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Danish high schoolers show up drunk and rowdy in Slagelse

TheCopenhagenPost
May 23rd, 2018


This article is more than 6 years old.

Head teacher cancels closing day celebrations in the face of “drunk, screaming” students

The cap needs to fit, contends Danske Gymnasier (photo: Glaux)

All closing day celebrations at Slagelse Gymnasium scheduled for today have been cancelled after a group of students showed up to school drunk yesterday. 

Head teacher Lotte Büchert from Slagelse Gymnasium said that she had warned students about the consequences if they turned up pissed on what is a regularly scheduled school day. She said the warning went more than just unheeded.

“I’ve never experienced anything like it,” she told TV2. “About 250 students, several of them drunk, danced, shouted and screamed in the canteen. Several tables were destroyed.”

Büchert said that she was shaken by what she called a “drunken orgy”.

Not the first time
The school had experienced a similar event last year, and Büchert had warned students that it would not be tolerated this year.

“Several students were clearly drunk and there were beer and shot bottles in several places,” she said.

Büchert said that even students who had not been drinking joined their drunk counterparts in the bacchanalia. Students are calling the decision to cancel all of the closing activities “unfair”.

“We feel deprived of an important tradition that creates cohesion and motivation among students as we jointly engage in an adventure on our way to our higher education onto when we later create society,” they wrote.

“Unhappy”
Students said that the “cozy” celebration in the canteen the day before closing day was a long-standing school tradition.

“The fact that some students ruined the experience for everyone and that results in a collective punishment is neither acceptable nor fair.”

READ MORE: Danish teens still most boozy in Europe

Büchert said she is “unhappy” over the incident and that she had looked very much forward to the last day of school. She also regretted that the cancellation affected students not involved in the canteen incident.

“It’s deeply regrettable that it affects them,” she said. “But it has not been possible to find out exactly who was involved. And all students had been warned.”


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A survey carried out by Megafon for TV2 has found that 71 percent of parents have handed over children to daycare in spite of them being sick.

Moreover, 21 percent of those surveyed admitted to medicating their kids with paracetamol, such as Panodil, before sending them to school.

The FOLA parents’ organisation is shocked by the findings.

“I think it is absolutely crazy. It simply cannot be that a child goes to school sick and plays with lots of other children. Then we are faced with the fact that they will infect the whole institution,” said FOLA chair Signe Nielsen.

Pill pushers
At the Børnehuset daycare institution in Silkeborg a meeting was called where parents were implored not to bring their sick children to school.

At Børnehuset there are fears that parents prefer to pack their kids off with a pill without informing teachers.

“We occasionally have children who that they have had a pill for breakfast,” said headteacher Susanne Bødker. “You might think that it is a Panodil more than a vitamin pill, if it is a child who has just been sick, for example.”

Parents sick and tired
Parents, when confronted, often cite pressure at work as a reason for not being able to stay at home with their children.

Many declare that they simply cannot take another day off, as they are afraid of being fired.

Allan Randrup Thomsen, a professor of virology at KU, has heavily criticised the parents’ actions, describing the current situation as a “vicious circle”.

“It promotes the spread of viruses, and it adds momentum to a cycle where parents are pressured by high levels of sick-leave. If they then choose to send the children to daycare while they are still recovering, they keep the epidemic going in daycares, and this in turn puts a greater burden on the parents.”