HOUSE PUNISHMENT

The boarding House was about discipline - its acquisition and maintenance. Here in the boarding house, you were stripped of your
• parent's wealth, influence, and social background, and reduced to just a surname and a school House. If there were others in the House who had the same surname as you, then you became further downgraded with an extra title; you became Somebody I, Somebody II, Somebody III, Somebody IV, and so on, depending on your position down the line e.g., Koya I (Fifth form), Koya II (Third form) and Koya III (Second form).
It was permitted, even encouraged, for a senior boy to punish any junior boy but the junior boy had the right to be told why he was being punished if the junior boy requested for the reason. Valid reasons would often include: breaking House rules, such as crossing a lawn, or insubordination. If not satisfied with the proffered reason, the junior boy could request for the intervention of other seniors, or of his Teur (House teacher). Thus, a diplomatic means could be found to reduce or quash the punishment and in such a way that the senior boy didn't totally lose face.
A punishment was never permitted to be excessive. Typical punishment included kneeling down on the bare dormitory floor or standing on a table of the Prep room. The objective of the punishment was to elicit remorse and an apology, to instill respect for seniors; and to generally promote harmony and goodwill in the House. Wicked senior boys, while they existed, were few and when such showed up, the boy/Teur family network usually took control of the situation and tried as much as possible to prevent it escalating into an issue which could require the intervention of the Housemaster or the school principal. House punishments were official sanctions by House prefects. A typical punishment might include grass-cutting or toilet-cleaning assignments and may demand that the errand boy be prevented from leaving the school compound on a Saturday, an open-day.
The most prestigious and probably most despised House prefect position was the Confiscator. He had the power to remove the personal effects of errant Classes One to Four students to the Box Room from where they may be redeemed by paying nominal fines into the House coffers or completing a House punishment. The confiscation fines raised money for a House Party at the end of the school year. Students who persisted in disobedience, who persisted in tardiness over their chores and who persisted in carelessness over their physical grooming risked having their mattresses confiscated!
Eventually, every year, new students brought in buckets, clothes, shoes, mattresses to the school, many of which ended up in the Confiscation dungeon, lost amongst a jumble of bric-a-brac. Once at the beginning of the third term, George's mother worriedly with her son in tow, sought his Teur to ask why her son always came home with items she hadn't bought for him. "He lost his own stuff, so the ones he took home were donated to him".
, the bemused lad glibly replied,
quite succeeding in hiding his amusement. The truth was that George's things were hopelessly lost in the mad jumble of effects dumped and abandoned in the box room, some possibly more than ten years old. George had just taken whatever he could find to ensure that his mother did not get angry with him for losing all his belongings as had happened last time he returned home on holidays. Not that the answer satisfied George's mother though. Candidly, she didn't like her son receiving donated clothes from anyone. So, this new term and as would probably happen for the first four years that George spent in the boarding House in GCI, his mother bought fresh clothes and shoes that would also end up in the box room.


Culled from: Metamorphoses, 50th Anniversary Yearbook(1970 Set).