偷拍风波又一起 地铁内亲热遭举报 小情侣被令暂停学
游润恬
上个月某天，一对穿着校服的中学情侣肩并肩乘坐地铁，女的累了，把头靠在男的肩上，男的搂着女的肩。刚好在同一列地铁上的校友见了，悄悄用手机拍下这一幕，把画面通过电邮发给校长。
Article dated 13 Aug 2006
Source: http://www.zaobao.com/sp/sp060813_512.html
The full article is not available online, so I'll give a summary of the article.
On a certain day last month, a student couple from a secondary school, dressed in their school uniforms, sat beside each other onboard an MRT. As the girl was feeling tired, she rested her head on the boy's shoulder, while the boy held her shoulder. An alumnus chanced upon them, and secretly took their photo using a camera-phone, and sent the image to their principal.
The next day, during morning assembly, the principal announced to the school that two students commited a "disgraceful act" in public, and warned other students not to follow suit and spoil the school's reputation.
Although the two students were not named, the news still managed to quickly spread among their classmates. Some of them expressed sympathy, some derided the couple for wearing uniform and desrved to be caught, others were relieved they were not the ones caught and reminded themselves to change out of their uniforms.
The couple were suspended for a day and were made to sit outside the staff office. They were not allowed to go for classes or go home. The school arranged for them to undergo counselling seperately.
The boy, who is in secondary 4 and has a history of poor academic performance, was made to undergo 5 more days of suspension. He also had to promise that he would stop seeing the girl, in front of his parents, or he would not be allowed to sit for his Cambridge O level exams.
The girl is in secondary 3 and has results that were not bad. Her parents were not informed. She abided by the schools's decision and penned a letter of regret. When she went home, she blogged about the incident and added her opinions about the whistle-blower and school authorities. She vented her emotions freely.
I found this piece of news somewhat interesting.Is she actually right in saying that the alumnus behaved like a stalker? Regardless, websites like Haro Singapore and posts like this tell us that you better watch what you do in public. Most people don't want to have pictures of themselves drooling in deep slumber onboard the bus floating around in the Web. Besides being a huge source of embarassment, there is also a question of how far one's private sphere extends into the public sphere. Do you have any legal rights against people who take photos of you in public without your permission? As far as I can tell, so long as they are not doing something like taking upskirt photos, then no. Afterall, we see the reporters taking photos of people all the time, inclusive of those who don't want their photos taken, like the families of victims in accidents or people who are charged in court. Then there is the part of active citizenry. Maybe the alumnus felt he was performing his duty as an old boy.
The punishment meted out by the school, does seem strange. Based on the report, you would feel that the guy was handed a heavier punishment partly because he wasn't as good academically as the girl. On one hand, you could understand the school's intentions. Students who don't perform well should devote more time to studies, rather than spend it on relationships. On the other, I don't see how suspending him for six days is going to help him academically. And barring him from the O levels just seems to be too severe a punishment, although it may just be an empty threat. It could also be an excuse so that he doesn't pull down the school's results.
Studies and relationships can be managed effectively, but many struggle at it. Instead of trying to manage the student's studies and love life, the school should stick to the books and leave the rest to the parents. But sometimes when you want to inform the parents, worse things happen. I guess that's why teaching is so tough.
Tomorrow
The girl's blog
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