Life lessons as Trinity Grammar haircut turns into million-dollar stoush
TRINITY Grammar students just got a crash course in public relations, group unity and student rights. None of it is on their curriculum. Instead, they had a valuable lesson from the school of life over a lock of hair.
Education
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FOR eight days now, the boys of Trinity Grammar School have been given a crash course in public relations, group unity and student rights.
None of it is on their curriculum. Instead, they’ve had valuable lessons from the school of life, all over a lock of hair.
One boy’s haircut is rapidly turning into a million-dollar stoush ruining reputations and rewriting the history of the private boys’ school in Kew.
Trinity’s fees are $31,000 a year and it has a 12-year waiting list. Usually, its staff stay out of the headlines as they endeavour to help more than 1300 boys “act manfully”, as they have done for 116 years. It’s the kind of place where the longest-serving member of the school’s governing council is a Harvard-educated truffle farmer. And there’s a parents’ poetry group.
Students wear their school tracksuits on weekends; they like people knowing they’re Trinity boys.
READ MORE: PUSH TO SACK HEADMASTER, COUNCIL
While other elite schools such as Xavier College and Geelong Grammar are loud and proud, Trinity Grammar is quirky and conservative.
This week, many of the boys went rogue and refused to wear their uniform to class but adhered to a “smart casual” dress code of chinos and Ralph Lauren shirts.
Only at Trinity.
They did so in honour of former deputy headmaster Rohan Brown, dismissed by the school council on March 8 for cutting the hair of a year 10 student.
For many of the boys, the haircut wasn’t a big deal, but the sacking has rocked them to the core. It all goes back to the way Mr Brown saw himself as an old-fashioned school master caring for the whole child — not just as someone who teaches them only in class.
Mr Brown’s voice was inside the boys’ heads. “What would Mr Brown say?” was a mantra that steered many of them.
OPINION: WHY WE NEED TEACHERS LIKE ROHAN BROWN
CURRENT FRACAS ISN’T REALLY ABOUT A HAIRCUT
They were proud to live by “Rohan’s rules” that involved a commitment to integrity, service, honour and respect — and a short back and sides.
Mr Brown, a former Carlton VFL player, wrote to parents in January to say the boys should “have their hair cut” for the first day of school. The boys would groan at such missives, but they also welcomed this obsession to detail from “Brownie”.
It showed them he cared about them as individuals.
Not everyone liked Rohan Brown, but most respected him. As former Trinity Grammar teacher Philip Kemke put it, Mr Brown “could be brusque on the outside, but he was the heart of the school”.
The current fracas isn’t really about a haircut, although that’s what prompted it. It’s about a school community fighting to keep a teacher they think cares about character, not just classwork.
Tim Sharp, a past president of the Old Trinity Grammarians’ Association, says Mr Brown “is vital to Trinity because the values he espouses are now under threat within the school”.
Current parent Steve Murphy, who was former Victorian premier Jeff Kennett’s right-hand man, says it’s not a “factional war” but a “fight to save the school for our boys and the many who will follow”.
It all started on the first day of the school year, February 1. It was photo day and a year 10 boy with floppy blond locks caught Mr Brown’s eagle eye. Despite repeated warnings, the boy’s hair was too long. The exact circumstances have not been clarified, but he did not go home to get a haircut like some other boys. Mr Brown trimmed his locks.
The next day, the boy’s father wrote to headmaster Dr Michael Davies saying the incident was an “emotionally scarring event” that would “leave its mark” on the boy.
The letter accused the school of breaching its duty of care. Despite the heated rhetoric, the matter was addressed internally and settled a few days later.
In fact, Mr Brown even made a joke about haircuts in the February 6 school newsletter, saying that a few boys “needed to go home on the first day (and returned following a haircut!)”. No mention was made of his own amateur attempt.
The problem for Mr Brown was that one boy filmed the haircut on his phone.
CONVENIENT EXCUSE FOR A POLITICAL ASSASSINATION
The footage, which only lasts a few seconds, shows a fair-haired boy standing head down in front of Mr Brown. As his peers watch and laugh, his fringe is trimmed.
The footage circulated among the boys for weeks, finally coming to the attention of the school council, then headed by commercial lawyer Roderick Lyle.
The video, coupled with the complaint from the parent, sealed Mr Brown’s fate.
The council decided unanimously he had to go.
On Friday, March 9, Mr Lyle broke the news to parents at 8.37am, telling them Mr Brown had “left Trinity after due process was followed”. “The handling of a disciplinary issue by Mr Brown earlier this term was in contravention of school policy and was also inconsistent with community expectations in this day and age,” it said.
According to lawyer and school parent Annie Kelly, the immediate presumption from Mr Lyle’s words was that Mr Brown had done “something criminal”.
She said Mr Lyle’s letter “tilted an event using words carefully chosen to create prejudice” towards Mr Brown.
Word quickly got out that the “disciplinary issue” was nothing more than the haircut.
The Old Trinity Grammarians’ Association executive called Mr Brown’s sacking a “convenient excuse for a political assassination” and “deeply opportunistic”.
Game on at one of Melbourne’s most conservative, elite institutions.
