After Kinnan posted his Obituary on this blog, the School Management and the Head took it upon themselves to take him into an office and ask him to leave the school prematurely and not to return. In that meeting, the school management cited what their problems with the blog, especially the Obituary, were. These included:
- The vulgar language used in articles.
- The fictionalisation and open mocking of the school and the management
- The bad publicity it was causing the school.
- The anonymity of the authors.
- The defamatory remarks about the way the school went about its business.
We would like to address all these concerns, to build a more cohesive and appeasing blog, that still fulfils its purposes. Point by point, this is how we are changing to hopefully ease the friction:
- We have now censored all articles, and promise to withhold any swearing in future articles. However, we have to question the Head's opinions on swearing, as, despite condemning swearing on this blog, he defended the school for showing the Sachsgate Scandal to GCSE students, which is hardly lacking in vulgar diction, and the school were heavily lambasted for by the national press. Read more about this by clicking this link.
- We are not going to stop satirising the wrongdoings of the school, because otherwise this blog would be one big rant on what's wrong in the school, which would be as dry as the canteen food. However, we have placed a disclaimer at the base of every article, that states whether it is a spoof, and not to be taken as the truth, a satirical article, that uses fictitious devices to glean humour from the misgivings of the school, or a critical article, that is serious and factual.
- We are only causing the school bad publicity because we are pointing out the truth of Hampstead School; that it is not the same school as the perfect palace of learning that the head makes it out to be with banners, posters and websites that all carry a heavy price-tag. We will cause bad publicity by default as long as the school is not performing without fault.
- We would love to remove our masks, like Kinnan did, but, alas, look what happened to him. Quite frankly, the school management cannot be trusted enough for us to give up our names. They said to Kinnan in that office that they could have talked things over on a level playing field with us if they knew who we are, but, unfortunately, our inherent cynicism dictates that rather than talk to us, they would have thrown us out and done everything in their power to taint our careers. Until we have a contractual promise from them that no harm to us or our careers will come of us felling our cape of anonymity, we shall not budge on that matter. Sorry.
- As we have already said, we have censored and grouped the articles, so that it is abundantly clear what the intentions of each and every article are, and that our bad publicity was as a result of their bad management. Again, we have only been reporting on things that have happened, which is perhaps the reason the meeting with Kinnan took place in a private office. In fact, we're pretty sure quite a few of the papers would be interested in a story about a student being expelled for voicing his opinions on his education, and we're also sure that UNICEF would be more than pleased to hear that one of their Rights Respecting Schools, an award Hampstead covets over many others, has expelled a student after he exercised his rights, after they had been breached by the school on many other occasions.
