39-year-old Wiremu Ropata was the new principal at Te Arawa College. He was a medium built Maori man, recently divorced with two teenaged children, both who attended a school in another town. He was looking forward to his first principal’s role after having been a high school teacher now for 18 years.
The last few weeks had been spent becoming familiar with the current systems in place, meeting the staff and finding out about the students. They had warned him about Rex Cassidy. Every teacher had something to say about him. Some said good things and others said bad things. In a meeting with his new staff at the end of the previous week, 59-year-old, Mr Knot, a Biology teacher was the most outspoken against the lad. ‘He’s bad news. We had this discussion repeatedly with Andrews, the previous principal. But he was hopeless, he never did a thing!’
‘His hands were tied,’ Mr Reaper said. ‘There was nothing he could do.’
‘He was a wimp!’ Mr Knot declared. ‘He wouldn’t stand up to the board.’
‘Well I don’t blame him,’ said Miss Patterson, a rather butch 32-year-old PE teacher. ‘He’d gone through the same thing at his previous school and got fired for it. He certainly didn’t want that to happen again.’
‘Well it was obvious the man had no business being in education in the first place,’ said 34-year-old Mrs Tantic, a Maths teacher. ‘Especially not after the horrible events of last term.’
There were murmurs of agreement.
Mr Day, the middle-aged deputy principal, spoke, ‘Really, this is getting very tiresome. This school went through many legal issues last time they tried to get rid of that boy and it was a costly, not to mention embarrassing affair for the school. And with all the money his parents donate, we can’t afford to lose their support.’
Other teachers agreed.
‘I’m concerned about that,’ Mr Ropata acknowledged. ‘It seems that the school has over the last six months or so committed itself to long term projects that without this grant money could be in major danger of collapse.’
‘That’s Mr Andrews again,’ grumbled Mrs Tantic. ‘He had no idea about how to handle such large sums of money. He was under continuous pressure to allocate funds to these projects and now we have no choice but to keep channelling this money into them.’
‘That’s my point exactly,’ Ropata grumbled. ‘So, what you’re telling me is if we get rid of this boy… Rex, then we lose all that funding. Isn’t that the case?’
‘Yes.’
‘We end up with projects that need funding that we can’t finance.’
‘Exactly.’
‘Then we don’t have much choice but to keep him on here.’
‘But what do we do?’ Mr Knot complained. ‘We’ve tried everything.’
‘I’m not sure. I’m going to have to give this some thought. I…’
‘Gordon Bennett!’ one of the teachers who had remained silent for so long, finally spoke. He was the wild-eyed head of the PE department, 40-year-old Mr Harris. ‘This is ridiculous. All you have to do is avoid treating the boy like he’s some punk kid…’
‘But he is a punk kid!’ growled Mr Knot.
‘And get yourself some decent teaching skills too!’ he said in his thick English accent.
‘How dare you! How…’
‘Gentlemen, calm down,’ Mr Ropata ordered. ‘Let’s not get into insult slinging here…’
‘But this is the thing!’ Mr Harris declared, his scruffy hair and goatee making him look rather uncivilized. ‘You need to earn their respect. Treating them like they are bunch of delinquents is not going to hel…’
‘You treat yours like they’re a bunch of delinquents!’ Knot retaliated. ‘You treat them like they’re in Boot Camp!’
‘Delinquents don’t go to Boot Camp except on US reality shows!’ Harris said. ‘Boot Camp is for young adults, men who are there to be taught discipline and valuable skills. My students are young men needing the same thing. That’s the way I treat them. If I treated them like kids, they’d be sitting in one of your Biology classes, playing with toys!’
The grey-headed biology teacher scowled. ‘How dare you! My students don’t play with toys. They utilise scientific equipment!’
‘Get down off your high horse, Knot and maybe you’d get some respect from your students. Try it.’
Mr Ropata intervened again, ‘Mr Harris, I’d like to know why you’ve done nothing to sort this boy out yourself. It says in my records that when Rex came to this school, the principal at the time; Mr Carroll put you in charge of his discipline.’
Harris snorted. ‘I am yet to see any offence that warrants punishment.’
