(JollofNews) – The Gambia Senior Secondary School has expelled several of its students after one of them appeared on a sultry ‘dirty dancing’ video which went viral on social media and elicited critical reviews by local commentators.
A source close to the school’s administration said on Wednesday that the teenager and her peers whose identities have not been revealed were supposed to be in class but had joined a ‘food party’ at another school in the capital Banjul.
The girl wearing a Gambia Senior Secondary School uniform appeared on the video with a boy in a sexually suggestive dance known as passa passa, as other young people clapped and encouraged them from the sidelines.
The one-minute video posted on Facebook attracted critical comments from Gambian viewers some of whom questioned and criticized the moral standards in the country’s school system.
One contributor described it as “the height of immorality especially in an educational establishment where Gambia’s future leaders are supposed to be groomed into responsible adults.
Meanwhile one user condemned the mass expulsions as too harsh.
Writing on Facebook, one Ebrima Fatty who identified himself as a former student of the school wrote: “This is a young girl who has a whole life ahead of her. Expulsion in my view is going to create more harm than good. It’s the responsibility of parents and the school to help kids to become better and responsible students to prepare them for the future”.
Source: APA
This particular girl should be helped rather than setting too much shame on her. She can be rehabilitated at this tender age and be changed miraculously to a very good woman in future. Her ordeal serves as the first ever lesson she learns to correct herself. Please, let the school authorities pardon her.
Please have mercy on her and rescind the decision of expelling her,she can be counseled and rehabilitated.Remember she is too you young to be marginalized/stigmatized.
Are we Muslims hypocrites or forgiving grown-ups ?
Aren’t we forgetting our own mistakes, our unshared but nevertheless shameless thoughts ?
Or are we all equal to the only ONE ?
Give people air to breathe, to find out where they wanne go, and listen to their worries, please !
Jollonews,
This is not a question of having mercy on her. It’s a question of finding out if the school authorities haven’t overruled their authority to decide over something outside the jurisdiction of the school.
First, the parents should go to the Department and Ministry of Education, be informed about the regulations governing such behaviours and then take the pertinent steps to redress the matter.
If the school authorities are found overruling, they should be sanctioned and possibly punished. If the education codes of conduct or the school regulations make any reference to such “extra-curricular behaviours”, the student should be called to adhere to the regulations and given an opportunity by counselling. She can’t be so swiftly punished taking into account her future with the education she dearly needs.
She has every right to education which NO human soul should try to deny her. So the school authorities should not make her crawl on her knees to return her birth right asset….EDUCATION.
She might have made a mistake, though, that’s if the regulations have stipulated it but the whole exercise of expelling her is farfetched, uneducative and unproductive. In fact, she hasn’t killed anybody nor has she committed any act of terrorism!
What next for this girl after her expulsion?
Not far from Holland, where I live, in Norway, the wife of the heir to the throne was at one time a street girl. But the Norwegian Royal family and the entire population gave that lady another opportunity to mould her life by marrying to the heir. She’s now Norway’s most revered woman.
Let’s always remember the disadvantaged position and lack of opportunities for our women. They need assistance at all times!
Koto Babu, this is what i want to be seeing from you not hate fueled tirade base on no evidence. I totally agree with everything you’ve said on the issue. If she were my kid i will sue the school and the education department. The worst this girl or girls did was truancy. Her behaviour may be immoral but does not warrant expulsion from school. Her expulsion is only a knee jerk reaction from out-of- depth school authorities. Wearing the school uniform was the only connection the incident has with the school. Would she have been expelled if she was recorded by another student whilst the two were actually having sex at home but still wearing the uniform?? I do not for once deny that as a nation we expect more from our future leaders but we should be realistic and accept that the journey from being a youth to adulthood is full of pitfalls. The poor girl would be going through serous psychological trauma knowing that such a video recording of her is out there, online, accessible by perverts. Instead of providing pastoral care and support to the girl and her friends, the school authorities choose to stigmatize them further. Does any one know what happened to the boy? It will be very hypocritical to punish only the girl and let the boy go Scot free. The school and education authorities should have taken this incident as an opportunity educate the children on the dangers of posting things online and how to stay safe online. But it seems this is going to be another missed opportunity.
