Property worth millions of shillings was destroyed on Saturday night after students of Aduku Secondary School in Northern Uganda went on a rampage protesting the decision by the school’s administration to ban mini skirts and tight trousers.
The school’s principal Mr. Patrick Okwir Angulo said the school issued a circular last term that warned students against resizing their school uniform, adding that the decision was made after it emerged that girls were cutting their skirts into miniskirts while boys were resizing their trousers to make them tighter.
The situation is said to have escalated last week after the school administration confiscated all miniskirts and tight trousers as a way of instilling discipline, according to the school’s headmaster.
“During the opening of this term, teachers were deployed at the school gate to check the kind of uniforms students had come with,” Mr. Okwir told Daily Monitor in an interview.
Total Destruction
A night of havoc left the Anglican-founded mixed O and A-level boarding school in shambles. According to the Daily Monitor, at least 100 million shillings worth of school property was destroyed during the strike.
A group of ten male, Senior Three students is reported to have spearheaded other male students into demolishing a 300-meter perimeter wall surrounding the boys’ wing, saying it limited their movement outside the school.
The irate students then proceeded to the school’s computer lab, where they smashed windows and poured sewage water on computers.
They also attempted to break into the girls’ wing by pushing down a concrete fence, but girls refused to join them.
Police and education officers who visited the school on Sunday ordered all 1,300 students to be suspended for two weeks, pending investigations.
The school is expected to hold a joint meeting today between the Parents Teachers Association and Board of Governors to chart the way forward.
Ugandan woman protesting the anti-pornography law. Allafrica.com
Uganda’s ‘Anti-Miniskirt’ Law
In 2013, President Museveni signed an anti-pornography law, which prohibits “indecent” dressing. Proposing the bill in parliament, the then-Minister for Ethics and Integrity Simon Lokodo insisted that women who wore anything above the knee should be arrested.
The law was followed by a spate of protests with hundreds of Ugandan women marching through the streets of Kampala dressed in miniskirts and shorts.
The “miniskirt law,” as Ugandan media like to call it, has led to stripping of women in public by men who accuse them of being “indecent.”
