By Christine Ahern
Four boys from an exclusive private school in Melbourne’s east have been suspended after rating their female classmates, using disparaging language to rate their appearances.
Police are being notified after the year 11 students from Yarra Valley Grammar School in Ringwood shared a spreadsheet of photos of their female classmates to messaging app Discord and ranked them in categories. The girls were ranked from top to bottom as “wifeys”, “cuties”, “mid”, “object”, “get out” and then finally “unrapable”.
Boys from Yarra Valley Grammar have been suspended for ranking girls in categories on a chat group.Credit: Eddie Jim
The school became aware of the post last Wednesday, and by Friday the students had been suspended pending further investigation. The parents of the girls pictured in the post were notified by the school.
Yarra Valley Grammar principal Dr Mark Merry has described the post as “disgraceful”.
“Respect for each other is in the DNA of this school, and so this was a shock not only to us … but it was a shock to the year level and the boys in the year level that see this as way, way out of line,” he said.
Merry was particularly offended by the last category on the spreadsheet, which referred to girls as “unrapable”.
The students posted the spreadsheet categorising the girls on messaging app Discord last week.Credit: Nine News
“As a father, I find it absolutely outrageous, disgraceful, offensive. As a principal, I need to make some decisions [about] what we do about all of this,” he said.
“My first impulse and concern is about the wellbeing of the girls concerned. I want to make sure they feel assured and supported by the school.”
The school will notify police about the use of the word “unrapable” in case there has been any criminality involved.
“We are going to be consulting the police because the language used could be an inferred threat. I don’t think it was, but we need to get further advice on that … I’m hoping it was an appalling lapse in judgment,” Merry said.
Yarra Valley Grammar School principal Dr Mark Merry said the boys’ spreadsheet was “disgraceful”.Credit: Nine News
There are 185 students in year 11 at the prestigious co-ed school in Ringwood, which costs about $30,000 a year per student.
The school regularly teaches “respectful relationship” classes, holding a number of seminars for students throughout the school year.
Merry said the school would work harder on teaching boys how to behave, particularly within the current environment, where violence against women has been increasing at an alarming rate.
“We are well aware of the broader issues in relation to respecting women … we need to really do our best to ensure that young men understand their responsibilities and their boundaries of how they should behave,” he said.
Support is available from the National Sexual Assault, Domestic Family Violence Counselling Service at 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732).
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