Principal orders girls to take off shirts in front of whole school

THE St Joseph’s High School at Döbra was abuzz on Monday, after the principal allegedly ordered nine girls to remove their school blouses in front of everyone to punish them for disrespecting school rules.

The principal apparently paid a surprise visit to one of the Grade 10 classes on Friday and found that the girls did not have their blouses tucked into their skirts.’When she came into our class, she asked us the girls to stand up and when she saw that we had not tucked in our school shirts, she took our names. On Monday at assembly, she called our names, ordered us to stand in front of the whole school and instructed us to remove our school shirts. She announced to the whole school that we were the girls who do not respect the school rules and that she was going to teach us how to follow school rules,’ said one of the girls involved.The girls claim that they had to stay shirtless the whole day.’She instructed us to take off our school shirts in front of the whole school, learners and teachers. Some of us were refusing because we cannot just stand in a bra just like that. There was also one guy whom she had found with his shirt untucked and she instructed him to take off his trousers and put on a skirt. Everyone was shouting and laughing at us.’ Some of the pupils said it was the most embarrassing thing that had ever happened to them.’I feel very humiliated. Even my own brothers have never seen me naked and here I was, exposed in front of the whole school,’ said one of the girls.Said yet another girl: ‘As we were taking off our shirts, the boys in the crowd were making comments like ‘you look sexy, you should take it off, we want to see those sexy bodies’.’ The pupils say they spoke to their teachers about the incident and although the teachers were surprised, they told the pupils they could not do anything since the principal was ‘the boss’.Döbra school principal Mahua Masule told The Namibian that the school rules were very clear and what she did was not out of the ordinary. ‘What I did was just remove the school shirt that they were not respecting. I cannot talk to media as there are procedures to be followed. Before I’m allowed to give comment, the media should first get permission from the Khomas regional education office,’ she said.Contacted for comment, the Deputy Minister of Education, David Namwandi, said he was not aware of the incident but described it as ‘totally unacceptable.’’If this turns out to be true, it’s totally unacceptable. It’s dehumanising and I can assure you we don’t have anything like that in our education system,’ he said.’This cannot be tolerated. Anybody who does something like that must be dealt with. This does not mean we condemn indiscipline, but there are less dehumanising ways to address indiscipline,’ said Namwandi.’Mind you, if this is what happened, we are not going to stop there. I’m sure our regional office is going to follow up on this to find out what exactly happened,’ he said.St Joseph’s High School at Döbra is a Catholic school situated 20 kilometres north of Windhoek.Efforts to get comment from the Khomas regional education office proved futile as the deputy director, Thea Seefeldt, was said to be in meetings.