Emily Olle: Fight videos at Golden Grove High School highlight the depth of violence in SA schools
As a young boy shakes with fear as he’s beaten in a school bathroom, you want to tell him things will be okay. But unless something changes, it won’t be, writes Emily Olle.
Opinion
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As a school student cowers in the corner of a Golden Grove campus bathroom, you want to look away.
His hands are shaking. The fear is palpable. “Just hit him,” an onlooker cheers.
Another student willingly obliges, landing blow after blow to the terrified boy’s head and stomach.
As he falls to the ground, other students yell: “Get him … say sorry.”
“For what?” the boy pleads. “Say sorry or you’re going to get f---ked up.”
Some students taunt him, others stand brandishing their phones to film the sickening onslaught to later share on social media, multiplying the boy’s humiliation.
The footage is difficult to watch. You want to jump through the screen and intervene. To stand between the boy and his attacker and tell him it’s going to be okay, that he’ll be safe.
But the reality is, with the number of violent attacks in South Australian schools at a three-year high – equating to more than 50 each week – this student, and hundreds of others across SA, are not safe.
The footage is one of four savage attack videos shared by a concerned parent at Golden Grove High School, each showing schoolyard violence between students despite an Education Department ban on phones during school hours.
These incidents come after an account dedicated to campus brawls at Wirreanda Secondary School was shut down by Instagram, security guards were deployed to Whyalla Secondary School after a vicious attack by a 15-year-old schoolgirl, and brawls at Paralowie R-12 were shared to TikTok.
While bullying is a tragic tale as old as time, the era of social media has amplified the social gains and losses to be had by punching on in the schoolyard. One parent at Wirreanda Secondary School said fight videos were a hot commodity among students, with children urging each other on for the sake of a Snapchat. The Golden Grove bathroom attack video is hard to watch. But we shouldn’t be looking away.
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