St Rita’s College staff join calls for cops to probe ‘smash or pass’ scandal

Current and former staff of St Rita’s College are backing calls from parents for police to investigate a “smash or pass” rating scandal at the prestigious Brisbane Catholic school.

St Rita’s College in Brisbane’s Clayfield

Current and former staff of St Rita’s College are backing calls from parents for police to investigate a “smash or pass” rating scandal at the prestigious Brisbane Catholic school.

They also want to know why student identification photos were even accessible online in the first place.

It comes after The Courier-Mail reported that a Year 8 St Rita’s student shared individual photos of her entire class with a St Joseph’s Nudgee College boy and a video was made of the girls and uploaded to TikTok.

“Surely, with the widespread knowledge of misuse of imagery by young ones and adults alike across social media platforms, it appears highly negligent by (the college) not to have done a full audit of all aspects of college information sources and procedures,” one staffer said.

“This is a serious incident and should not be swept under the carpet. The college should be investigated and it should take responsibility for exposing students to potential vulnerability.”

Another staffer said while St Rita’s had since removed student access to the photos online, more needed to be done.

“Schools should be taking extreme precautions to protect their students but instead the privacy of students has been violated,” they said.

“It is now time for the college to be investigated by the police.”

Earlier this week, St Rita’s parents demanded police involvement.

“We have asked the school to refer this matter to the police,” one parent said.

“We’ve been told the boy shared the photos in a group chat with his friends and someone in that group chat produced a video.

St Joseph’s Nudgee College has become embroiled in the scandal.

“Nudgee College is claiming to have found no evidence that anything had been shared on social media.

“There is the possibility this is true, but knowing teenagers, this is unlikely.

“And I hate to say it .... the chances of across a whole cohort of Year 8 students for none of them to reshare is unlikely.

“What is more likely is that once it became known that the schools were investigating the students quickly moved to hide or delete the material.”

The Courier-Mail understands the Year 8 girl who shared images of her cohort (taken when they were in Year 7) was suspended for one day.

St Rita’s deputy principal Catherine Allen last week advised parents the school was working to have the “shared information” removed.

Nudgee College principal Scott Thomson wrote to parents on Saturday afternoon, refuting claims the boys had used social media to rate the attractiveness of St Rita’s students.

“Based on our investigations, there is no evidence to support the allegations in the story,” Mr Thomson said.

He said a Nudgee student shared the St Rita’s student identification photos with a small number of his fellow students, but the school was not aware that they were shared publicly on social media or used in any way.

“The students explained what had happened and expressed their genuine remorse at sharing the photos,” Mr Thomson said.

“The material shared was removed from devices.

“This matter is now being dealt with confidentially and in line with the college’s policies.”

Both St Rita’s and Nudgee College were contacted for comment.