Wesley College: Principal slams students over sick women’s march remarks

Students from an elite Melbourne school have been caught on camera making sick comments on the way to Monday’s March 4 Justice rally.

An elite private school in Melbourne principal has condemned his students after a video emerged of a group of them making misogynist comments on a bus to a March 4 Justice rally earlier this week.

A TikTok video is circulating among students which shows Wesley College students talking about the “the most f***ed up thing they have done”. Their responses include explicit and derogatory comments.

A student who was on the bus said he heard boys joking they “should’ve bombed the women’s march”.

Mr Evans said there was “disrespectful behaviour of some of our students travelling on public transport”.

He said the comments were “highly offensive and caused extreme discomfort”.

Wesley College’s principal Nicholas Evans slammed the behaviour of some of his students.

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“I am deeply disappointed to have Wesley students behave in such a manner. Such behaviour does not reflect what we value and share in our Wesley community,” he wrote to parents on Tuesday.

Mr Evans said in an assembly yesterday there were “people in this school heard saying words that cannot be unheard”.

“Those who did hear them were rightfully appalled; they were appalled by the lack of humanity, the casual disregard of the lived experience of half the human race,” he said.

“The words said reduced half the human race to a series of epithets, mere labels. In doing so those who uttered them denied their humanity and to deny humanity is to deny any semblance of empathy.”

Wesley College, which has Year 12 fees of nearly $35,000, was one of several Victorian private colleges mentioned by women in a petition calling for more education about sexual consent.

Wesley College charges up to $35,000 a year in fees.

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A former Northcote High student said on the petition she was “assaulted by two boys from Wesley College on the way home, I was squished in between two boys on the train and they were grabbing my bum underneath my skirt”.

The student, who was in Year 9 in 2013, said the Wesley students were a few years older than her.

Victorian Education Minister James Merlino said the latest reports of misogynistic comments on public transport from students at the school “just beggar belief”.

“[It’s] incredibly, incredibly disappointing, disgraceful behaviour, and on the day of the March 4 Justice, it just beggars belief,” Mr Merlino said on Wednesday morning.

“I know that the school is deeply, deeply disappointed with the behaviour of some of their students, and they’ll take action.”

Victoria’s acting premier James Merlino said the comments ‘just beggar belief’. Picture: Luis Ascui/NCA NewsWire

Mr Evans said the latest incident made him sad “because this is indicative of behaviour I have witnessed too often from too many men”.

“Casual misogyny and sexism are so often expressed in all male conversations.”

He said senior school staff had recently undertaken an audit of programs dealing with consent and respectful relationships, which covered such topics as sexual consent, pornography and gender-based violence.

Wesley College is not the only school to cop criticism over the behaviour of its students on public transport in Melbourne.

Students from St Kevin’s College in Toorak were filmed singing a sexist chant on a tram in 2019.

The incident made national headlines and helped uncovered allegations of widespread misogyny in Melbourne’s elite boys’ schools.