Dear Uncle Rupert,
Life in boarding school really sucks at the moment. When Malcolm become House Captain, we thought that would be enough to make everybody happy, but no. First there was all that trouble when people wanted to choose their own bunk partners, but the Chaplain said that such a thing was unnatural and Malcolm said he didn’t see anything wrong with it and Tony had planned to have a vote on it, so why don’t we have a vote about it, because that’s what we said we’d do. But in the end there was no vote, so it just caused a lot of trouble for nothing.
And then the other week, we had trouble with the House Penalties And Punishments Group. You remember how some boys from others school came here and asked if they could join our school because they were being bullied at their own school, and how we fixed it by grabbing any that even came near our school and locking them up in the boat sheds? And how some of the boarders said that they thought this was against school rules, even though we pointed out that the boat sheds aren’t on school property? Well, these boys were going to get the House Penalties And Punishments Group to rule on whether we had to pay the people in the boat sheds something because of all the things that had happened to them while they were there. We said that this shouldn’t happen, because we’d made a rule that nobody who’d been to the boat sheds could reveal anything about what they’d seen, but the House Penalties And Punishments Group said that they wanted to hear what had happened and that they had the power to exempt people from this rule. Anyway, we don’t want people using this as an opportunity to tell everyone how bad it is in the boat sheds, so we agreed to give them some money, if only they’d promise not to insist that the House Penalties And Punishments Group listen to what they had to say.
Of course, all the prefects here were really cross about this, particularly Peter who doesn’t like anybody talking about the boat sheds unless it’s him. He likes to tell people that it’s a big deterrent to people coming here, but he doesn’t making it an even bigger deterrent by pointing out exactly what’s happening there.
But he wasn’t the only cross one, so when a few people on the House Penalties And Punishments Group were deciding whether the correct decision was made when one of the naughty boys only got gated for seven weekends when we all thought that he should have been given a caning and sent to the boat sheds, some of the prefects were saying things like:
“Just who do the House Penalties And Punishments Group think that they are. I mean, we were elected as prefects so we should be in charge of everything and we shouldn’t be stopped from doing things just because the school rules forbid it!”
AND
“The House Penalties And Punishments Group are a group of people who have no respect for the school and are trying to destroy it and I’d like to give them all a wedgie!”
AND
“If they don’t do what we want, we should sneak in and short-sheet their beds!”
Well, Uncle Rupert, you won’t believe what happened next. Apparently there’s a silly rule that you can’t tell the House Penalties And Punishments Group what to do while they’re in the process of making a decision even if you’re a prefect. Something to do with intimidating them and trying to “unduly influence” their decisions. And Greg, Michael and Alan were asked to go and see the Group and explain why they were making comments like that. Naturally, they were too busy being prefects and sent someone else along to explain how prefects were allowed to tell them what to do, because, well, prefects are born to rule and the House Penalties And Punishments Group shouldn’t just enforce the rules, they should do exactly what the prefects want.
So can you please come down to the school and set everyone straight? Remind them that really you’re in charge and when you’re not around, you’d like everyone to simple do what we say, because you were the one who told everyone to vote for us and we’re the prefects that do what you want without question, unlike the other students who only do it sometimes? Or those prefects from Green House who never do what you want unless Richard does it before the others have a chance to object.
I know it’s a lot to ask, but it’s really a mess here at the moment. Tony is still sulking about losing the Head Prefect job to Malcolm and Andrew keeps writing horrid stories in the school newsletter about what a terrible job Malcolm’s doing which is true but nobody wants Tony back and we need you to tell Andrew to wait until we’ve worked out whether we’re going to replace Malcolm with Peter or Scott before he writes anything. Can you tell Andrew to stick to writing about how the Green House doesn’t exist and anybody who thinks that they’re living in it is just fooled by the people who hate the school?
Please, Uncle Rupert, we’re not managing very well on our own.
Yours faithfully,
Christopher.
