Why Students Keep Burning Schools Despite Seeing the Damage Their Peers Have Caused

When many people see students in other schools going on strike just days after the Utumishi Girls tragedy, and even major incidents like the Kyanguli Secondary School fire tragedy, they ask the same question:

"Didn’t they see people died? Why are they still planning strikes?"

It’s a fair question.

But the truth is, many students don’t think like adults.

When parents see the Utumishi story, they see death. When many students see the same story, they see something else. They see girls who were angry, girls who felt unheard, and girls who were protesting something.

And that’s where the problem starts.

You see, boarding school students across Kenya often share the same complaints. Food is bad. Teachers are too harsh. Rules are too strict. Dormitories are overcrowded. Exams never end as schools try to set record-breaking mean scores.

So when they hear about a strike in another school, they don’t always focus on the tragedy. Instead, they think:

"We are going through the same things."

Some even end up blaming the administration more than the students involved, believing the real problem is the system.

Others see something even more dangerous.

Attention.

A school burns and suddenly the whole country is talking about it. Cabinet Secretaries arrive. Politicians arrive. TV stations arrive. The school becomes national news.

And some students quietly start thinking:

"So we can also be on the news?"

Of course, nobody says this openly. But that mentality has existed in Kenyan schools for years.

One school protests. Another school sees it. Then another. Then another. And before you know it, students in almost every county are either planning strikes or burning dormitories, classrooms, etc.

The sad part is that many students genuinely don’t expect people to die. They imagine a strike, a little chaos, maybe some property damage, maybe being sent home, maybe forcing the administration to listen.

What they don’t imagine is funerals. They don’t imagine parents identifying bodies. They don’t imagine spending the rest of their lives carrying guilt.

That is why even after tragedies like Utumishi, we are seeing reports of other schools being closed indefinitely due to looming strikes.

And until schools find better ways to listen to students before anger boils over, that cycle may continue repeating itself.