Camille Clarke

A Barataria South Sec­ondary stu­dent, who ap­peared on a so­cial me­dia Web site last week with what ap­peared to be a weapon in her waist while ad­mon­ish­ing an­oth­er stu­dent in a class­room, has apol­o­gised.

The teen, who on­ly iden­ti­fied her­self as the De Boss Mel Mel on her Face­book page, said she felt ashamed.

"Good­night Face­book. I know by now you all have seen the video with me beat­ing that girl but you must nev­er judge the book by its cov­er. I know that I look very small in that video and I may look like the bad one and I'm sor­ry for act­ing like that."

She said no one told her to write the apol­o­gy, but af­ter see­ing the video she felt ashamed.

"I feel ashamed and know­ing that me and that girl was good friend. I was an­gry and try to de­fend her but she turn on me. Not every­body who say that they are your friend is you friends.

"Once again I'm sor­ry for act­ing so. I apol­o­gise to her and her fam­i­ly and al­so my fam­i­ly for em­bar­rass­ing them. I am not vex with her moth­er for what­ev­er step she may take. Good­night."

The teen's class­mate made no at­tempt to re­tal­i­ate dur­ing the al­ter­ca­tion.

This lat­est in­ci­dent comes two months af­ter the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion said it would be in­tro­duc­ing CCTV cam­eras in the na­tion's schools and ap­point­ing tru­an­cy of­fi­cers to as­sist with the avalanche of school vi­o­lence.

With­in the past week, videos show­ing a fight be­tween two fe­male stu­dents at a South sec­ondary school, a male stu­dent jump­ing over sev­er­al flights of stairs to es­cape from be­ing bul­lied by oth­er stu­dents and a video of a fe­male stu­dent mas­tur­bat­ing were al­so post­ed.

The video for which the teenag­er apol­o­gised for her ac­tion went vi­ral on Tues­day. It showed a fe­male stu­dent par­tial­ly dressed in a vest and school uni­form with what ap­peared to be a weapon in her waist while scold­ing an­oth­er fe­male stu­dent.

The post had 615 shares with 339 likes and over 30,000 views and com­ments such as: "Now you know what wa­jank par­ents make..," "I like how the young la­dy stayed calm and cool, not re­tal­i­at­ing was a good idea...but I don't know if when I would have been able to do that."

So­ci­etal prob­lem

Con­tact­ed on the mat­ter, T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent De­vanand Sinanan said he was un­aware of the in­ci­dent but said the an­ti-bul­ly­ing ini­tia­tive is still in ef­fect at schools through­out the coun­try.

"The Stu­dent Sup­port Ser­vices has an on­go­ing an­ti-bul­ly­ing cam­paign where they teach stu­dents and treat with the sit­u­a­tion. Stu­dents have been work­ing with au­thor­i­ties to ad­dress the prob­lems, which won't be solved overnight. It is not just for the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion to deal with but oth­er in­sti­tu­tions in so­ci­ety," he said.

Sinanan said every­one had to play a part in solv­ing the prob­lem.

"We have to es­tab­lish rules for the un­der­age for hav­ing ac­cess to un­der­age me­dia and what is read­i­ly avail­able is cause for con­cern for ed­u­ca­tors. We have no con­trol over it un­for­tu­nate­ly. As a na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty we have to deal with cy­ber crime," he said.

He said tech­nol­o­gy was the in­for­ma­tion high­way and law­mak­ers have to be pre­pared to deal with it.

Pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al Par­ent Teacher As­so­ci­a­tion Zena Ra­matali says there needs to be an an­ti-bul­ly­ing pol­i­cy for schools.

"We have been speak­ing about this for sev­er­al years and the is­sue of bul­ly­ing is not be­ing ad­dressed. We start­ed cam­paigns and or­gan­i­sa­tions have high­light­ed it. It is like a re­cur­ring dec­i­mal and stu­dents are be­ing bul­lied," she said.

She said in ad­di­tion to talk­ing about the is­sue, peo­ple need­ed to be taught and giv­en skills to re­solve is­sues. She said par­ent­ing and coun­selling for those af­fect­ed were al­so ar­eas of con­cern.

Al­so con­tact­ed, ASP Joanne Archie said she did not see the videos, but not­ed. "Par­ents should mon­i­tor what sites their chil­dren are view­ing and what their chil­dren are post­ing.

"Par­ents need to mon­i­tor these sit­u­a­tions care­ful­ly and look for oth­er is­sues af­fect­ing them. Maybe they are look­ing for at­ten­tion."

Of­fi­cials in the Com­mu­ni­ca­tions De­part­ment of the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion said dis­trict su­per­vi­sors had been con­tact­ed on the var­i­ous video post­ings but had not seen the videos.