Ateneo's Sanggunian slams attendance of Irene Marcos in Areté amphitheater launch

Ateneo de Manila University's student body, Sanggunian ng mga Paaralang Loyola, slammed on Monday the attendance of Irene Marcos at the launch of the school's Areté amphitheater over the weekend and called it a "grave insult and vehement mockery" to martial law survivors.

"It is nothing but ironic that a Marcos participated in the event of the institution," it said in a statement.

"It is the university's central space for creative, adaptive, and independent thinking—values that the Marcoses systematically destroyed during the darkest era in Philippine history," it added.

Irene is the third and youngest biological child of former President Ferdinand Marcos.

The student body said that inviting the presence of Marcos in the university grounds was not in line with the principles that ADMU upholds with regards to the discourse on the Martial Law issue.

"We demand the Areté administration to apologize and explain why it invited a Marcos to this event," it said. —Dona Magsino/LDF, GMA News