A Message from our Principal

We had a wonderful night last Friday at the ‘Night in Venice’ (aka the Student Union Building!) with our year 12 and 13 students at their Senior Formal. One of the truly special aspects of working in a co-ed school like Trinity, is the respect and true friendship between our young men and women. There is no ‘stand-offishness’, no awkwardness and no partners left alone while boys or girls get together in their ‘cliques’, which can happen at other schools. Thank you to the Formal Committee very ably led by Mila Stace, and to the key staff involved with the Formal organisation, particularly Year 13 Dean, Erica Ward. If staff thoroughly enjoy their evening without any stress, then it has definitely gone well!

I am the Dunedin Secondary School Principals’ representative on the newly formed Inner City Safety Advisory Group which has begun to look at how the environment in the inner city and around the bus hub area can be improved and become a more positive, safe, environment for our young people spending time there. As part of this work, another member of this group (the Chair of the Dunedin Student Council) and I, surveyed students across Dunedin to ask them about their experiences in the inner city. With over 1300 responses (approximately 23% of Dunedin students) from all but one high school, it was very disheartening to find in summary, that our young women feel the most unsafe in the inner city due to disrespectful behaviour. I would go as far to say that some experiences described in the survey are bordering on sexual harassment and assault from males. From our data gathering, only 4% of female students ‘always feel safe’ in the inner city compared to 18% of male students. While 18% of males is also disappointingly low, having only 4 out of every 100 girls feeling confidently safe when they are in the inner city is appalling. In light of my above comments about the formal, again I think that co-ed schools do a good job in this area, and we are well supported by our college families to do so. Our boys and girls are generally very respectful towards each other. Our girls know what respectful male behaviour looks like and they can be confident around good young men. Our boys know what is right and, compared to what happens in other schools, the incidents of fights and physical altercations among our boys is incredibly low; in fact, only one has made its way to senior leadership this year, and ironically the perpetrator was a new student who transferred to Trinity from a boys’ school.

We always have work to do. Consent is a huge issue, and I often am dismayed that respect for women appears to have been eroded over the last ten years through easy access to pornography and even very sexualised music videos. Positive, respectful relationships and genuine friendships between students of different genders is paramount to creating a society that will look after the vulnerable and call out unjust and disrespectful sexualised behaviour where one’s innate dignity is not valued. After all, we are all created in the image and likeness of God – Respect, Service, Justice and Truth all need to be part of this.