Ivan Valchev, a Bulgarian national teaching in the high school of graphic communication in Manhattan, the US, has been kept 181 days in a "rubber room" as a form of punishment, the New York Times reported Thursday.

On August 30 this year, when Valchev reported to a security guard on the eighth floor of an office building near Midtown, he experienced a certain sense of gulag deja vu. He had been ordered by his principal to a reassignment centre, more commonly known among New York teachers as a "rubber room."

In an interview for the Bulgarian 24 Hours daily newspaper, Valchev said that his principal has been constantly pushing him to retire and even sent a student, who was suspended several times from school for impudent and bad behaviour, to his classes to provoke him to react and eventually slap him which would finally give the principle a reason for the punishment.

"That student even called me a "white whore'," Valchev said.

The room in question was about 1,100 square feet and on blueprints submitted to the Fire Department was designed to hold 26 people. On this day, it contained upward of 75. It had no windows, no land phone, no Internet access, no wall decorations, not even a clock. Any personal belongings left overnight were removed by custodians.

Some of the occupants faced criminal charges like assault, while others had been brought up by city education officials for termination due to incompetence or other causes.

Still more, including Valtchev, had not yet received a formal letter specifying any allegation. Until their cases are resolved, which can take years, all are required to spend the 181 days of the school year in the rubber room.

And although the teachers there receive their full salaries, the stale, spartan conditions and the absence of any physical or intellectual stimulation provide a ceaseless reminder that in some respects they are guilty until proved innocent.

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