Under the guise of morality

Are We There Yet?

Under the guise of morality

By Bong Austero

St. Theresa’s College in Cebu City openly defied a court order requiring it to allow students to attend their graduation ceremonies last Friday. The students were being punished by the school for allegedly engaging in lewd and indecent behavior as evidenced by pictures posted in their Facebook accounts. The pictures were supposedly taken during various family outings and showed the girls in bikinis, doing dirty dancing, and holding cigarettes and alcoholic beverages. School administrators who were outraged by the pictures allegedly berated the students in public calling them “sluts,” “cheap,” and “drug addicts.”

Thank you to the example set by Secretary Leila de Lima of the Department of Justice when she openly defied a restraining court issued by no less than the Supreme Court, everyone is now emboldened not to obey a court order by citing a mere technicality.

Of course the school officials of STC did not refer to de Lima directly, but anyone could see where they got the inspiration. Like de Lima, the STC nuns virtually proclaimed that they were responding to a higher moral order. Their lawyer chose to hide behind some legal gobbledygook, but the posture of the nuns and their intent to stand their ground was very clear when they said that they did not allow the girls to attend the graduation ceremonies despite the court order because that would have meant that they “have already exonerated the girls.” In short, they deliberately and willfully did not intend to obey the court order.

In the meantime, the girls have to suffer the stigma and the negative brand for the rest of their lives just because of a few pictures that may have been done for “fun.” Oh believe me, kids today have a much different conception of what fun and pranks mean and are capable of doing and staging all kinds of poses for the sake of looking outrageous in pictures. It’s a generational thing; I’ve seen far worse in various Facebook accounts of students.

In fact, there’s a similar incident involving another Catholic school in Marikina. School officials of the Infant Jesus Academy in Marikina City did not allow six boys to join their graduation rites because they posted pictures of themselves, also in Facebook, that looked like they were kissing each other. The boys have explained that they were just pulling a prank and that they were just having fun. Yeah, it’s truly more fun in the Philippines but apparently the memo has not reached the administrators of Catholic schools.

I am aghast that school officials have the audacity to cite “morality” as the reason why they mete out sanctions that harm students psychologically and traumatize them for the rest of their lives - minors who have been entrusted in their care for years! In the case of the girls in STC in Cebu, they were subjected to verbal abuse and a lifetime of stigma! Where is the morality in that? And horror of all horrors, Jose Palma, the Archbishop of Cebu who also happens to be President of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines, has publicly sided with the school officials and blamed the parents of the girls for seeking legal remedies! Palma said that the parents and the girls should have meekly accepted the fact that their rights were trampled upon by uncaring school authorities wielding the worst kind of moral fascism because these were directed at minors! These officials labeled the girls “sluts,” “cheap,” and “drug addicts”; what, pray, do they call themselves—the people who educated these girls? And whatever happened to the much-vaunted Catholic teachings of forgiveness and charity? It is ironic that a staple parable of the Catholic faith, that of the prodigal son, is discussed heavily in this season of Lent.

Did the school violate the rights to privacy of the students who posted the pictures in their Facebook accounts? This is an issue that we will have to grapple with as kids turn to social networking sites as main tool for expression and communication. Like I said, there are a lot of generational issues that ride with the social networking phenomenon that we must understand before we make judgments about kids today. Punishing them outright using outmoded standards just does not sound moral—or right.