Students fight as House panel seeks solution to violence

While solutions to the problem were being worked out, students of Donmuang Technical College – involved in a notorious attack earlier this month which resulted in two people killed and two others wounded by stray bullets – yesterday launched a machete attack on three vocational students from a rival school, seriously wounding one and slightly hurting two others.

 

At the panel’s testimony, the police admitted it was partly their fault in dealing too lightly with the matter. But a senior officer, Pol Maj-General Saroj Phromecharoen, also blamed sensational media coverage as another reason, while citing a violence-prone tradition and the influence of graduates and seniors as other factors, which are mentioned by teachers and the Office of Vocational Education Commission (OVEC).

 

Saroj said police handling of the situation was not fully to blame, because the violence had been aggravated to the level of a crime. “Shooting a rival in a bus full of passengers is not an act of a student,” he added. According to police records, there were 779 incidents involving student violence in Bangkok from January to yesterday.

 

OVEC secretary-general Chaiyaphruek Serirak said there were about 1 million vocational students but those engaged in violence and revenge were only “in the hundreds” and based mainly in Bangkok and adjacent areas.
A number of drastic measures have been suggested – from isolating problem-students in three-month solitary studies, sending them to boot camps for seven days while their schools were shut, or prohibiting schools from enrolling new students for one semester.

 

On the police’s part, Saroj cited as an example measures adopted at two rival schools, responsible for the oldest and most infamous feud – Pathumwan Institute of Technology and Rajamangala University of Technology Tawan-ok, Uthenthawai Campus. 

 

No graduates are allowed on either premises and those entering the campuses without permission will face arrest for trespass. Six policemen also sit on both school boards and all students are required to register through finger scans, and leave the school within two hours after each day ends.

 

Commission chairman MP Prakob Rattanaphan said a sub-panel on student rivalry violence would be set up to work on a permanent basis.

 

In the attack yesterday, three students from Pathum Thani Technology College were chased by a group of Donmuang Technical College students while they were waiting at a bus stop off Rangsit-Nakhon Nayok Road. An 18-year-old student suffered several chop wounds to his head and body which required 40 stitches, and two others sustained minor injuries.

 

Police chased the attackers fleeing on three motorcycles, but failed to arrest them.