LUCEA, Hanover – Rusea’s High school principal June Thompson on Friday defended her decision to suspend, for three days, 45 students who defied the dress code for the institution’s sports day.

The students, who were sent off on March 14, are expected to return to school tomorrow. According to Thompson, some female students clad in “revealing” garb were among the 45 students punished.

“We planned our annual school sports day for Tuesday, February 20. For two weeks prior to that we had been instructing the students that sports day is a school day and they should be attired in uniforms,” said Thompson. “All students are expected to be at sports day, register will be marked, we would assemble over here then march by houses to the nearby Colin Miller Sports Complex. They were told at general devotion, they were told at grade devotion and they were told at house devotion. They knew that failure to adhere to these instructions would result in suspension.”

But one Grade 11 student whose classmate was among those suspended insisted that it was a traditional custom for students to dress casually on sports day.

“The teacher just want us to wear uniform to school like is normal school day, but it is not a normal school day,” the student complained. “We used to wear pretty clothes come to sports day every year until the new principal came and said she wants everybody to wear uniform, then she go suspend them. We can’t come to school in uniform and walk up and down inna hot sun. You know how that feel?”

The recently appointed Thompson, herself a past student of the 230-year-old school which has a student population of over 2,000, said punishment for the rebellious students should have begun on Monday, February 26 but was put off to accommodate mid-year examinations. However, the grades seven and eight students who breached the new school rule received their punishment last month.

“We delayed it because it would have impacted on their averages because they would have missed three days of exams,” said the principal. “We exercised leniency, but they were warned that at the end of exams they would have been suspended.”

Thompson said that a handful of parents were disgruntled over the suspensions, but most who visited the school realised they were “misled by their children that it was okay to wear casual clothes on sports day”.

She lashed parents who failed to turn up at the school when requested by the school to do so.

“Some of these very parents, when we have any problems or any indiscretions at school and we send for them we have a great problem in them coming to represent their children,” said Thompson. “But now they will be calling and e-mailing and things like that. But they have a role to play in inculcating discipline in these children.”

A parent of two of the suspended students had complained to the Sunday Observer that the suspensions were unjust. According to the parent, the list of students suspended was compiled from second-hand information.

However, Thompson dismissed the claim. The list, she said, was compiled by teachers who were put in charge of seeing to it that the dress code was adhered to. The names were entered in an exercise book as the day progressed.