Principal

If you are like me, you may have watched last week with alarmed interest the revelations of the behaviour of a group of male students at Yarra Valley Grammar School. I have read position and counter-position across mainstream and social media about the school’s response to these students producing a list rating the appearance of female classmates. The very act of ranking other students based on the desirability of their appearance is clearly unacceptable in any school context, but it was the language that these students used to do so which tipped this episode from concerning to appalling. 

There have been many stories in the follow-up press from people who had been subject to this type of list-making when they were at school. This abuse – and it is abuse – and the hurt it caused in many cases stayed with them well into their adulthood, untempered by the knowledge that the lists were made by young people who may well have grown to see the problem with their behaviour. The list made by the students at Yarra Valley Grammar reinforces the historical trope that women are to be valued for their physical appearance, ignoring their personality, character, intellect, goodness, perspective, effort, care – all of the multivarious parts of a good person – and privileging appearance only. It carries the seeds of an attitude to women which underpins the consistent and pervasive social issue of misogyny.

It is in this belief that I fully support the actions of Yarra Valley Grammar principal, Dr Mark Merry, in expelling two students over the incident. I know nothing about these boys. It is likely that they are good people who have made a devastatingly bad set of judgements. Some have argued that the expulsions will simply shift these attitudes to a different school whose problem it will become to fix. Maybe so. But to have them remain in the school would have subjected the girls on that list to having to walk past them in the corridors and yard again and again and again. It would mean that the victims of the incident would continue to suffer in an ongoing way. That is not a situation that I would allow here, and I commend Dr Merry for not allowing it in his school, either.   

I often say to students to that you can’t claim as a virtue something you had no control over – your birth or inherited wealth, natural ability, or your physical looks. The logical extension of this is that you can’t then deride as a fault these same things in others. We should be judged on the things we do control – our choices, actions and how well we try to empathise with others who are different from us. For the continuing good of our communities, we have to be strong enough to stand firm in this judgement, even when it requires serious outcomes for young people.