Team DailyPedia
Last February 29, former University of the Philippines (UP) student and musician Billie Dela Paz wrote a lengthy Facebook post detailing the harrowing experience she went through during an org (organization) initiation process. Apparently, it was an experience so traumatic that Dela Paz is even considering “bringing up PTSD (Post-traumatic Stress Disorder) with my psychiatrist the next time I see her.”
Though it happened five years ago when Dela Paz was still a college freshman, merely recalling the experience she went through with the org, the name of which she didn’t disclose, was enough to reduce the musician to tears.
“…until now, I have nightmares,” Dela Paz shared. “Until now, I sob and shake when I recall the application process. Until now I avoid people, places, and things that remind me of the trauma the org caused.”
She summarized the entire encounter into one word: “HELL.” She further disclosed that she was abused “psychologically and physically. Throughout the process, the members put us under a lot of pressure. They screamed at us, bullied us, and eventually, they physically hurt us.”
Dela Paz detailed that she and her fellow applicants went through four different rites or stages: an acquaintance party, a formal interview, a costume week, and the actual initiation or final rites.
Even at the first stage, the newbies suffered abuse at the hands of the upperclassmen. Dela Paz and a few others were made to stay in a non-ventilated warehouse under the pretense that the new recruits should practice there for a presentation. Dela Paz recounted that at a certain point, a senior member came in and started shouting, cussing, and verbally abusing her.
But this initial trauma did not deter her from joining the org. “But I still pursued the application process.” She explained, “…maybe I was blinded by what people said about how excellent this org is. People said that being a member of this org would help me with my career in our field in the future, so I soldiered on.”
The verbal, physical, and emotional abuses escalated even further as the applicants moved from one stage to the next during the application process, culminating with the appalling events of the final initiation rites which included, among other sorts of public humiliation and abuse, being made to eat a chili pepper, getting stripped naked, and had buckets of cold water poured on her—all while she was blindfolded. But worst of all, the initiation culminated in her being forced to “place a dog’s penis on my mouth and they kept screaming ‘CHUPAIN MO YAN. PUTA KA. CHUPA! CHUPA!’ (SUCK IT. YOU WHORE. SUCK IT! SUCK IT!)”
In the end, though she completed the initiation process, Dela Paz couldn’t bear to keep company with her org-mates and she left the organization altogether. Today, she has this to say to the organizations and to the administration of UP: “I hope you don’t wait until someone commits suicide because of the pressure of applying for orgs like that. Please, I beg you to do something about the hazing in orgs.”
