Why every student posting abuse towards indigenous author should fail the HSC

HSC students started targeted an author with vile and racist abuse overnight. The students involved should automatically fail.

Author Ellen van Neerven was targeted by the HSC group on Facebook last night. Picture: Mark Cranitch.

OPINION

REMEMBER that time you got stuck on a poem in your HSC exam because you hadn’t prepared well enough?

Beset with a dire sense of failure, you took to social media and sent the author of the poem vile messages: Your poem is a cancer. Go and kill yourself. It reads like a four year old wrote it. F*** you and your stupid … bulls***.

Of course you don’t remember that. Because no one in their right mind would inflict relentless and abusive cyberhate on an innocent party — an author who had no idea her work was even chosen as an HSC text.

But that’s exactly what dozens of NSW High School Certificate students are doing on the HSC Discussion Group Facebook page right now (as well as on other platforms like Twitter). They aren’t even hiding it. This is a public group with more than 66,000 members. Anyone can see the posts.

Students are publicly — and proudly — posting the abuse to award-winning indigenous author Ellen van Neerven. They were asked to analyse her poem “Mango” on Monday in English Paper One. And it stumped quite a few kids.

Instead of doing a bit of self-reflection about their poor performance and inability to do the task at hand, numerous teens decided to turn on the writer instead.

One student posted a picture of a monkey typing, with the caption: “LEAKED IMAGE OF THE AUTHOR OF MANGO.”

Some of the comments were reminiscent of the racial abuse 2014 Australian of the Year and dual Brownlow medallist Adam Goodes received, before he finally quit the Sydney Swans in 2015.

Another vile image shows a mashup of images from the animation Rick and Morty with the text: “I’m gonna need you to take these mangos and shove them up your butt.”

Students have edited Ellen’s Wikipedia page, claiming that “her poem ‘Mango’ was used as a weapon of mass destruction by the NSW Education Standards Authority.” The page has since been edited back to normal, after apparently being temporarily “protected” due to the abuse.

One female student posted a screenshot of an abusive message she sent to Ellen. It stated: “What the f*** was the point of your mango bulls*** Didn’t you learn anything from last years [sic] hsc students — HELLO RACHEL CORBETT.”

The references to journalist Rachel Corbett appears to be a threat, as she received a huge amount of abuse after writing an opinion piece for news.com.au about the HSC Discussion Group Facebook page last year.

Although some students did show moral courage and posted comments defending the author and asked their peers to “settle down” and “calm down,” the majority did not.

In case you are wondering, Ellen had no say in her working being set as an HSC text. So she would have been totally sideswiped by the tsunami of abuse.

A statement from the NSW Education Standards Authority confirms: “Authors whose work appear in the exams are not advised in advance due to security and confidentiality requirements.”

The statement goes on to say: “NESA CEO David de Carvalho said that ‘I am appalled by the abuse of the author’. This is a completely inappropriate response and I hope those involved see fit to apologise to Ms van Neerven.”

Frankly, an apology is not enough. As Lieutenant General David Morrison stated in 2013: “The standard you walk past is the standard you accept.”

Every student posting racial abuse towards Ellen van Neeren should fail the HSC immediately.

Firstly, what they’ve done could be against the law. Under section 474.17 of the Commonwealth Criminal Code Act, it’s illegal to use a carriage service to menace, harass or cause offence to another person in Australia.

Despite asking NESA what action will be taken against the abusive students, news.com.au did not receive a response by the deadline.

Secondly, the High School Certificate is a significant marker of educational attainment. It’s a rite of passage into adulthood. Education is defined as “the process of facilitating learning, or the acquisition of knowledge, skills, values, beliefs, and habits”.

The key word here is values. This is not a behaviour that reflects our values as a society or community. We want and need artists and writers to produce work that reflects and contributes to a rich society. We don’t want creators to be subject to waves of cyber-violence. Make no mistake. Cyberhate like this has real world consequences for its victims.

After my last investigation into cyberhate, my inbox filled up with horror stories: targets of cyberhate who have tried to suicide, who have lost their jobs because of the relentless online abuse. Women and men who have had to move interstate. Others who’ve had predators turn up at their doors in the middle of the night after their home addresses were posted online. And that’s just for starters.

As I’ve said over and over again when speaking out publicly about cyberhate, the online world is not different from the offline world. It’s one and the same. Death threats or racial abuse in the supermarket are no different to deaths threats online — and the same standards must apply.

These kids abusing Ellen van Neerven are nearly adults — some of them already are — and they must understand the consequence of their actions. They must pay the price. Perhaps after they’ve learned this lesson the hard way, we can consider them educated.

Ginger Gorman is an award-winning print and radio journalist. She’s also a cyberhate expert and is currently writing a book about the subject. Watch her TEDx talk about trolling.