ThePILLARS Publication

Maybe I was wiser when I was 5

A 21-year-old computer science student takes stock of a life spent chasing excellence instead of passion, and finds that the closest thing to an answer is simply wanting to be happy.

Why do we cry when we chop onions?

A meditation on why the leaders—national and campus-level alike—who cry the loudest about criticism are often the ones most in need of hearing it.

Healing does not unfold in overnight hospice

As dynastic politics and disinformation tighten their grip on Philippine elections, a new generation of voters is testing whether information—not inheritance—can still decide who gets to govern.

When Power Becomes Profit

Bureaucrat capitalism has turned Philippine governance into a marketplace, where officials moonlight as entrepreneurs and public office doubles as private enterprise: from national cronyism to Bicol's quarry-owning politicians. Ateneans must reject complacency and reclaim public service from the logic of profit, both on campus and beyond it.

Ateneo needs new activist student leaders

FROM THE ARCHIVES: With the return of face-to-face classes, student leadership in the university faced a vacuum and a disconnect with its own history. The editorial for ThePILLARS Publication's Vol. LVIII, Issue 1, June 2020–May 2021 print release confronts this gap in the most honest way possible. Years later, its calls remains as relevant as ever.

SONA 2026: Another hollow speech of broken promises and half-truths

As the President delivers his State of the Nation Address, two conflicting narratives clash—one of development, and one of struggle; one of deception, and one of reality.

The Upper Chamber needs an Uppercut

The Philippine Senate does not need to be fixed. It needs to be pressured. From Bato dela Rosa's months-long absence to leadership coups timed around impeachment proceedings, the institution has made visible what structural critics have long argued: the chamber governs not for the Filipino people, but for the elite factions that produced it.

No, apathy is not the problem!

In 2010, a student leader stood before his own institution and said: we are the problem. Paul Francis Lagarde's Washday piece, sharp, unsparing, and written from the inside, refused the easy comfort of blaming disengaged students and turned the mirror on the leaders doing the labeling. It is, sixteen years later, still one of the most honest things anyone in AdNU student politics has put to print about apathy.

One Year Since, The Ghost is Still At Large

One year after Duterte’s arrest, the central question confronting the country is whether the system of violence and political tolerance for killings that flourished during his administration can truly be dismantled.

On the University's class suspensions in times of weather disturbances

When Journalism is Treated as Terrorism*

When journalism is criminalized, entire communities are silenced—and democracy is further diminished.

Tama na, fees!

For the fourth consecutive year since the pandemic, the Ateneo administration has proposed a 4% increase in tuition and other fees for the coming academic year. ThePILLARS Publication strongly opposes the university administration's proposed change.

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