‘What?’ scoffed Knot. ‘Fighting? Disrespect to teachers, inappropriate behaviour with members of the opposite sex, disrupting the class. None of those things deserve discipline of any kind?’
‘Give me a break! If he fights, there’s a good reason. As far as inappropriate behaviour when it comes to the girls, that’s just absurd. What right have we got to dictate how he should conduct his relationships with his friends? One thing’s for sure the girls involved have no problem with the way he interacts with them. None whatsoever!’
‘What about disrespect? Disruption of classes?’
‘Pah! That just goes back to my original argument. You need to establish respect if you want respect in return. This isn’t a problem if you know how to treat them. What do you want me to do, conduct a few lessons on how to earn a student’s respect? If you’d like I can, but it won’t be Rex who needs to attend them, he has no problems getting respect from the other students.’
Knot snarled, ‘I’m not going to listen to this! You are way out of li…’
Mr Ropata had had enough. ‘You are both out of line!’ He knew it was time to step in and get some order here. He couldn’t allow his staff to dictate the meeting and had to show his leadership. ‘You both raise valid points. I acknowledge that. Nevertheless, Mr Harris is right about one thing. It’s about establishing respect. I’ve seen so many students cause their teachers grief because they get treated like primary school kids. Now in no way am I suggesting any of you are doing that here, however, it’s something to think about, if you want to establish good discipline in your classes. Anyway, I’m not just going to expel this boy - not that I can anyway. We need to set some strategies in place. I’d like to meet this boy and see what he’s like for myself. I think tempers are a little frayed here, so we’ll bring this meeting to an end. I’ll see you all on Monday morning bright and early.’
Mr Ropata didn’t expect that he would be meeting Rex Cassidy so soon, but come 8:50am on Monday morning he did just that. Two boys had been brought to his office for a skirmish inside one of the locker blocks. One was Luke Shirley, the other Rex.
Ropata was not happy about having to deal with a problem like this only minutes before the start of the school day, nevertheless, he didn’t want to leave it until later either. Ten minutes was surely enough time to deal with the problem, but he hadn’t known it was Rex until after he’d agreed to deal with the two of them.
He had both their student records on his computer. Rex’s, he was already familiar with. He’d studied it in great depth over the last few weeks. Luke’s, he had only just glanced at once or twice, but it was quite large too, considering he’d only been at the school since October last year. He was dealing with the tough nuts here. It was two teachers the previous week, now it was two students.
He studied both boys carefully. Rex was immaculately dressed, not a hair out of place. How he’d managed to stay so tidy after only a few minutes earlier being involved in an altercation, was impressive. The boy leaned back in his chair, his legs stretched out, feet crossed over and arms folded. His bright blue eyes sparkled mischievously, as if he was looking forward to what was coming next. Ropata could almost picture James Bond sitting there, just having escaped death ten times over, still looking suave and relaxing over a Martini - shaken not stirred.
Luke was a different story all together. His red hair was a mess, hi
s face bruised and the school nurse had bandaged up his right fist. He wasn’t wearing a uniform shirt, because it had gotten soaked somehow and he had been lent a different one from Lost Property. Ropata had been told he’d gotten wet in the boys’ toilets, but how exactly, he didn’t know.
‘Now what the heck is this all about?’ Ropata asked them both. ‘I understand the two of you had some kind of altercation in the boys’ toilets?’
Luke was about to speak but Rex beat him to it. ‘Well Mr R, it was like this see? We both happened to be in there at the same time and well, I have to say, Luke’s toilet etiquette just wasn’t up to scratch. There’s one rule that you never break when you’re standing at the urinal. You keep your eyes straight ahead and you never talk to the guy next to you. I mean, everybody knows that, right? But he didn’t just start talking. He started looking too. Now this school is Te Arawa College, not Brokeback Mountain College, so I just had to teach the guy some lessons in decorum.’
Mr Ropata tried to hide his amusement. They were right about this boy. He really was a quick thinker. He might even be tempted to believe the story if the boy’s manner hadn’t been so facetious.
Luke was far from amused though and his eyes were full of bitterness. ‘That’s a load of crap, Cassidy! You assaulted me. I did nothing! You bashed me about. Look what he did to my hand?’ He held it in the air. ‘The school nurse reckons I fractured a knuckle. It hurts like hell, but that’s nothing to what he tried to do to me after that. He tried to drown me! He tried to kill me!’
