As school and Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials move to take stricter ap­proach­es to school vi­o­lence, at least three South East Port-of-Spain Sec­ondary School (SE­PoSS) stu­dents want those in au­thor­i­ty to stop play­ing “pol­i­tics” with the school’s fu­ture and think about the chil­dren.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia out­side the Nel­son Street, Port-of-Spain school yes­ter­day, the male stu­dents who all hail from the Laven­tille, sad­ly agreed that the school was like a prison to them.

One boy said, “It is built like a jail, with no green spaces or recre­ation­al fa­cil­i­ties to kick a ball, run or just re­lax.”

While an­oth­er stu­dent said that while the struc­ture is­sues do not ex­cuse the be­hav­iour or jus­ti­fy the ag­gres­sion be­ing dis­played by some stu­dents, he asked, “How do you ex­pect peo­ple to be­have when they have to stay cooped up in the class­room at break and lunchtime un­til you leave?”

He said stu­dents were forced to stay in their class­rooms for the du­ra­tion of the school day, on­ly be­ing able to play bas­ket­ball or foot­ball in the school’s cor­ri­dors, de­spite the fact that the space was small and un­ac­com­mo­dat­ing.

The Form Six stu­dents, who wrote the CSEC Maths and Man­age­ment of Busi­ness ex­ams yes­ter­day, said the school vi­o­lence be­ing dis­played ear­li­er this week and in the last year or so, was a re­sult of the “cul­ture” that per­vades the school.

One of them ac­cused the school’s man­age­ment of fail­ing to take ac­tion to ad­dress pre­vi­ous at­tacks in and out of the school.

“Noth­ing has ever re­al­ly been done to­wards the be­hav­iour of the stu­dents they know are the per­pe­tra­tors,” he claimed.

His class­mate and friend added, “I agree with what was said. The en­vi­ron­ment has a lot to do with it, as well as show how the chil­dren were raised.”

Sad­dened by the lev­el of bru­tal­i­ty dis­played in the lat­est in­ci­dent of school vi­o­lence, the third boy said, “I feel every­thing start with the school it­self be­cause these same peo­ple are al­ways fight­ing and noth­ing hap­pens to them.

“They might get a two-day sus­pen­sion and when they come back the next day, they do­ing the same thing over and over. They break­ing the same rules, com­ing back to school and not go­ing back to class­es ... just do­ing the same thing over and over.”

Ac­knowl­edg­ing each child had a right to an ed­u­ca­tion, the boys said it should not come at the ex­pense of the phys­i­cal well-be­ing and health of oth­ers.

The boys said the au­thor­i­ties need­ed to se­ri­ous­ly con­sid­er just how the al­most 900-strong stu­dent pop­u­la­tion was be­ing short-changed by the lack of a green space and/or recre­ation­al fa­cil­i­ties. They called on school of­fi­cials to “step up” and do right by their charges, as they said there would be no change in be­hav­iour­al pat­terns go­ing for­ward.

The lone fe­male stu­dent who spoke with Guardian Me­dia, sym­pa­thised with the 17-year-old vic­tim who had been at­tacked and bru­talised, say­ing, “I can’t imag­ine fight­ing as a young woman.”

The four stu­dents, who will be grad­u­at­ing from Se­PoSS lat­er this year, strong­ly be­lieve if se­ri­ous in­ter­ven­tions are not in­tro­duced now—the school’s Form Six pop­u­la­tion will be­come non-ex­is­tent.

—An­na-Lisa Paul