Sneaking out to get food

is apparently what you do if you don't like the food at a school camp.

There has been an interesting reaction to the story in this morning's paper - you know, that story about those "entitled private school kids" who went out looking for something to eat at midnight. The school hit them with two day suspensions.

School camps are a nightmare to run now. I wouldn't want to get involved. The closest I came to ever getting involved was going to the camp for disabled children as a Guide. I did that for quite a number of years. There were sixty Guides, sixty children and six adults at those camps. Nobody even considered a midnight jaunt anywhere. Nothing would have been open anyway. 

Apparently the students here didn't like the food. They claim they wanted "meat". You don't find "meat" at the twenty-four hour "convenience" store attached to a petrol outlet. You might get a pie or a sausage roll - and they won't be that good because those places don't stock the best sort.

I thought back to my time at boarding school. I never had a hot meal at school. The girls' boarding house was a long way from the actual school. (The boys were housed at the school.) They were route marched to and from school by the prefects. There was no way I was going to keep up so I was sent to school with a sandwich and a piece of fruit. I had to eat that with the day students. 

Why I was not allowed to eat in the boys' dining room is beyond me. I nearly didn't get any lunch at all. I was considered a "nuisance" (an "absolute nuisance" to be exact).  As it was I would have made my own lunch if I had been permitted to do so but that would have meant allowing a student into the kitchen. We only went in there to do the washing up or the cleaning. 

I was given exactly the same lunch every day. It consisted of two slices of stale white bread filled with a smear of margarine and some baked beans. The fruit was often an over ripe banana or a bruised apple. Once a small bunch of grapes appeared. A parent must have brought a box down from their property and donated them because everyone had grapes.

Would I have considered sneaking out at night to get food? No, I would have been too cowardly to do that. One of the girls did go out on a regular basis. Her older cousin was a very young police constable at the time. If he was on shift in the area he would wait for her and she would spend a couple of hours riding in the police car with him and his mate. How they never got caught is a mystery. 

Even at that age however I think I was much more aware of the responsibility adults had for our welfare. "In loco parentis" actually meant something to me. I knew my parents, particularly the Senior Cat, to be responsible for the students in their care. That standard of care is actually held to be higher than it is for parents. 

I never said a word about the miscreant student. I just pretended to sleep right through. "You sleep like the dead!" the others would tell me. Little did they know I was curled up there terrified of what might happen if she got caught. 

Sometimes she would bring sweets back and share them around. I never accepted any. I pretended I didn't like sweets. In reality I could not have eaten one. It would have made me even more complicit in her wrongdoing.

Looking back I almost wish she had been caught. Almost, but not quite. My concern even now is that she might have been expelled and that her cousin would also have been dismissed from the force. That would have been a punishment too far but a two day suspension is not. 

As the head of a school I might have found a different punishment. I doubt suspension has much value. I would not have given extra work either. It is much more likely I would have suspended their involvement in sport or some other school activity after I had explained the possible legal consequences if one of them had come to some harm.   

But why did the media make such a thing of the story. Were they really "entitled private school students" or was it simply just the thoughtless sort of group behaviour teenagers do indulge in occasionally? I know any number of state school students who not only have more pocket money but would do exactly the same thing on a school camp. 

The one thing perhaps to be said for these students is that they were apparently so well behaved while they were out the school did not find out until another student snitched on them a couple of days after they returned to school. I am not sure the same would have been said of the students who recently hurled abuse at a transit officer who tried to stop them "painting" the railway station.  They were from a local high school.