Image: Bianca de Marchi, AAP
‘Old boys’ of Newington College have been up in arms since the elite Sydney school announced its plan to become co-educational.
In a move that has inflamed some parents and alumni, the college will begin admitting girls into kindergarten and year 5 in 2026, and years 7 and 11 in 2028. By 2033, the college will be fully coeducational by 2033.
This uproar by a small group of alumni has featured parents sobbing on television, saying they are “distraught”, and protesting outside the school
One parent told Nine News while crying, “I’m an old boy, my son’s an old boy and the intention was always that I’d have a grandson, but I won’t bring him to a co-ed school”.
Another alum of Newington, Robert Orr, told the Australian Associated Press: “I suspect it’s for virtue-signalling, woke-type principles, which I’m dead against.”
Email from parent says ‘transgender midgets’ at fault, will have fees subsidised
As revealed by The Guardian Australia, one of the leading voices of the furious opposition is Dallas Morgan, a Sydney barrister and Newington ‘old boy’, who sent an email last week to select alumni “to update the embarrassing saga of old boys wanting a voice against the evil empire of woke mumbo jumbo”.
In the email, he continues to lament that “transgender midgets” could have their fees subsidised. He also detailed his plans to fly to Tonga and convince King Tupou VI, whose father went to the college, to oppose the transition. Newington’s brother school, Tupou College, is also in Tonga.
He goes on to encourage the email’s recipient’s to “never give up” and to continue opposing the school’s “strategic direction”.
“We will need to show like at the SGM [Special General Meeting] the silent majority disagree with the ‘Strategic Direction’ aka ‘transgender midgets get free schooling paid for by hard working normal people’. What a joke.”
Newington Headmaster says behaviour is ‘unacceptable’
Earlier this week, Headmaster Michael Parker sent an email to families and the wider alumnus community condemning the “unacceptable” behaviour that made other staff and families feel “threatened”.
“Some of the behaviours, alongside a campaign of deliberate negativity, of a few individuals over recent months are in breach of our values, our culture and our agreed Parent Code of Conduct,” he wrote.
“Individual incidents have been raised with the College, which are currently being dealt with, but there is ongoing behaviour from this group which continues to leave some parents and staff feeling threatened and very uncomfortable.”
The headmaster also wrote that the campaigning of a “very small group” was “casting a temporary shadow over what is a highly inclusive, safe and positive place”.
The controversial move was announced by the $42,000-per-year college late last year, following in the footsteps of similarly affluent boys’ schools Cranbrook and Barker College.
