'Deliberate, dangerous, and disgusting': The dirty school lists need to stop

COMMENT: "Is expulsion working? These kids need education about what they've done. Otherwise, they just spread their toxicity at other schools."

Shona Hendley

3 min read

May 16, 2024 - 12:38PM

High School

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Another day, another dirty, mean, list ranking female school students. Enough is enough.

Today, Brentwood Secondary College in the Melbourne suburb of Glen Waverly has allegedly launched an investigation after a photo was taken of a list written on a stall door the girl’s bathroom at the school.

This list ranked students who are the “biggest sl***.”

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Image: Supplied / 7NEWS

"Deliberate, dangerous, and disgusting"

It is the third list of its kind to come out of a Melbourne school in the past week, leading many to ask: what is going on with our boys? But more than that – we need to accept it won't stop until we change our response.

The disgusting, demeaning, misogynistic, and downright toxic act (which it is - a deliberate and planned act) of these ranking lists, is spreading faster than the COVID-19 pandemic, with a new school seemingly caught up in its own version each day.

As a mother of two daughters, one who will start high school next year, every time I hear of another school in the news about these lists, the rankings of female students based on appearance, personality, rumours, or just whatever has popped into an adolescent boy’s head in that moment, I literally feel sick.

I feel sick because my body realises how dangerous this behaviour is. I also feel sick because my mind is overwhelmed with questions, emotions, and rapidly increasing frustration.

Nothing is working - and the schools need to see that.

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“I expect they’d be expelled from the school, but then how does that fix it?”

While Two Yarra Valley Grammar School boys behind a “cruel and highly offensive” spreadsheet that rated their female classmates were expelled last week, the Year 10 boy who allegedly wrote a rape and murder list at McClelland Secondary College in Frankston was suspended; highlighting a varied approach to the disciplinary action between schools.

This inconsistent approach has also left fellow students at the schools feeling uncomfortable and unsafe.

McClelland College Year 12 student Sienna Parnacott said about the suspended student returning to school: “I certainly wouldn’t feel comfortable if that was me [on the list].”

And while one McClelland College parent has said the student responsible for the list should be expelled, other parents aren’t so sure.

“I’d expect they’d be expelled from the school, but then how does that fix it?” one mother said.

“How does that help the child?”

A Sydney high school boy, who shares a similar sentiment, told Kidspot, "What's the point in expulsion - it's not working. Those boys need education about what they've done. Otherwise, they just spread their attitudes at other schools."

"Something more than disciplinary action"

Once a teacher myself, I have seen examples of toxic masculinity amongst male high school students (albeit not a list), and I agree, it comes down to something deeper than disciplinary action (although I think there is a place for that too), and education is the only answer.

What this looks like exactly, I don’t know. But what I do know is that it needs to be prioritised and actioned immediately because this behaviour needs to stop. Now.

It needs to be actioned with a consistent approach and in a widespread, systemic way to be effective, and it needs to be implemented not just by schools but parents, family members, sporting clubs, workplaces, anywhere and everywhere that influences our children and their values.

Because that is the reality, it is an everywhere, everyone issue. While the lists may have found their physical home at schools, they don't stay at school. They're on social media and private chats. Even now their effect is being felt far wider than within the school grounds - and this will only get worse.

With this misogynistic and downright disturbing behaviour fast becoming our next pandemic, spreading amongst adolescent boys in Australia’s second biggest city, it won't be long, if left without effective education, before these lists will become so part and parcel everywhere, that it won't even make the headlines.

And while not every writer or participant of these lists, or of similar actions goes on, or will go on to possess these sexist views in the future, or demonstrate them through violence against women, there is legitimate reason to worry that it might.

I mean, obviously. Look at what is happening right now. We have to do better.