also invites a deeper reflection. For every student who successfully reaches the hill, how many equally talented young Filipinos never receive the same opportunity? At a time when the Ateneo community continues to honor the rookie's legacy, perhaps it is also worth asking not only how more people can climb the hill, but why such a steep climb exists in the first place.
Yet, the existence of another phrase, from one of the columns, Questioning the hill, published by The Guidon, the official student publication of the university, raises unsettling questions. "This year, perhaps it is time to ask why there is even a hill at all.
Though we worked hard to be here, we know that this hill exists because there is much work left to be done.” If some are expected to go down while others are aided, via financial and moral help, to climb up, then the real issue is not the movement across, to and from, the hill, but the hill itself. Because there should not be a hill in the first place.
The hill is a metaphor for privilege. It represents unequal access to quality education, financial security, social connections, and opportunities that remain out of reach for many Filipinos. For some, the path upward is paved with resources and support. For others, it is a steep climb made harder by poverty and systemic barriers.
To its credit, Ateneo remains among the country's strongest advocates of financial aid and merit-based scholarships, opening its doors to students who would otherwise be excluded from quality education. While acts of service and scholarship programs are meaningful, they often address the symptoms rather than the causes of inequality. Charity may ease hardship, but it does not dismantle the structures that create it.
Perhaps the hill is not merely a hill. It resembles a tatsulok—a pyramid where wealth, influence, and opportunity accumulate at the top while the majority struggle at the base. In such a system, helping a few individuals climb upward changes lives, but it leaves the shape of the structure untouched. Charity may ease hardship. Scholarships may open doors. Yet neither alone dismantles the systems that produce inequality in the first place. If we are serious about justice, then our goal cannot simply be helping people move within the pyramid. It must be questioning why the pyramid exists at all.
This is not to diminish the value of service. Going down the hill matters because it allows people to confront realities beyond their own and recognize inequalities that privilege often conceals. Yet service cannot end with exposure alone. Empathy is only the beginning. To truly understand the lives of others requires immersion—the willingness to listen, learn, and allow oneself to be changed by uncomfortable truths. More importantly, the challenge begins upon returning up the hill.
What do we do with what we have learned? How do we remain grounded after witnessing realities so different from our own? If service becomes a two-day immersion, a community visit, or a temporary encounter before returning to comfort unchanged, then the distance between the hill and the communities below remains intact.
The punto de vista of service is not merely teaching people how to climb the hill nor frequently going down it ourselves. Rather, it is imagining and building a society where no hill exists, where no one is born at the bottom while others begin at the top. A just society is not one where the privileged occasionally descend or where the marginalized endlessly strive upward. It is one where opportunities are distributed fairly enough that there is no need for climbing at all. If we truly believe in forming people for others, then our mission should not merely be crossing the hill, but flattening it.
