Rastafarian SHS brouhaha: what if tomorrow a male child comes in and says I identify as a female so allow me into a female house

The Vice-President of the Old Students Association of Achimota School, Joel Nettey has caution the country against reducing the ongoing discussions about the admission of the Rastafarian into Senior High Schools in the country into just hair styles.

According to him, the issues go beyond just their hair and culture adding allowing them would mean opening the flood gate to ridiculous demands by students.

He explained rules and regulations were to guide some of these things and provide level playing field in which children could thrive academically, irrespective of cultural, financial, religious background etc and any attempts to derail them would be dire.

“What if tomorrow some child comes in and says I am a male child but I identified as a girl child so I want to move into Kingsley House, a girl’s house, how do you stop this, the guy genuinely says he identify as female so he has walked into female bathroom, how do you stop this, and that is why it is important you have rules.

‘“……to just change them because one or two individuals say my culture says I should do this and so therefore if you don’t let me in, you are infringing on my right, let be careful because once you open that flood gate you are actually opening it to almost ridiculous demands from students of that age who are really seeking their own pleasure in some cases and that their right”.

Mr Nettey was speaking on AM show on JoyNews on Tuesday, March 23 and monitored by GhanaPlus.com.

The former student of the school noted dealing with teenagers could be very difficult sometimes and such rules and regulations were to curb their excesses.

“We are dealing here not with adult but teenagers and we have all been teenager and we know that if we don’t have rule that guides what people do they will come up with all kinds of stories”.

He noted Achimota school was what it was today because of those rules and regulations and would be inappropriate to change them just to satisfy one or two people.

He, however, noted the development could change in the future with proper conversations involving all stakeholders.

” if with time the rules need to be modified, so be it and we are happy to have a debate to see how best to change this rules,” he said.