Da­reece Po­lo

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

A 17-year-old boy and his mom were left em­bar­rassed af­ter a de­ci­sion by the ad­min­is­tra­tive de­part­ment of Trin­i­ty Col­lege, Mo­ka, to ban sev­er­al stu­dents from grad­u­at­ing with most of their peers.  

The teenagers were blocked be­cause of their hair­styles which were dubbed in­ap­pro­pri­ate. As a con­se­quence, they re­ceived their cer­tifi­cates af­ter­ward.  

“It was em­bar­rass­ing. It ent have noth­ing else to it,” Bryce said dur­ing an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day.  

Ac­cord­ing to Trin­i­ty Col­lege Stu­dent Rules and Guide­lines, male stu­dents are re­quired to wear their hair short, neat, and ap­pro­pri­ate. Marks in their hair and eye­brows are not al­lowed.

How­ev­er, Bryce’s hair did not ap­pear to breach these rules as he fell with­in the guide­lines. De­spite this, he was lumped with his class­mates who opt­ed for corn­rows and afros which caught him by sur­prise.  

“On the last day of school, they put us in a meet­ing to in­form us about what would be go­ing on dur­ing the grad­u­a­tion. They told us that our hair has to be neat. They didn’t say any­thing about ‘cut down’ or any­thing like that. They say it have to be neat,” he said.  

Apart from feel­ing shamed by his ed­u­ca­tion­al in­sti­tu­tion, he was al­so dis­ap­point­ed that he was sep­a­rat­ed from the rest of his peers.

“The way that they seg­re­gate we, they put us on a bench far in the cor­ner where our par­ents couldn’t even see us. They (par­ents) had to walk all the way in front of the stage to see us. It was re­al­ly a bad ex­pe­ri­ence for a very spe­cial day,” he said.  

This al­so af­fect­ed his moth­er who was ea­ger to see him cross the stage and re­ceive praise for his hard work over the last five years. She wait­ed to cap­ture the mo­ment and was dis­ap­point­ed.

“Meh moth­er was there with the cam­era in her hand wait­ing to see her child walk up and col­lect his cer­tifi­cate and she didn’t get to ex­pe­ri­ence that, nei­ther did I get to ex­pe­ri­ence that at the time,” he said sad­ly.

Up­set by the or­deal she and her son ex­pe­ri­enced, Sa­lene, Pub­lic Re­la­tions Of­fi­cer of the Par­ent Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion, stepped down im­me­di­ate­ly. She in­tend­ed to send a mes­sage to the board that this was not ac­cept­able.  

“When I re­signed via the What­sApp group, I said ‘Guys, this is it for me be­cause I can­not be a part of dis­crim­i­na­to­ry ac­tions, ig­no­rance for the most part, and bias,” she said.  

She al­so ex­pressed her dis­sat­is­fac­tion with how the school opt­ed to ad­dress the mat­ter though she said she did not sup­port the out­bursts by some par­ents.  

“The An­gli­can dean de­cides to come up and rep­ri­mand the par­ents for hav­ing an opin­ion or be­ing dis­en­chant­ed with what was go­ing on. Maybe the out­burst is not what should have hap­pened be­cause it just re­al­ly kind of put a damper on every­thing but at the same point in time, I could un­der­stand. The An­gli­can dean’s com­ments were pre­ced­ed by the prin­ci­pal com­ing up to say ‘this is what hap­pens when you don’t obey rules. ‘

“This is what we’re try­ing to un­der­stand–why wait un­til to­day to do that when there have been con­ver­sa­tions be­fore ask­ing why? Why can’t we just do things dif­fer­ent­ly? Why can’t the boys grow their hair?

When she didn’t hear her son’s name, Grif­fith opt­ed to leave but she was stopped. Her son, and the oth­ers, were giv­en their cer­tifi­cates af­ter the cer­e­mo­ny.  

Up to late yes­ter­day, she re­mained un­aware of why Bryce’s name was re­moved.

Min­is­ter: Con­ver­sa­tions on the is­sue will take place soon

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly re­spond­ed to the re­ports in a Face­book post, de­scrib­ing it as “re­gret­table” and “un­for­tu­nate.”

She said while the rules are be­ing de­bat­ed, they must be fol­lowed. Nonethe­less, she ques­tioned whether the cer­e­mo­ny was a suit­able fo­rum to en­force the guide­lines.  

“The ques­tion of the suit­abil­i­ty of the Grad­u­a­tion Cer­e­mo­ny as a fo­rum to en­force the rules of a school, from which stu­dents were ac­tive­ly grad­u­at­ing, is a valid one,” she said.

“Re­gard­less of one’s emo­tion­al and vis­cer­al re­sponse to this is­sue, it is a fact that so­ci­etal or­der de­pends on rule-keep­ing, and that is a crit­i­cal facet of the ed­u­ca­tion schools are meant to im­part,” she added.

She as­sured that con­ver­sa­tions will take place soon to ad­dress this ahead of the up­com­ing school term.

“Yet an­oth­er crit­i­cal con­ver­sa­tion aris­es out of these cir­cum­stances, which speaks to the stan­dard­i­s­a­tion of the rules and re­moval of sub­jec­tiv­i­ty which sur­rounds school hair­styles, es­pe­cial­ly for male stu­dents. The time for this con­ver­sa­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go has come, and de­ci­sions will be tak­en for im­ple­men­ta­tion in the up­com­ing aca­d­e­m­ic year, based on the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion’s dis­cus­sions with our val­ued stake­hold­ers,” she said.

Bryce was grate­ful for the Min­is­ter’s re­sponse, and said he looked for­ward to the pro­posed changes tak­ing ef­fect.

“Yuh grow­ing up, yuh try­ing to find who yuh is as an in­di­vid­ual and some peo­ple might say ‘yuh hair is small thing, yuh hair have noth­ing to do with yuh in­di­vid­u­al­i­ty’ but to we, hair is part of we ex­pres­sion so to see that there will be changes com­ing up in the fu­ture of all the oth­er schools, my school, for black chil­dren, it will be great­ly ap­pre­ci­at­ed,” he said.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to Bish­op Claude Berkley who was said to be out of the coun­try. Mean­while, the Chair of the board of Trin­i­ty Col­lege, Dr Shel­ley-Ann Tenia, did not re­spond to calls or What­sApp text mes­sages.  

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