MUNRO College, the all boys boarding school in St Elizabeth that earlier this year weathered a bitter national row over discipline, has developed a tough new code of conduct that all students and their parents must sign for the start of the next academic year in September.

The code was developed by Munro’s principal, Dr Earl Hendricks, a no-nonsense disciplinarian who has made no secret of his determination to restore the school’s reputation for discipline and high academic standards after the frenzied controversy sparked by the 145-year-old institution’s expulsion of five boys and their subsequent reinstatement by the education minister.

“The board has reviewed it (the code of conduct) to ensure it complies with the law and the ministry’s Education Regulations (1980),” Hendricks told the Observer. “After that, it will be sent to the ministry’s regional office,” for approval.

The 60-page code of conduct handbook lays out the academic requirements of students in all classes, from first to sixth form. The manual also categorises offences in levels from one to four.

“Level one offences,” explained Hendricks, “are the least serious. Level four are the offences which carry recommendation for expulsion.”

The level four offences, he said, include:

* using and selling alcohol on campus;

* setting the place on fire;

* assaulting employees;

* making bomb threats;

* breaking and entering; and

* possessing or using any type of illegal drugs.

The penalties for each of these “criminal offences” will be the same.

Hendricks said that if a student commits any of these offences, his parents will first be contacted, there will be a mandatory 10-day suspension and the police will be called in, an action he now admits should have been taken after the five boys were caught smoking marijuana on the school compound last year.

At the time, Hendricks was just a couple of months into the job as principal.

The five students, who were transferred from other high schools during the September term, had left the Munro compound without permission and went to the nearby town of Malvern where they bought the illegal drug.

The school board suspended the boys for five days, but decided later to expel them when their parents refused to withdraw them on the board’s request.

The boys’ parents appealed to the Ministry of Education and the minister, Burchell Whiteman, eventually overturned the board’s decision, arguing that the board had exceeded its powers by punishing the boys twice for the same offence.

According to Whiteman, the Education Regulations give the board the jurisdiction to apply only one form of punishment.

The minister said he had also taken into consideration a commitment from the boys not to repeat their mistakes, “as well as the signs of academic progress which they have exhibited during their time at the school”.

Whiteman’s decision triggered a series of resignations from the school, starting last December with Dr Herbert Eldemire, the respected Montego Bay physician and elder statesman, from the Munro and Dickenson Trust.

The trust, which recommends the members of the Munro board of governors to the education ministry, administers the endowment left by the 18th century planter, Hugh Munro, for the education of boys in St Elizabeth.

Eldemire saw Whiteman’s decision as a “slap in the face” for the Munro board which he had endorsed.

Eldemire’s resignation was followed by that of Dr Bryan Morgan, the president of the school’s old boys’ association, who was forced from that post and as a board member, when he alone among his executive supported Whiteman’s decision.

On January 3, the nine other non-school members of the board resigned in protest against Whiteman’s decision, arguing that their positions had become untenable.

Four days later, when the school opened for the new term, the five boys returned to classes after a morning devotion at which they apologised to the student body and heard Hendricks warn that he still intended to run an institution where discipline was paramount.