Good morning, gentlemen.
I asked the headmaster if I could say a few words about discipline generally, and specifically honesty.
We talk a lot at this school about our core values, and there’s a high expectation on you boys from our community – from not just your parents, but also from us as, the staff, as well as from our old boys – that you will all strive really hard to live out the core values of our school and to do your best to live out the promise that you made to us all when you each gave the College pledge. To give a pledge or a promise is an important thing, not made lightly. To give your word, as a young adult, as a College boy, as an Old Collegian, means something, or should mean something, and it also means you must try your very best to live in accordance with that promise.
So let me get back to the topics of discipline and honesty. We are only really two weeks into the year and already Mr Paterson and I and your housemasters have had far too many discipline-related issues to deal with. I’m going to remind you, gentlemen, that the code of conduct has been strengthened over the last two months to give the school power over those College boys who do not toe the line.
Only two weeks ago, a 5th Former was expelled from College by the Department of Education, because he was a regular offender of our code of conduct. On Saturday, at the basketball in this venue, I chatted briefly to a boy who should have been in 6th Form this year. Instead, he was expelled from College last year. No more Red-Black-White for those two boys. No more brotherhood. Don’t be like those two boys. Adhere to our rules, our code of conduct and our privileges, live out our core values and adhere to the pledge that you have made in front of each other.
I am especially worried about the dishonesty that I’m finding amongst some College boys. Some of you, I am very sorry to say, have no shame in lying to each other and in lying to your teachers, or even stealing from each other. You talk of a brotherhood, and you are rightly proud to call yourselves “brothers”, but what kind of brotherhood do you have where you have theft and dishonesty amongst yourselves, including cases where a senior boy is found rummaging in broad daylight through the bag of a junior boy behind his back in the food court!
Let me be very clear. We can condone the odd mistake. We were teenagers once too. But boys who or not living in accordance with the values of this school need to shine up immediately. Boys who steal from each other, boys who commit vandalism, who scrawl graffiti on desks, vape in toilets, lie on their written statements. If you want to live like that, outside of what we stand for as a school, then that’s your free choice.
But my friendly advice to you is that you look to go to a school that is in line with what you believe in and in how you want to live your life. That is not how we operate at Maritzburg College. I’d like to remind you, as I often do, that you attend the oldest and proudest boys’ school in KZN. That comes with obligations and expectations, and if you are not up to it, then there are many other educational establishments for you to attend.
Don’t be the thief, the bully, the cheat, the liar, the vandal. Do the right thing, adhere to your pledge to each other, and live out the core values of our school.
Matthew M Marwick
Senior Deputy Headmaster