KOCHI: A prominent school near Erattupetta in Kottayam district of Kerala has decided to change the new uniform of a section of its girl students on Monday following a controversy over its design sparked by a viral Facebook post that called it ‘vulgar’.
According to the Parent-Teacher Association (PTA) of St Alphonsa Public School, Aruvithura in Erattupetta, they are now altering the uniform for girls from classes 5 to 10, as the students are disturbed over the incident. Nearly 350 girls will now wear an overcoat instead of the ‘controversial half jacket’ that caused the outrage. The school will bear the expenses of the new outfit.
It all started with the Facebook post of a photographer, Zacharia Ponkunnam. He posted an image of three girls in a uniform that looked like that of St Alphonsa Public School, Aruvithura on his Facebook wall, commenting that the outfit had an obscene design. The post went viral and around 5,000 people had shared it in just a day. Later, a person named Noushad Thekkayil from far-away Kozhikode (it is over 200 km away from Kottayam) filed a complaint against the school authorities with the State Child Rights Commission over the ‘inappropriateness’ of the uniform.
“We have not done any wrong. It was the PTA that selected the design and got it stitched three months ago. We have not received any complaints from the parents regarding the uniform till now. However, we are all worried about the controversy and the children are upset. So we have decided to make a change to the uniform,” PTA president Sabu Cyriac told Express after a meeting in which the decision was taken. He also claimed that the photo that had gone viral had been “photo-shopped” that the uniform seen it was in no way similar to the original outfit.
The school authorities have lodged a complaint with the police with regard to defamatory campaigns against the 25-year-old school. There are 1,700 students on the rolls of the school from LKG to Plus Two. The management of the school will also file a complaint with the Kerala Women’s Commission (KWC).
The PTA president said they had chosen the design from a booklet that illustrated various types of uniforms, and that they school had produced the fabric for it in bulk and got it stitched for all the students from class 5 to 10.
