Students from a Werribee school feature in viral bullying TikTok video

Video filmed on school grounds shows students from a leading Werribee state school identifying which of their peers they “hate”.

The clip, which has 117,000 likes and more than 2300 comments, has the title ‘show someone you ha@te’.

A TikTok video that shows students from a leading Werribee state school identifying which of their peers they hate has been viewed 770,000 times.

There are calls for the clip, filmed by ten students from Suzanne Cory Secondary College on school grounds and public transport, to be removed from the popular social media platform.

Such clips are sparking immediate disciplinary action, with schools taking a strong stand against cyber-bullying. The clip, which has 117,000 likes and more than 2300 comments, has the title “show someone you ha@te”.

Comments include “What happened to respect, aspiration and contribution?”

One of the creators said the students were “expressing our bottled up hatred”.

The TikTok trend usually sees students momentarily flashing the Instagram profiles of those they love, hate, want to hook up with or want to kiss. But the Suzanne Cory students clearly show the identities of many of those they “h@te”.

Suzanne Cory Secondary College is one of the state’s four selective-entry schools and in 2021 its students received a mean VCE study score of 34 – one of the highest in the state.

Selective Victorian schools like Suzanne Cory have come under fire overseas for their students being misogynistic on social media.

It comes as cyberbullying reports were up 95 per cent for the first six months of 2022, figures from the eSafety Commissioner show.

Martine Oglethorpe, a digital wellbeing and online safety educator, said schools and parents should report such clips to the platform and if there is no action within 48 hours, go to the eSafety Commissioner.

“While some students can brush this off, the harm for others can be immense,” she said. “Knowing 700,000 people have seen it compounds the hurt and exacerbates the harm.

“We know young people don’t always have the cognitive ability to see the harm they are causing because they are not seeing the reaction face-to-face,” Ms Oglethorpe said.

“This needs to be reported and taken down.”

A spokesman from the Department of Education said Victorian schools “take strong action in relation to incidents of bullying, with disciplinary action for the perpetrators and full support for impacted students”.

“Social media providers have a critical role to play in preventing the publication of content that promotes bullying — and we are continuing to raise this issue with the platforms directly,” he said.

Julie Inman Grant, eSafety Commissioner, said her team worked to get offending content removed as quickly as possible.

“While eSafety cannot comment on the detail of specific matters, almost all youth cyberbullying cases that come into our office tend to be peer to peer and an extension of conflict happening within the school yard. Most of these cases are very complex and require great care and time to resolve,” she said.

“Visit esafety.gov.au to report online abuse and find information or support.”

A spokeswoman from TikTok said the company’s “top priority is to maintain a safe and positive environment for our community. Our Community Guidelines make clear that we do not tolerate content that contains bullying or harassment, statements targeting an individual, or hateful speech or behaviour, and we remove content that violates these guidelines. We also have robust tools to report content and provide expert-backed anti-bullying resources and education in our Safety Centre.”

It comes as selective Victorian schools like Suzanne Cory have come under fire overseas for their students being misogynistic on social media. Ninety per cent of the school’s students come from backgrounds other than English.

Last August, Riya Kiran, a writer at IndianLink, warned prospective Indian students about misogyny and elitism at Melbourne’s four selective schools, including Suzanne Cory. “While I’m eternally grateful for having the privilege of attending a selective high school, there is a conversation to be had on the relationship between selective schools’ environments and the perpetuation of sexist and elitist cultures,” Ms Kiran said.