Kevon Felmine

Stu­dents at the Ce­dros Sec­ondary School clashed again on Tues­day af­ter a case of bul­ly­ing led to one stu­dent stab­bing an­oth­er at the school.Desks, chairs and dust­bins al­so were thrown out of class­rooms by stu­dents who al­so got in­to in­di­vid­ual fights dur­ing the stab­bing in­ci­dent, as they re­spond­ed vi­o­lent­ly to teach­ers' at­tempts to calm them down and get them back to class­es.This was the sec­ond such in­ci­dent at the school and staff and stu­dents are now trau­ma­tised. The first was on Jan­u­ary 23.

Par­ents and staff, how­ev­er, are al­so now ac­cus­ing the prin­ci­pal, Wendy Mathu­ra, of at­tempt­ing to cov­er up the in­ci­dent and call­ing for an­swers as to why the in­ci­dent of bul­ly­ing which sparked the lat­est ri­ot­ing was al­lowed to get out of hand.Al­though T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) pres­i­dent De­vanand Sinanan con­firmed the in­ci­dent yes­ter­day, South West­ern Di­vi­sion Po­lice said no re­port had been made to Ce­dros po­lice.

Ac­cord­ing to a source at the school, the stab­bing oc­curred dur­ing the lunch pe­ri­od when a Form Five stu­dent was bul­ly­ing a Form One stu­dent.The source said the el­der stu­dent "was mak­ing fun of his hair­style and tapped him on his head. The Form One stu­dent then pulled out a screw­driv­er and stabbed the Form Five stu­dent on his shoul­der sev­er­al times.

The source added: "The Form Five stu­dent start­ed to beat up the Form One stu­dent and oth­er stu­dents start­ed to be­have like a mob. Sev­er­al oth­er fights be­gan, sim­i­lar to the fight that took place on Jan­u­ary 23, when stu­dents start­ed to throw fur­ni­ture and fruits at one an­oth­er and at teach­ers.

"Some teach­ers stood help­less and some had to run back to the staffroom. The prin­ci­pal and teach­ers tried to set­tle the school af­ter the stab­bing but the stu­dents, when they went back to their class­es, be­gan throw­ing chairs, desks, dust­bins and black­boards out of the class­room."The source said there were claims that since the prin­ci­pal ar­rived at the school re­cent­ly, hav­ing trans­ferred from an­oth­er school, there had been a break­down in dis­ci­pline and re­spect for stu­dents and teach­ers had dwin­dled.

The source said mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty have al­so been up­set over not get­ting to use the fa­cil­i­ty for com­mu­ni­ty events. The school is the on­ly venue be­tween Ica­cos and Point Fortin large enough to host func­tions.One par­ent said: "Is it that the au­thor­i­ties don't care? Putting her in a school be­hind God's back and turn a blind eye. As a con­cerned par­ent, that school will on­ly con­tin­ue to go fur­ther down un­less that prin­ci­pal is re­moved."

Ac­cord­ing to the source, se­cu­ri­ty al­so had to block the prin­ci­pal's of­fice yes­ter­day af­ter stu­dents re­fused to go back to class af­ter lunch. Stu­dents were re­port­ed­ly beat­ing dust­bin cov­ers and chant­i­ng."Some­one called the CEO (chief ed­u­ca­tion of­fi­cer), and the CEO called the su­per­vi­sor and the su­per­vi­sor called the school con­cern­ing the re­port­ed ri­ot. The school said it was just a lit­tle thing and they had it un­der con­trol," the source said.

In an in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Sinanan said TTUTA was aware of the prob­lems at the school and rep­re­sen­ta­tives spent hours there last Fri­day in­ves­ti­gat­ing the is­sues. How­ev­er, he said, stu­dents flood­ed the school's cor­ri­dors in protest yes­ter­day call­ing for the prin­ci­pal to go­He added: "I spoke to a mem­ber of staff yes­ter­day and to­day. I don't know if ri­ot­ing is the cor­rect word but I know there was some un­usu­al de­vel­op­ment at the school. There was clap­ping and chant­i­ng and they were call­ing for a new prin­ci­pal.

"I spent sev­er­al hours there on Fri­day last week... my­self, Ms De Fre­itas and Mr Lump­kin. There were some se­ri­ous ad­min­is­tra­tive is­sues that we re­al­ly have to sort out. All is not well and we are try­ing to work with the au­thor­i­ties to get this re­solved."

Prin­ci­pal: No ri­ot

Con­tact­ed late yes­ter­day, prin­ci­pal Mathu­ra con­firmed there was a fight at the school but de­nied any­one was stabbed."Two stu­dents had a lit­tle fight but there was no stab­bing," Mathu­ra told the T&T Guardian.She al­so de­nied there was any clash as a re­sult of the fight on Tues­day and said she was un­aware of a stu­dent protest out­side her of­fice yes­ter­day.Asked where she thought the claims came from, Mathu­ra said she had no idea but said some­one might have an agen­da against her.

She al­so de­nied claims that the com­mu­ni­ty was be­ing de­nied ac­cess to the school, not­ing that church groups, fish­er­men, scouts, SporTT and the West In­dies Play­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion (Wipa) were us­ing the school to host var­i­ous ac­tiv­i­ties.Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Ali­cia Bus­by, com­mu­ni­ca­tions ad­vis­er at the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, said of­fi­cials of the min­istry were un­aware of the in­ci­dent. How­ev­er, she promised they would launch an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the mat­ter now that they were made aware of it.

This was the third in­ci­dent of vi­o­lence at a school in un­der two weeks and the sec­ond to be sparked by a case of bul­ly­ing.Last week there were at­tacks at Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege, San Fer­nan­do, and Rus­sell Lat­apy High School, Mor­vant, re­spec­tive­ly. The in­ci­dent at Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege was said to have been caused by a stu­dent bul­ly­ing an­oth­er.