By recess that day, there was open mutiny among the students who were in disbelief that the cornerstone of the school community for three decades could be sacked for such a reason.
Disbelief turned to anger, and anger turned to fury.
Dr Davies and the school council got wind of the unrest and called a 6pm parents’ meeting that day.
For more than two hours, Mr Lyle — who declined to comment for this article — took questions from more than 1000 mutinous parents.
While many senior students spoke articulately about Mr Brown and what he meant to them, their parents were booing, interjecting and shouting.
It’s not often you see upper middle-class adults in good suits and sensible shoes behaving like a mob of delinquent schoolkids.
Many were irate at the way Mr Brown was characterised by Mr Lyle as a serious offender whom the school had no choice but to sack, given the complaint from the parent and the impact on the boy.
Mr Lyle insisted the school had an obligation to act over the haircut. “It was an assault,” he said.
That night, Mr Lyle forgot one important thing: it’s pretty hard to fool a room full of lawyers. All of his persuasive words and legal phrases meant little after the boy’s aunt stood up right at the end.
“We never wanted Mr Brown sacked, he is a great teacher and mentor,” she said. “It wasn’t us who complained and tried to sack Mr Brown.”
CHANGING OF THE EDUCATIONAL GUARD
Her words seemed to seal the fate of Mr Lyle, who resigned less than a week later. Yet not everyone was comfortable with Mr Brown’s actions.
As one parent told the Friday meeting: “I don’t think anyone here is disputing that there was a haircut problem; we’re all just saying the punishment is not equal to the crime.”
Another said: “You shouldn’t overlook 30 years of service for one mistake.”
One former private school principal told the Herald Sun it was more than a mistake.
“You can’t cut a kid’s hair. It might have been OK to do it once, but you can’t do it any more. It’s not acceptable behaviour in this day and age. It may be a form of assault. You can’t touch a kid, let alone cut their hair.”
And yet this condemnation wasn’t shared by the vast majority of parents. The haircut, deemed a sackable offence by the school council, was accepted and even welcomed by many parents.
Many were well used to Mr Brown’s interest in the hair of their offspring. One said he would make “the scissor action with his fingers” and take kids to the barber.
Anyone at the school will tell you this is really about the changing of the educational guard, with Mr Brown representing the old and Dr Davies the new.
Since Dr Davies was appointed four years ago, trouble has been brewing over the direction of the school.
As one parent at the Friday meeting said: “It’s no longer a school, it’s an ATAR factory.”
It’s a sentiment Dr Davies strongly disputes, although he declined the Herald Sun’s invitation to comment.
Mr Kemke says there was a great difference between Mr Brown’s and Dr Davies’ educational styles. “Mr Brown wanted the boys to develop relationships and be inspired to learn,” he said. “This is opposed to the more content-driven style of Dr Davies that relies on showing what you know on an exam paper.”
One of Dr Davies’ peers at another school says his aim to raise academic standards is honourable, “but he’s failed to take people with him”.
At this stage, the Trinity old boys are preparing for costly legal action to remove the remaining school council members. They are concerned because the new chairman, winemaker and truffle farmer Rob Utter, immediately stated his support for Mr Lyle’s sacking of Mr Brown. But there is no formal mechanism for the council to be removed.
Mr Brown is still omnipresent, receiving a steady stream of supporters at his Kew home. “I love the school, I’d love to come back,” he told the Herald Sun.
STUDENTS AND OLD BOYS VOW TO FIGHT
There may be tough times ahead for him. Yesterday, accusations of bullying surfaced from his tenure more than 30 years ago at Erinbank Secondary College.
And not everyone at Trinity loved Mr Brown: some parents talk about his tendency to pay more attention to the “popular, sporty kids”.
There was tension after both Mr Brown and Dr Davies signed a letter of tribute to retired Trinity teacher Christopher Howell.
Mr Howell taught there for 40 years, but in January 2016 took his own life — days before he was due in court on an indecent assault charge involving a pupil. Others had complained that he had sexually assaulted them. The school knew of the charge, but Dr Davies and Mr Brown paid tribute to Mr Howell’s “extraordinary legacy”.
This outraged those who had alleged assaults, and offended others, weakening the trust between the school community and the school’s leaders and setting the scene for the latest uproar.
Dr Davies appears intent on weathering this storm. One letter to parents from Mr Utter notes that Dr Davies “was not part of the code of conduct hearing or decision relating to the former deputy head”.
In the eyes of many parents, such an approach fuels the impression Dr Davies still doesn’t get it.
One former principal, who knows both Dr Davies and Mr Brown well, said it was “impossible that a deputy head was sacked without the approval of the headmaster”.
Yesterday, the students continued their protests by wearing casual clothes. “Until Mr Brown is back, no one else will tell us what to wear,” said a vice-captain. “Nobody else can, and nobody else will.”
The students and old boys vow to fight on until Mr Brown is reinstated. For them, Mr Brown was Trinity in a way Dr Davies never will be.
As Mr Brown said recently, he “bleeds green and gold”.
No doubt more green and gold blood will be shed before this situation is resolved.
• Susie O’Brien is also a Trinity Grammar parent
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