Earl Moxam, Senior Gleaner Writer

Spurred on by last week's death of a student at the school, Jamaica College (JC) is seeking to fast-track the reintroduction of a boarding facility at the institution.

This, according to Ruel Reid, the school's principal, has to be one of the strategic responses to the circumstances which led to one student slaying another during a at the school.

Seventeen-year-old Mortiman Golding died after being knifed by another boy. The tragic incident at the traditional high school for boys has caused significant consternation throughout the society. It has also brought about a renewed focus on social problems crossing over from the home and community into the schools.

It is in that context, Reid discloses, that the school will be vigorously pursuing the boarding option.

a priority

"We are strongly contemplating that, and it is in the pipeline. It is something that we are going to put high on the agenda - to what extent we can have some limited boarding here and any other partners who can also provide boarding for our students," Reid tells The Sunday Gleaner.

Asked to justify what will no doubt be a costly undertaking, the JC principal said that it had to be part of a multifaceted response to the challenge that schools and the society in general faced.

In reference to young men in particular "who lack the necessary support, socialisation and guidance in their lives," he says a well-established boarding service might be the only way to "direct them back to the straight and narrow path".

"We can't have them in school today and send them back to the same circumstances, so we need to take them out of those circumstances and have them in a more clinical environment, so that they will have a different kind of acculturation to enhance their lives and behaviour on a permanent basis," he reasons.

Reid, himself a product of a boarding school, concedes, however, that a new facility at Jamaica College would have to be a special unit, sensitively equipped and staffed to meet the needs of the boys.

Says he: "What we need is a new kind of environment where they have love and care and as normal a life as possible, but in a different context. That has to be the way to go rather than just putting them into an institution, because the institution itself might have its own culture and create another set of problems. We don't want to warehouse them."

The principal acknowledges that setbacks such as last week's slaying of Mortiman Golding have to be addressed. In a swift move following the tragedy, the firm providing security for the school was replaced the following day. There are now more rigorous searches for knives and other weapons, with metal detectors being used extensively.