In 2000/2001, I was the captaen scoile at Coláiste Íosagáin, the head girl, a role bestowed onto a student who was nerdy enough for the teachers and popular enough for the students. What’s slightly tricky to understand about Coláiste Eoin and Coláiste Íosagáin, secondary schools on the Stillorgan Road in Dublin, is that they are both linked and separate. The schools are on the same grounds, they share facilities and sometimes teachers, and for the Leaving Certificate cycle, some classes are mixed. As a joined entity, it’s unique in many ways among the hothouses of south Co Dublin schools. It is non-fee-paying, it is a Gaelscoil, and – shock horror – boys and girls get to mix just like we do in the real world. These are all positive things. And certainly when I was a pupil, the diversity of the school body was wide, and students came from all over Dublin, Wicklow and sometimes further.
Both schools consistently rank as among the best in the country. Year in, year out, close to 100 per cent of the Leaving Cert year goes on to university. Academic excellence is par for the course, and both schools excel at sport and music. Coláiste Eoin and Coláiste Íosagáin just don’t do bad press.
PR disaster
So I can’t imagine the scrambling that happened this week when Coláiste Eoin hit the news for all the wrong reasons. A group called Shout Out, which runs anti-homophobic bullying workshops in schools, was trying to figure out why a scheduled workshop with transition-year students was suddenly pulled.
They had successfully run workshops in the school before. Shout Out said the workshop leader was already at the school when it was cancelled, and was told “the board of management had decided that both sides of the argument should be given”.
What followed was a PR disaster for Coláiste Eoin, which failed to communicate effectively and immediately with pretty much everyone who wanted information, most importantly Shout Out and the media. The “both sides” term was certainly bad phraseology. As the RTÉ broadcaster Philip Boucher-Hayes tweeted, “I don’t know what Coláiste Eoin’s difficulty is. Surely there’s no shortage of homophobic bullies.” You can’t blame a school for not having the PR chops of a corporate entity, but in this day and age news travels fast. A slight whiff of controversy and things start to gallop towards the horizon before your feet have even locked into the stirrups.
There is, of course, no other side to bullying, whatever type of bullying it is. In the run-up to the referendum on marriage equality, these are heightened times. On Morning Ireland on RTÉ on Wednesday, Declan Meehan of Shout Out said, "We don't want to politicise something that is aimed at improving the school experience for all people".
It’s worth pointing out that homophobic bullying – and you hear the word “faggot” chime out from every boys’ school in the land – is not just used against those perceived to be gay but against anyone a bit different. For many teenagers “gay”has become a pejorative term. The Department of Education recognises this fact and has guidelines that pay particular attention to compelling schools to tackle identity-based bullying.
Tolerance
Coláiste Eoin’s statement laid the blame at concerns from some parents. It also said it is proposed to invite Shout Out to make its presentation at a future date: “The Board of Management has received written communications from a number of parents outlining their concerns regarding the workshop. In this context it was incumbent on the board to address all issues and to seek the advice available from Catholic management representative bodies available to secondary schools.”
I believe the Coláiste Eoin statement, because I know the school to be a place of tolerance, but you can’t account for the opinions and interventions of parents. If a parent objects to their son or daughter taking part in such a workshop, then presumably they could ask for them to be excluded. That’s their prerogative. Let everyone else get on with it.
What is wholly unfair is scuppering the entire thing because of their own personal views on the matter.
A child’s time in school can be destroyed by bullying, and any parent that stands in the way of combating that needs to seriously examine their rationale. If parents are genuinely perturbed by the idea of anti-homophobic bullying initiatives, then perhaps they too would benefit from a workshop.