‘Give me a break!’ scoffed Rex. ‘Give me some credit. If I had wanted to kill you, I would have succeeded. I wouldn’t have done such a half-arsed job.’
‘See? He even admits it! Go on, Cassidy admit you shoved my head down that bog!’
‘Oh yeah, Luke,’ Rex suddenly sounded very apologetic. ‘You know I made a mistake then. It’s just that I thought that’s what you were supposed to do with pieces of shit.’
Luke made an angry lunge for Rex, but the likeable rogue was way too fast. He rocked his chair back the last moment and Luke went tumbling over his feet, face first to the ground. Rex clicked his tongue a few times as he rose to his feet and planted his foot down on his back, pinning him there. Luke tried to wriggle out, but Rex just shoved his foot down even harder causing Luke to cry out in pain.
‘Boys!’ Mr Ropata stood to his feet, unable to believe what he was witnessing. ‘I don’t believe this! What the hell are you two playing at?’
‘Relax Mr R.’ Rex smiled, grinding his foot even further into a nerve in Luke’s spine causing him to scream out again. Mr Ropata realised that Rex must have some real knowledge of the human body to be able incapacitate Luke in such a manner. The unfortunate redhead gave up the struggle and remained still this time. Rex smiled. ‘We’ll let him just rest down there for a while, shall we? Let’s let him dream up some more BS to tell the new principal.’
Mr Ropata nearly laughed. ‘You’re a fine one to talk about BS.’ He liked this boy’s style. He was very good and Ropata had very little sympathy for Luke who had no charm whatsoever. He was just a nasty little brute. If he were going to believe any of these two boys’ stories, he’d more likely believe Rex’s.
‘You’re too kind Mr R, too kind. I knew you wouldn’t buy the Brokeback Mountain story. I just thought Luke here might get a kick out of it, that’s all.’ He sat back down, swung both his feet up and landed them back down on Luke’s back, crisscrossed. Luke grunted and squirmed in agony.
‘So, come on, Rex,’ Mr Ropata said calmly. ‘What got you so riled up? You don’t strike me as the type of guy who loses his temper too often.’
‘No, but when someone offends my friends…’
‘Mmmm. Yes, well I can understand that. However, I really need to know the full story. In what way did he offend one of your friends?’
‘Maybe old Surly here should be the one to explain that,’ Rex said.
‘You broke my knuckle!’ Luke’s face remained planted on the floor. It seemed the boy had given up the struggle now, not wishing to get another foot to the nerve on his back.
‘I find that hard to believe,’ Mr Ropata said. ‘How does someone else break another person’s knuckle? The only way that’s going to happen is if the person with the injury attempted a swing that knuckle at something and came off worse. Judging by the lack of bruises on Rex’s face, I’d warrant you took a swing, but hit something else. Perhaps a wall?’
Luke didn’t reply.
He took Luke’s lack of dialogue as an admission of guilt. ‘Mmmm. I thought as much. Rex, is it safe to assume that a girl was involved in all this?’
‘Yes, it would be safe.’
‘Ahha. I think I see what might have happened. Luke, your file describes many offences against female students. Inappropriate comments, even the occasional acts of sexual harassment. I’m guessing this is another such incident here, in which case I don’t think there’s any point in pursuing this issue further. I think justice has been served.’
‘He tried to drown me!’ Luke protested from the floor.
‘I doubt that very much, Luke. I’m more inclined to believe he was just trying to humiliate you. I don’t think we need to prolong this meeting any longer. It’s now past nine and we have an assembly to get underway. You’d better let him up now, Rex.’
‘No worries, Mr R.’ Rex lifted his feet off Luke and plonked them back on the floor. Luke slowly and painfully climbed to his feet.
‘Now you boys get to the assembly hall. I don’t want anymore trouble out of you two.’
‘Yes sir,’ Rex said.
Luke just grunted.
Mr Ropata watched as the two boys left. He chuckled. He could definitely see what the teachers were talking about now when it came to Rex. It was going to be a very interesting year…