Carisa Lee

Re­porter

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

A St An­tho­ny’s Col­lege stu­dent is nurs­ing a bro­ken nose and oth­er in­juries at home, af­ter an al­ter­ca­tion with at least six oth­er stu­dents on the school’s com­pound on Thurs­day.

Re­ports in­di­cate that the vic­tim was al­so hos­pi­talised for a swollen face, bruised ribs and bruis­es on his chest and back.

Four Roads, Diego Mar­tin po­lice have since launched a joint in­ves­ti­ga­tion with the Crim­i­nal In­ves­ti­ga­tions De­part­ment, Com­mu­ni­ty-Ori­ent­ed Polic­ing Sec­tion and the Child Pro­tec­tion Unit in­to the mat­ter.

“We will have to have an au­di­ence with the prin­ci­pal and de­vise a way for­ward,” a se­nior of­fi­cer who asked to re­main anony­mous told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day.

The of­fi­cer said they were forced to re­lease the stu­dents af­ter ini­tial­ly de­tain­ing them at the school due to a lack of in­for­ma­tion from school of­fi­cials, stu­dents and par­ents. He said they had al­so start­ed to in­ves­ti­gate oth­er mat­ters at the school, but most fell through due to a lack cor­po­ra­tion by the prin­ci­pal, staff or par­ents.

“We are in school of­ten and they re­al­ly don’t re­veal things to us. It’s a hush-hush sit­u­a­tion and it’s not help­ing the sit­u­a­tion,” the of­fi­cer said.

How­ev­er, he dis­pelled the ru­mours of a fight club at the school cir­cu­lat­ed on so­cial me­dia yes­ter­day with pho­tos of the vic­tim show­ing the in­juries he sus­tained.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day on the in­ci­dent, Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly said the min­istry was ex­pect­ing to get the prin­ci­pal’s re­port on the in­ci­dent yes­ter­day.

She said this will help them as­cer­tain ex­act­ly who was in­volved in the at­tack on Thurs­day and the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing it.

Al­so con­tact­ed, Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer (CEO) of the Catholic Ed­u­ca­tion Board of Man­age­ment (CEBM) Sharon Man­groo said she too was await­ing the prin­ci­pal’s re­port. She too dis­pelled ru­mours of a fight club.

“It was an in­ci­dent that hap­pened last term, it could have been some name call­ing. It was some­thing com­ing out from an in­ci­dent be­tween two of the boys; one at­tacked the oth­er one, the friends who were around jumped to the friend’s de­fence,” Man­groo ex­plained.

Man­groo said the rel­e­vant pro­ce­dures are be­ing fol­lowed and the sev­en boys, who have since been re­leased from po­lice cus­tody, may be sus­pend­ed.

Guardian Me­dia spoke to two par­ents, who did not want to be iden­ti­fied, who said they are now wor­ried about the safe­ty of their chil­dren, not­ing part of the prob­lem has been su­per­vi­sion of stu­dents.

The par­ents said if it’s not a fight, it’s the sale of con­tra­band or stu­dents steal­ing from their peers. They too agreed the school of­fi­cials hide a lot of the mis­be­hav­iour at the in­sti­tu­tion.

Man­groo ad­mit­ted that there have been is­sues in the past but said the prin­ci­pal han­dles it.

“But you don’t want to be la­belling the chil­dren who are not tak­ing part in any­thing that is wrong,” she said.

She called on par­ents to put their trust in the prin­ci­pal.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) pres­i­dent Mar­tin Lum Kin, who said they had not re­ceived any re­ports of teach­ers feel­ing un­safe at the school.

But one TTUTA mem­ber said they would like al­ter­na­tive pun­ish­ments to sus­pen­sion and ex­pul­sion, as these neg­a­tiv­i­ty af­fect the stu­dents.