A disturbing video circulating on social media has triggered widespread outrage after several students reportedly from Benigno S. Aquino National High School (BSANHS) were allegedly seen trapping cats inside a sack and subjecting them to acts of violence. The footage, which reached across multiple platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok, and even Reddit, showed clear acts of cruelty, accompanied by mocking captions that further intensified people’s anger. The incident has since drawn an official statement from the school, school organization, Local Government Unit (LGU) of Concepcion, Tarlac, and even from a parish church, all condemning the act and calling for accountability.

This is not just a viral video going around online but a moral failure, and we need to stop pretending otherwise.

This is not uncertainty, unawareness, and some sort of innocent mistake but an intentional choice—an obvious conscious one to harm a defenseless pregnant cat, to record and post it, and to treat suffering as if it were entertainment.

That is not humor or immaturity. That is straight up cruelty. And morality? It does not leave room for excuses when the act itself is already evident.

Morality is defined by choice. A person can only choose to be kind or cruel, either to protect it or to harm it. In this case, the choice was made clear and it was made without hesitation.

The Philippine Animal Welfare Society (PAWS) for example, is a volunteer-based animal welfare non-profit organization that was built on a clear purpose: to prevent cruelty and reduce the suffering of animals, and to promote a society rooted in humane values. That alone should already make one thing obvious—what happened in that video is not normal or acceptable. And when someone knowingly impose harm on a sentient being, then they are not “just playing around.” They are violating a basic moral principle: that life has value.

Hence, let us not affront reason by diminishing this to “kabataan lang kasi” just to get them a free pass, because these people are not clueless children anymore. They are in high school already and some were freshly graduated students who have already gone through years of education, formation, and exposure to values. They know what is right and wrong. Nevertheless, they chose to commit such inhumane act.

One of them was even a former altar server under Hesus Mabuting Pastol Parish—someone once entrusted with service, discipline, and respect for life makes this not a minor detail. Moreover, as an altar server and a youth officer myself under a different parish, the clip gives me a heartache because it shows that even with exposure to moral values meant to develop compassion onto an individual it still does not guarantee moral integrity—and that makes this case even more disturbing.

This leads to a harsh reality: values that are not practiced are meaningless.

The act itself is already unacceptable but the response makes it worse—the laughter, the filming, the decision to post it. That is not ignorance. That is not a lapse in judgment. That is the complete absence of empathy, and empathy is the very foundation of morality.

So, let us be blunt and get straight to the point.

If a person can look at suffering and laugh, if a person can cause harm and feel nothing, and if a person can turn cruelty into some entertainment content—then we are not dealing with a mere “mistake.”

We are dealing with a moral failure. And the problem does not end with the people involved. It extends to how we respond. Because when people start excusing this as something minor, when they reduce it to “guidance and counseling,” when they soften consequences just to avoid discomfort, then we are not solving the problem. We are protecting it.

Accountability is not cancel culture. Accountability is the minimum standard of morality. If there are no consequences, then there is no boundary. Therefore, cruelty becomes easier to repeat. Easier to justify. Easier to ignore. And that is how our society rots—not through one act of cruelty, but through the combined willingness to tolerate it.

As someone who came from the same school, this hits harder because we were taught discipline, excellence, and integrity. “Disiplina at galing ing armas ku, Aquinian ku, pagmaragul ku (Disiplina at galing ang armas ko, Aquinian ako, pinagmamalaki ko),” is our school motto, but if those words do not put into action, then they are nothing but words we simply spoke. Because morality is not what we claim to value. It is what we prove through our actions. And if this is the kind of behavior we allow to pass without clear condemnation, then we are not just witnessing moral failure. We are contributing to it.

So the question is no longer what they did, but what we are willing to tolerate. And more importantly, what does it say about us if we choose to tolerate cruelty? Because if we cannot stand against this, if we cannot defend the most basic value—that life deserves respect—then we are not just losing our sense of morality.

We are losing our humanity.

The Frontman