Stowe School is getting a bit of flack right now, because the £33,000-a-year (yep, count ’em) college, which seems to be a training ground for Prince Harry’s girlfriends (Cressida Bonas, Chelsy Davy and Florence Brudenell-Bruce are among the alumni alongside, er, Richard Branson) has admitted it ran out of morning after pills.
In a leaked email, sent on 4 February this year, the housemaster for Walpole, complained that when asking for the pill, ‘Pupils who have been asking for emergency contraception have told the nurses that they were having sex in boarding houses over the weekend.’
Which would mean a lot of rule-breaking.
‘Sexual activity is a very serious pastoral concern for us as a school, and something we need to be constantly vigilant of… This is clearly a difficult area to police, but the fact that students are openly saying that they have been having sex in their houses at weekends suggests that our level of supervision of them at weekends needs to be stepped up….’ the email, uncovered by The Mail on Sunday, continued.
‘If pupils are relaxed enough to have sex in a boarding house, it is clear that there are certain parts of the boarding house, or certain times of the day when they are very confident that there will be no staff around.’
The housemaster’s solution? To have a word with the older members of the school to remind them of the rules, and for staff to ‘appear’ at times and in places that they might not normally be.
Now, as much as it seems like they’re all going at it like bunnies, the school’s lawyers, Schillings, last night said that the school’s medical centre only kept two morning after pills at the time. So to run out isn’t that bad, is it? And besides – at least the girls are seeking protection against pregnancy, even if it is after the act?
An official statement from the school said: ‘Stowe places the utmost importance in providing the highest level of pastoral care for all of its pupils. The school has clear policies, rules and procedures in place covering all pastoral issues, including those that concern sexual behaviour. Transgressors of the school rules risk expulsion. The school continually reviews procedures to ensure the maintenance of high standards of pastoral care.’
However, an ex-staff member told the* Mail* that the reason girls are turning to the morning after pill is because the school doesn’t hand out condoms – they don’t want to encourage sex, apparently. Because of course, that’s what condoms do.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.