Scots College run out of Jindabyne after fake COVID-19 social post
A Facebook campaign targeting boarders at top private school Scots College has forced teachers to cut short a camping trip in the NSW Snowy Mountains.
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Students from a prestigious Sydney private school were forced to leave Jindabyne after locals falsely accused them of scheming to infect the community with coronavirus.
Ironically, the Year Nine students from The Scots College had been in the Southern Highlands since the start of term 1 and out of contact with the rest of the world.
The Glengarry program is regarded as a rite of passage for many Scots boys and places students in a six-month residential boarding program at the Kangaroo Valley campus.
The campus, including student dormitories, was severely damaged in bushfires earlier this year.
As a result, the school had to improvise and find other locations in the area for them to take part in the outdoor education.
The Sunday Telegraph understands that, on Tuesday, about 20 students boarded a bus and were headed for a rural property on the outskirts of Jindabyne.
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Angry locals saw the Scots-branded bus and went online to vent their frustrations.
The post, shared on the Jindabyne notice board on Facebook, stated “clearly the school leadership don’t give a rats about social distancing because they’ve piled a bunch of kids into a bus for a five hour trip breathing each other’s germs”.
“We’ll all be on the news tomorrow because some idiot school bought a busload of infected kids to a country town to kill all our old people,” the post read.
“If you see them, ask them to take their fancy rich kid germs home.”
Despite the far-fetched claim, the post, which has since been deleted, generated dozens of comments, many of them equally aggressive.
According to a school source, the comments included urging local businesses not to serve the students so they starved.
Ironically, the Scots boys had been in the program, which teaches bush skills and cuts students off from technology, and so isolated from the rest of the world since early February.
The last contact they had with anyone outside the program was almost two weeks before the Jindabyne trip during a parent visit, the source said.
The federal and state governments have allowed schools to remain open, despite closing other non-essential services this month, as it helps health and emergency workers on the frontline of the crisis.
After teachers and parents heard of the threatening Facebook comments, the group cancelled the rest of their stay.
It is understood the boys were meant to camp at the site for two weeks but went to meet up with other students taking part of the program at another location instead.
Of all the online comments, it was the elitist tag that annoyed parents the most, with one stating: “We work our arses off to send them to a good school”.
Scots College refused to comment as it wanted to avoid further antagonising the Jindabyne community.
Another Bellevue Hill private school, Cranbrook, was forced to turn around a coach full of schoolboys heading into Canberra earlier this month over coronavirus concerns.
In a bid to “minimise exposure to the general public” the coach had not stopped on the way to Canberra for the annual Head of the Lake Rowing Regatta.
The school had taken extra safety precautions by regularly sanitising the oars and installing additional air filtering in the coach.
But the government's health advice changed during the drive and the boys were forced to head home without stepping foot in the ACT.
“Advice from NSW authorities rapidly changed while the Cranbrook team was en route to Canberra and, given the escalating risk to student safety, a decision was made by the school to return our rowers immediately to Sydney,” Cranbrook Deputy Headmaster Bob Meakin said.
“Once more severe restrictions were imposed, all events from mid-March to June 30 were cancelled or postponed.”