Government’s continuing neglect of Queen’s Royal

In addition, QRC’s Westminster full quarter chime clock, with which generations of Royalians have identified following on its installation in 1913, has for years neither told the time, nor chimed. Indeed, there are Old Boys of Queen’s Royal, who have never heard the bells chime. Meanwhile, as though Government, not considering it enough that crucial parts of the school should remain in a state of disrepair, its Ministry of Education continues to occupy land, belonging to QRC as it has done for decades, at the Western end of the college’s grounds. It is land which if returned to the college could be utilised for the physical expansion of the school and allow for scores more youngsters to access pre-tertiary education at Queen’s Royal. This stubborn refusal despite repeated requests by QRC Old Boys.

As a result, year after year, scores of young, ambitious Trinidadians and Tobagonians are being derived the right to access standard of education that gave Queen’s Royal College stature from its inception in April of 1859 when it was known as Queen’s Collegiate School. Government’s continuing neglect of Queen’s royal has seen the college’s Assembly Hall with its ornate ceiling slide into shameful disrepair. Classes which were held there as the school expanded had to be shifted elsewhere as the crumbling ceiling made it dangerous.

In turn, annual dinners organised by the QRC Old Boys’ Association had to be shifted as well to other venues because the same danger posed the students meant a threat to the safety of guests. On Saturday, November 18, this year’s Old Boys’ Association Dinner, originally carded for the Trinidad Country Club, will take place under a huge tent in the College’s courtyard. Should there be heavy cloud burst accompanied by determined gusts of wind, there is the uncomfortable likelihood that some of the black tie or lounge suit guests may be inconvenienced. And that, dear reader, is an understatement.

Government’s seeming don’t care a damn attitude to Queen’s Royal College is a dismissal not only of the protestations of QRC Old Boys, but the understandable concerns of students and their parents as well. I pose the question: Had the Government been approached to deal with the concerns of a denominational secondary school, similar in stature and problems to Queen’s Royal College, would it have dismissed with seeming contempt the way it has appeared to have Queen’s Royal’s?

In the Assembly Hall the names of former students who had won scholarships or otherwise distinguished themselves are recorded, acting as a motivating factor to on roll students over the years. There, if the particular wall has not begun to crumble and/or the paint to flake were the names of such noted Royalians as Dr Eric Williams, who would become the country’s first Prime Minister; Dr Rudranath Capildeo, Trinidad and Tobago’s first Leader of the Opposition and Sir Vidia Naipaul, TT’s man of letters and the nation’s first Nobel Prize winner; Sir Hugh Wooding, former Chief Justice and chancellor of the University of the West Indies; Lloyd Best, one of the Region’s greatest thinkers, and Dr Sidney Suite, one of the youngest persons to have won an Island Scholarship.

Williams’ name is there because he won an Island Scholarship in 1931; Capildeo in 1938; Naipaul in 1948; Wooding in 1923; Lloyd Best in 1952 and Suite in 1949. All of them, individually, at some time or another had made use of the Assembly Hall. For the record, the year Best won an Island Scholarship would be the last year Queen’s Royal would win all of the Island Scholarships. The others winning that year were John J E Neehall, J Reginald P Dumas and Gordon G Namsoo, while Garth G Alleyne would win the Coronation Scholarship. All of that history recorded in QRC’s Assembly Hall is shut off, virtually, from present day students, who, if they could enter the Hall would be doing this at great risk!

A function to mark the 100th anniversary of the opening of the Main Block, housing the Assembly Hall, had to be held in the courtyard. Why this shabby treatment of Queen’s Royal? Is it because late Prime Minister, Dr Williams, had once described the college as having been “established . . . as an elitist institution” with all that would have meant when it was written in 1970. However, since this statement may be misconstrued as limiting Government’s indifference to Queen’s Royal College to Dr Williams and the ruling People’s National Movement, I hasten to add that both United National Congress Administrations also had distanced themselves from the pleas concerning the physical problems of QRC.

A lack of available funds cannot be advanced as a reason, as Trinidad and Tobago has enjoyed continuous favourable energy — crude oil and natural gas — prices for more than a decade. Or is Government seeking to apply, literally, QRC’s motto: “Certant omnes sed non omnibus palma”, which when translated means “All struggle but not for all is the palm (or prize)” to the school’s disadvantage. Or will Queen’s Royal College one day receive the palm (or prize) of Government funding and with it halcyon days?