You have been sent on indefinite suspension for the part you played in a recent disturbance in which valuable school property was damaged. Write a letter to the principal of your school describing the part that you played and apologizing for your involvement.

APOLOGY OVER THE RECENT RIOT IN THE SCHOOL   

It is a pity a violent demonstration erupted in our school on 3rd July, 1998. The riot was quite an unfortunate incident as what was planned to be a peaceful demonstration was hijacked by the hoodlums and eventually escalated to a full scale act of vandalism. I am writing this letter to describe the part I played and at the same time apologize fro my involvement.

Right from the commencement of this academic session, feeding system in the boarding house has left much to be desire. In fact, it is nothing to write home about at all. The food issue is not only the question of quality but quantity as well. Whenever it is bread and tea, what we are given is mere coloured water; if rice, it is half rice and half stones. The soup issues is the worst. It is as watery as water from the Atlantic Ocean, yet our parents pay a sum of ten thousand Naira per term per child in the boarding house. This problem has led to the outbreak of several diseases traced by hospital authorities to malnutrition.

Consequently, we convened a prefects’ meeting after morning assembly on that fateful day. There, a lot of complaints surfaced ranging from poor feeding to luk warm attitude of teachers to teaching. It was resolved that a delegation of prefects to had been done several times before but without any solution. However, we went as proposed and met with the vice principal due to the absence of the principal. Instead of reasoning with us, he rather turned a deaf ear and accused us of bad intentions. All effort to make him reason with us that our action should e seen as consultation rather than confrontation was ignored. He said that we were being used by some members of staff to cause chaos. He called us several names such as agents of vandalism  sowers of seeds of discord and the like. He refused that anyone of us should make any comment.

Before we got to the dining hall where the students, mostly the seniors bad gathered, the atmosphere was already charged as they had heard how ruthlessly and rudely the vice principal had treated us. In fact, he treated us with contempt I narrated to the students who had eagerly awaited our arrival the position of the vice principal, how he tagged us ‘agents’ of disgruntled elements among the teachers. I equally told them that he said we were being used by ;some people within and outside the school to caused unrest. However, I told them to be calm, that the principal would soon come to settle the matter.

As I was addressing them, a gang of hoodlums to perpetrate violence, stealing arson and destruction of school property. Accused me of playing to the gallery of the authority by not allowing students to take laws in their hands. Before I knew what was happening, our students had joined the hoodlums to perpetrate violence, stealing arson and destruction of school property. Eventually, the library complex, laboratory block and the vice principal’s office were burnt to ashes and a good number of people including the vice principal and a host of teachers wounded.

Consequently, I now  tender my unreserved apology to the authority to please temper justice with mercy and cancel my indefinite suspension. This is due to the fact that my action was not intended to aggravate the situation but to douse it, but instead, I was singled out as the principal  culprit. In view of the fact that our final examination is very much at hand, I implore the authority to set up an investigative panel to look in the causes of the causes of the uprising with a view to bringing the original culprits to book.

In conclusion, I will be very ;grateful if my suspension is cancelled and the authority looks into  the matter. Thank you very much for taking time to read my own side of the matter.