(Trinidad Express) Graduation dreams were dashed for two 16-year-old boys of the Harmons School of SDA after they were allegedly dragged out of their school prom at Rovanel’s Resort on Monday night .
Police called to the scene because of what the school said was disobedience of the rules for the graduation as the boys wore cornrow-plaited styles.
Parents of the two students told the Express they are looking at their legal options in the matter.
Eric Edwards, father of one of the boys, said he is not letting the matter rest. ‘The most hurtful thing about this, these are the same two boys, any function they have they will go and help them every Saturday. My son will say ‘Dad, come and drop me. I have to go and usher for them’. They are so helpful to the school and yet still they were treated like this and I said they were abused and assaulted because they were held by the hand and dragged out of the ballroom and I say after spending all this money you unable to enjoy your night, I was like that is craziness,’ Edwards said.
Edwards said the school had indicated that plaiting of the boys’ hair was not allowed and since the rule was broken they were removed from the venue.
Evidence that the police were called to the Rovanel’s Resort was also shown to the Express following the removal of the students from inside the venue.
‘They said he was not allowed to plait his hair and, from my understanding, if the rules are one way they should be across the board so the ladies were supposed to dress modestly and from what I saw it was not all that modest, but they were also allowed inside. It was only two of them that was not allowed because of their hairstyle, it was two of the boys,’ Edwards said.
According to the consent form issued by the Harmons school of SDA, boys were to dress smart, long pants, avoid any fancy marks and patterns that distract. Young ladies were expected to dress modestly, no cleavage showing, no brightly coloured hair, no jewelry, only natural make-up.
Edwards said the assault was reported to police. ‘I did not go to the Division of Education but I went to the station and made a report of the assault and then I took him (son) to the hospital for his medical,’ Edwards said.
The family is now looking at their legal options. ‘I intend to take legal action in the matter, I intend to go as far as possible that I can go because I know my son is scarred for life, the very next day he didn’t eat for the day, he didn’t speak for the day and I was like I know the pain he was feeling and that hurts me if my children hurt I hurt,’ he said.
Parent Aviann Ferdinand, whose son was also allegedly physically removed from the venue, also reported the matter to police.
When contacted yesterday, president of the Tobago Conference of SDA, Pastor Vishnu Persad, told the Express the matter is being investigated. ‘It was brought to our attention that there was an incident at the prom, the details are not very clear to us as yet as we did not attend the prom so we have initiated an investigation to get a comprehensive view of what happened that night,’ Persad said.
Wider issue of discipline
Trinidad and Tobago Unified Teachers’ Association Tobago officer Bradon Roberts, in responding to the incident, told the Express he would not isolate on this particular matter as discipline remains paramount.
‘What we have is a concern of discipline and discipline is much larger than persons fighting and those kind of things. It talks about character,’ he said.
He continued: ‘I know the (Education) Minister had a knee-jerk reaction to the last time we had this topic of hairstyle where we had a whole new policy on hairstyle which for me was unfortunate as we need to have greater focus as to the efforts of schools instilling discipline. So some schools may go overboard in some regard and we need to deal with that but we have to address and focus on the purpose of some of the rules that some of the schools are utilising.’
Roberts said he did not have all the details regarding the particular incident but schools would have rules for a purpose and we have a culture in T& T where we constantly try to test the rules ‘and then we get to the media to have particular attention’.
‘So I would not want to say who is wrong in this regard. I believe the matter of discipline was left outstanding since we had the first set of comments on hairstyle. I am not certain if a child want to wear pink shoes to school if we would then get a policy on shoes, so we need to focus on discipline as a larger topic and what is the purpose having particular rules in schools,’ he added.
