Court issues TRO to let Cebu students graduate

CEBU CITY—A court on Thursday ordered a Catholic school here to allow two high school students to take part in graduation rites after school authorities barred the students from attending graduation ceremonies for posting pictures on their Facebook accounts showing them in bikinis and one of them holding a liquor bottle and a cigarette stick.

The Regional Trial Court ordered St. Theresa’s College to allow the 16-year-olds to attend graduation ceremonies today, acting on a petition by their parents.

In his ruling, Judge Wilfredo Navarro, of Regional Trial Court Branch 19, also ordered St. Theresa’s to “treat the minors with kindness and civility befitting true graduates of a respectable institution sans any discrimination for the entire duration of the commencement exercises.”

Navarro granted a plea for a temporary restraining order filed by parents of the two graduates who protested the decision of school authorities to bar the students from attending graduation rites for posting what school officials said were “obscene photos” on their Facebook accounts.

Sued were Sr. Celeste Ma. Purisima Pe, school principal; Mussolini Yap, assistant principal; Marnie Racaza, student affairs moderator; Kristine Rose Ligot, discipline in charge; and Edita Josephine Yu, homeroom adviser.

The school officials claimed that the students violated provisions in the school handbook, which lists dos and don’ts for students inside and outside campus.

One of the penalties for violating the handbook is exclusion in graduation ceremonies.

The students, however, said their Facebook accounts were private. They said they were deprived of due process when school officials penalized them.

Their lawyers said the students were shocked when they were called to a meeting with school officials on March 1 during which the students were called names by the officials.

It was on that meeting when the students were informed they were being barred from attending graduation rites.

Judge Navarro said the school violated its own handbook when it deprived the students of due process. The handbook, the judge said, required the school to inform students of their violations first and give them a chance to air their side before any penalty is handed down.

The judge said barring the students from their graduation rites, “would drag them further into the abyss of emptiness and absence or lack of meaning to their temporary existence for the rest of their lives.”

“And to do this to them would indeed be most un-Christian, if not entirely inhuman,” said the judge.