Parents fail over airport incident

THE rowers from St Bede's are just following in the illustrious steps of old boy Gerry Brownlee in not expecting consequences when they hopped on the baggage conveyor at Auckland Airport.

Rules are to be broken and if you break them you will get away with it because rules are for other people. The old boy of St Bede's and Minister of Transport Mr Brownlee set the bar low when he breached airport rules and bypassed security at Christchurch Airport to board a domestic flight in July.

In the controversy this week, St Bede's ruled the rowers should be sent home for the breach of airport security. However a High Court injunction allowed the rowers to stay and compete in the national secondary school champs, the Maadi Cup at Lake Karapiro, Cambridge.

To be fair, it's not the rowers who lawyered up and managed to wriggle out of the repercussions laid out by the school and its principled principal.

It's the parents.

The parents argued the punishment didn't fit the crime and all the boys' hard work would be lost. The school argued the students, aged 16 and 17, were in breach of the school's code of conduct, which had been signed by all the boys on the trip.

There is no doubt it was a matter for the school to resolve. It was a school team in a school competition.

One rule for all has never applied to some people, and this is a prime example of it. Money and a burning sense of entitlement give them a get-out-of-jail card.

St Bede's mission is to "help each boy develop fully by faith and by works." It's not the school that's failed the students here.