THE destruction of a human being, especially a young person, through posting the most degrading and, for that age, forbidden sexual indulgence on social media should merit severe punishment for the architects.

This is not the normal prank, but the work of a group, or single perpetrator, in the arrogant confidence that they will be protected. Or, worse yet, their own self-esteem torn to shreds, possibly males unsure of their own gender loyalty, or females raised as Liliths, the type that the ‘Hip Hop’ culture refers to as ‘Bitch’ [not my invention].
We need a ‘Boot Camp’ for those who posted that video of that student [and others] in a compromising sexual act on Facebook. I’m no saint or hypocrite. From around 15 years old, I was like most males: Always in love, and became a father early, though completely unprepared for the consequences. But our private business was always that: Private.
This will happen again, because our society is pretentious and hypocritical, in a world that is ever evolving around us. And we continue to look at who is looking before we do the right thing, or hope that if it is ignored it will go away.
Let me elaborate on what I mean. During the period of the insurrection, prompted by extrajudicial killings of 2002-6, while mothers were weeping for their missing sons, some well-to-do ladies conducted a flag-waving protest of sorts, using a headscarf, to be precise.
I spoke to one of its leaders; a media bosslady, encouraging her and her group to take a position for, and against, what was obviously the truth of the matter.

PEACE, NOT JUSTICE
She replied that they would do no such thing; that they would just wave in protest against what was happening and not against what had caused it. This, to me, was a phenomenal society position; peace, and not justice, was the objective.
I do need to emphasise by sharing two other examples. Four years ago, I bought two DVDs from a busy salesman. This is a guy I think could sell anything. The DVDs were named ‘Guyanese Girls Gone Wild’. After going through the first few minutes, I decided to talk to some people: One in law enforcement, another in education, and yet another, a female, in the media.
Through my interaction with them, I would learn that we have no laws to deal with most of the destructive social impediments invading our population space; and that when they are enacted, we don’t enforce them.
The media person said that it would require too many investigations, and that enough was happening with the drugs business and the PPP back then to keep her fully occupied. The ‘buddy’ in Education just didn’t know how, or what, to do about it.
Another excellent example is when, in 1997, I negotiated with the UNICEF to do a comic book on AIDS. Madam Gail Texeira was Minister of Health back then, and Dr Sarah Gordon was at the now defunct GAHEF (Guyana Agency for Health Sciences Education, Environment and Food Policy). Olufemi at UNICEF was ready to run with the project, and the relevant approvals were granted. The book was published in 1998, and an illustrated Guyanese story was supposed to be out there.
More than two years later, a friend turned up at my home with four of these books, in mint condition. Apparently, he had gone to the Ministry of Education on contract business, and was left alone waiting on his rendezvous. He peeked into a room and saw these books; apparently, one pack was broken, so he picked up a few exposed books, saw the graphics, and his friend’s name on the indicia and took four copies.
No one seemed to care! The books were never distributed, because somebody possibly thought that the graphics were dealing with explicit sexual content, without considering how else would one deal graphically with a sexually transmitted disease.
Today, we have 7000 [recorded] Guyanese living with AIDS, possibly because of false values, which needed to be shaken into awareness.
MORE TO IT
Now, to the current discourse. Don’t be quick to castigate this juvenile student’s home environment; there’s much more to it than meets the eye, including illegal substances, which are like an invasive species having a field day, because our laws have not expanded to deal with new substances, and our education-information services refuse to deal with the problem aggressively.
I have approached quite a few authorities on the mater, but to no avail. From marijuana, to ecstasy, to cocaine mutations, all of it is everywhere! On Monday morning, while travelling in a car, I heard a radio host discussing youth problems with a male. Her concern struck me as being sincere. This was HJ Radio. I was later told that she was an old student of the school at reference. The irony is that not so long ago, the TV part of that group had a Jamaican artiste doing a cover tune of Peter Tosh’s ‘Legalise it’, smoking a marijuana spliff and blowing its smoke all over the advertising screen and into the pregnable minds of prime-time TV viewership, including our young.
I want to go back to the recent past, August 2016, to a letter to the press by Nichole Williams; her comments were outrage at the Alkaline show.
Nichole related, “Both in the VIP section and prominently within the general section were many children at a concert at the National Park at 12:30am, with adults whom I presume were their parents and guardians.”
But, what could have caused this outrage? Surely not a one-time beyond-bedtime outing to listen to a Reggae artiste?
The next paragraph explained, “Then, knowing the highly x-rated, drug-related and violent content of Alkaline’s music, one then asks: Is this what we voluntarily expose our children to?”
The problem is a two-decade breakdown of values, where the line betwixt logical proper, not pretentious, and the indecent was smudged. Within this time period, a damaged generation became parents.
Only laws can make distinctions and reinforce concepts about choices. The other factor is the lack of support activities in our schools. There, again, the arts beckons, as, in the absence of stimulating the imagination intellectually, the peer pressure of the negative is always inviting.
Let’s see ourselves in this episode, featuring another school. We then do nothing, and brace ourselves for the next; as the philosopher explained, “The gates of hell are opened wide, and the descent smooth.” And this is only what the public knows.