Perhaps money and reputation trump forgiveness at Blackfriars Priory School | David Penberthy

Of all the scandals to beset Adelaide’s private schools, apparently this is the one that just couldn’t be forgiven, writes David Penberthy.

Three weeks ago, the well-regarded Blackfriars College found itself making news for all the wrong reasons.

It’s not the first time a school – private or public – has been at the centre of scandal and it obviously won’t be the last.

That’s because all young people make bad decisions as they mature and grow.

The scale and nature of those bad decisions will vary. The challenge for schools is to come up with a proportionate response which balances the need for punishment with the impact such punishment will have on a child’s wellbeing and future prospects.

In the case of Blackfriars College it has failed that test.

I have got to know the parents of one of the two boys who have been expelled from Blackfriars over their part in the burning of a Christian Brothers College jacket after the Blackfriars football team ended a long drought against their rivals.

These two boys were part of a very large group of kids – 26 in all – who took part in the burning ritual.

It has all the hallmarks of a classic mob adolescent activity with kids egging each other on and whipping themselves into a frenzy.

Is that it? Picture: 7NEWS

The first thing I would say about these parents is that they are not excuse-makers or dissemblers or deniers.

They’re not the sort of mollycoddling parents whose child is the apple of their eye and butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. They know their son did the wrong thing and they believe he should have been punished.

Their son is smart and responsible enough to believe that too.

What they struggle to understand - as do other parents and students at Blackfriars, old scholars and outside observers like me - is why their kid has had his entire schooling ended via the ultimate sanction of expulsion just 10 weeks shy of completing Year 12.

This boy was not “the ringleader” of anything. He didn’t organise the event, he didn’t buy the jacket, he didn’t take a lighter along.

He finds himself in the unlucky position of being the kid who actually got the flame to catch on the fabric as a bunch of kids were passing it around, having failed to achieve ignition. Because he was photographed, and because (like heaps of other kids) shared photographs via airdrop with other students, he’s been deemed to be a key protagonist in it all.

This is not a young person with a history of misconduct either.

His parents have repeatedly asked him this past three weeks if there is anything else he has done and has not told them about.

There is not. The school has not provided any other examples of wrongdoing.

The parents have been upfront about two minor incidents their son was involved in – two years ago, he was part of a group of kids who threw eggs outside the school, and he also got detention once for throwing paper off a balcony.

Back in the day at Marion High, we used to call that sort of conduct “lunch time”.

Off his own bat, this student wrote to the principal apologising for his conduct, owning his bad decisions, stating he was prepared to apologise more widely to the broader school community for his role.

The school instead offered this family a 20-minute meeting at which it became clear that the process was a fait accompli and that their son would be expelled and the decision would stand.

Blackfriars Priory School on Prospect Road. Picture: Keryn Stevens

This does not look like natural justice to me.

It also looks much harsher than some of the penalties being handed out at other private schools where menacing or lewd behaviour directed by boys at fellow female students is falling short of expulsion.

That observation is an apples and oranges scenario. It is best to compare the treatment of this boy to other disciplinary cases at Blackfriars.

I understand that board members at Blackfriars have been asked to intervene in this case, not just on the grounds of fairness but consistency.

In the past few years at the school there were two other incidents, one where a senior boy sold cannabis and vapes to younger students, but was not expelled, and allowed to finish his schooling remotely.

In the other, seven older students bashed a student.

The ringleader of the violence was only suspended, not expelled; the other six were not suspended.

Blackfriars Priory School principal David Ruggiero. Picture: Supplied

Burning a piece of fabric seems to be the hanging offence here.

The parents have even asked if their son can completely his schooling remotely, like the drug-dealing kid did. Nope. It is hard to fathom.

And it is hard to fathom how a school so rooted in the traditions of confession and repentance – qualities the boy has shown – can abandon the concept of forgiveness.

Perhaps money and reputation trump forgiveness in this case.

The parents of this boy are besides themselves, and the boy is too, having had all his social props torn up, his academic future imperilled, his name besmirched as the school set about on the unreliable path of trying to apportion tiers of blame for what was a mad, all-in spree.

In a less politically correct era, the boys would have been commended for showing fighting spirit on behalf of their team.

These days it’s the crime of the century.

None of it makes sense.

Perhaps the school and its principal want to show they live by the maxim ‘spare the rod, spoil the child’.

I’d give them an Alexander Pope quote instead, ‘to err is human, to forgive divine’, and suggest they reflect on the actual human impact on this young and decent person from their heavy-handed response.