This question has circulated widely, sometimes out of genuine curiosity, but often carrying an undercurrent mockery. Why would a University of the Philippines (UP) student like Alyssa Alano be in Negros, working with peasants and rural communities?
To be honest, I wouldn’t entirely blame those who genuinely ask. From the outside, it can feel surreal; almost irrational—to leave behind relative comfort for places marked by poverty and conflict. Why would someone choose to step away from stability and opportunity, only to immerse themselves in conditions defined by hardship and uncertainty?
The premise of the question “Why was she there?” already suggests that her presence requires justification. It assumes that engagement with marginalized communities is unusual, something that invites suspicion, even from the state’s armed forces.
But for us many UP students, believe it or not, it is not questionable. We do not question why some of our schoolmates choose to not attend our classes just to go where the struggle is greatest.
UP has long upheld the idea that education does not end in the classroom. Academic training is meant to engage with lived realities, especially in a country where inequality is not abstract but structural and persistent. Community work, rural exposure and grassroots research are not deviations from education, they are extensions of it.
Alyssa’s presence stands as a lasting testament that this spirit among UP students endures and will persist for as long as these contradictions remain.
Her presence in Negros was not evidence of terrorism, but of participation in a long-standing practice of immersion: learning directly from farmers, indigenous peoples and workers whose conditions are often reduced to statistics in policy discussions.
To interpret this as something inherently suspicious is to misunderstand both the purpose of such engagements and the broader role of universities in society.
Her death raises serious concerns, including the use of disproportionate force and the erosion of safeguards recognized under international humanitarian law. These are not questions that can be answered by speculation or labeling.
This misunderstanding is not accidental. Just like what I wrote months ago, universities like UP do not manufacture rebels, they expose contradictions.
They expose the gap between policy and reality, between economic growth and persistent poverty, between formal rights and lived experience. In doing so, they produce students who take different paths. Some enter government, some go into private industry.
A few choose more grounded difficult directions, and the very land where those lie are not as peaceful as a classroom, because contradictions do not emerge from classrooms.
They emerge from material conditions: landlessness, chronic poverty, lack of access to justice, and experiences of state violence. These are not theoretical constructs, they are lived realities in many parts of the Philippines, including Negros.
Students who engage in community work encounter these conditions directly. For most, that exposure leads to reform-oriented paths: policy work, legal advocacy, but for others like Alyssa, particularly those who return to communities where conditions remain unchanged, it can lead to more radical, advanced, and intimate conclusions.
The divergence is not the result of whatever you reduce Alyssa’s life into, but of unequal realities beyond the university. This context matters when discussing Alyssa Alano.
Labeling her as part of an armed movement because she was working with peasants is not just inaccurate, it is part of a broader pattern that collapses distinctions between civilians and combatants. Such narratives make it easier to justify excessive force and obscure the protections that should be afforded to individuals engaged in civilian activities.
Her death raises serious concerns, including the use of disproportionate force and the erosion of safeguards recognized under international humanitarian law. These are not questions that can be answered by speculation or labeling.
So again, why was she there?
She was there because community engagement is integral to how many UP students understand their education. She was there because the conditions in rural areas demand attention, study and response. She was there as a student participating in a long standing culture that connects learning with public service.
The more difficult question is not about her presence.
It is why that presence is so easily recast as a threat and why it is more convenient to scrutinize students than to confront the conditions they are trying to understand.
The short answer to the question why Alyssa was there is simple: she’s way braver than most of us could ever be and she had more courage than any of us would ever have in a lifetime.
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