Can’t agree more with the fellow commentators above…
If anything meaningful the Education & school authorities missed out in the information contained out of this incident that needs to be scrambled out for realistic understanding is, the particular students concerned, if any, shown that they need some help both morally & psychologically…
Some bits of counselling & self-awareness therapy, etc will go long way to help put them through, while they continue in education which is a human right entitlement in itself…
Exclusion from education isn’t but rather the wrong solution to this particular issue at hand; this just shows how faraway we are off from the finishing line as a country…
The Education Ministry should intervene to safe the students’ future as human beings before it gets too late…
I hope someone is listening right now….
Self-awareness meaning personal awareness issues; therapy that enable & facilitate individual to digest & construe consequences of acts & actions that may be one’s right but that also do need forethought before indulgence…
1. The video is very shocking, but what is equally shocking, is the number of people willing to share it on social media. Whoever shares this video is far worse than the kids in the video, because they have facilitated the circulation of an obscene image of a minor. That’s predatory and sick. This behaviour needs to be equally condemned, just as the actions of the kids.
2. I will agree with views expressed that the decision to expel is harsh, but only if it was based on this single incident. In that case, I think the decision will be very harsh, disproportionate, unreasonable and constitute a knee jack over reaction by the school authority.
However, I hope people who saw the video, will have observed that the level of confidence shown by the lead actors, especially the young girl, to expose themselves in public and in that manner, would seem to suggest that this wasn’t a spontaneous, on the spur of the moment, performance. If we, as a nation, are serious about addressing such behaviour in society, then we need to ask a whole lot of questions to understand what is happening in our communities (parenting), social groups (peer influence) and schools (esp. extra-curricular activities) in order to “re-orientate” our youths towards gainful aspirations.
We need to understand that 22 years of endless merry making at Kaninlai (with rumours of child molestations at those occasions, leading to so many teenage pregnancies) and the well funded parties on beaches, with all their attendant consequences, have created a certain Gambian Youth who will need considerable counselling to re-orientate them towards the type of youth we want to produce tomorrow.
3. As stated by previous contributors, the right to education is a fundamental Human Right guaranteed by the Constitution and therefore, any attempts to deny an individual from enjoying this right through expulsion, must be taken as a last resort and for very good reasons. Indeed, the individual has a right to education, which the school must respect and endeavour to provide, but the school too, as an institution, not only has standards to protect, but has a duty to hold all its students to those standards that it has set for itself, which may distinguish it from the rest, and The Gambia Senior Secondary (High) School, is indeed, a school that is known for high standards and academic excellence.
If, for instance, the decision to expel, rather than being based on this single incident, was taken because this incident was the latest in a catalogue of behavioural issues from this group of students, then the decision must be seen within the wider context of protecting the standards of the institution and maintaining its reputation built over a number of years.
If this was a recalcitrant group of students, who may have had previous sanctions, like detentions and suspensions against them, then I would say that the decision to expel them was the right one, as the interest of a few cannot supersede the rights of the many. And in any case, keeping a recalcitrant group of students will have adverse effects on others, in the long term.
I think the education authorities need to engage the school to establish whether the school’s actions was justified and find a sensible solution to this problem. The expelled students cannot and should certainly, not be abandoned and left to themselves. They need assistance to continue their education and development, and could even be re-admitted next year to continue their education, if they have fully reformed.
If the law of the land states that a child of certain age must attend a school, then another school will have to accept the child but, usually the accepting school, is most times a school of lower standard than the school that the student is expelled from. Lets hope she learns from this, everyone is entitled to one mistake.