Congratulations Sydenham

SACCSS Athletics 2016 Senior Champions

Congratulations to our Athletics Team. On a cold, wet and windy day at the Lakeside Athletics Track, the smallest of the teams competing on the day was Catholic Regional College Sydenham. The tournament was the SACCSS Athletics carnival and we had fantastic individual and overall team results! Participation, sportsmanship and a can do attitude was evident frome ach and every student. I was honoured to be able to be present for the day, even having the chance to present some of our winning athletes with their ribbons.

Catholic Regional College Sydenham won the overall Senior Aggregate for the first time since 2005!

* The Senior Girls Team finished 1st overall for the day.

* The Senior Boys Team finished 3rd overall for the day.

* Kelsey Hildred won the individual age group champion for the 17 – 20 year olds. Kelsey came 1st in the 1500m, 400m, Triple Jump, 100m, and 2nd in 800m and 200m.

* Rose Corluka came second in the individual age group champion for the 16 year olds.

* The Senior Girls Relay came first by a photo finish!

* The Senior Boys Relay came second.

* The 16 year old boys relay also came second.

Girls Soccer – SACCSS Champions 2016-08-29

Well done and congratulations to the Girls Soccer Team who were the premiership winners for the 2016 interschool competition for the Sports Association of Catholic Co-educational Secondary Schools.

Cyber Safety - Andrew Fuller

I am concerned and troubled by the number of incidents reported in the media of late where predominantly male students have treated young women appallingly, with little if any respect or concern for the impact that the circulation of lewd images or commentary about the young women by these boys would have. Parents of the victims are rightly outraged while the families of the male perpetrators are ashamed, embarrassed, disgusted and often having to spend significant amounts of money to hire legal counsel as more students are charged by Police. Let’s be clear, this is unacceptable behaviour that is illegal as well as immoral.

The families of these boys did not believe their sons were capable of such things. And for each and every parent reading this, please do not think that your son or daughter is not ever going to be silly enough to do something like this. It is exactly what all of the parents now facing this with their children thought as well. The days of not discussing these issues are behind us. In order to protect all parties, we must discuss the issues and the consequences. We must put a stop to this behaviour so that respect for girls and boys, men and women underpins all relationships in order that they are respectful not damaging or hurtful.

The rise of social media is fuelling a series of recent incidents at Melbourne schools where teenage boys have shared lewd and derogatory posts about young girls, clinical psychologist Andrew Fuller says.

Victoria Police recently confirmed detectives from the Sexual Offences and Child Abuse Investigation Team had spoken to a 16-year-old boy in relation to reports of "inappropriate images being distributed by students in the St Kilda East area", and that the investigation was ongoing.

In recent weeks it was reported a group of boys at a different Melbourne school posted a video to Facebook of an appalling "Tinder boot camp" where students allegedly urged each other to rate the attractiveness of girls out of 10 and accept "nothing under a seven".

Further still, two students at a third Melbourne school were linked to an Instagram account that posted images of girls and planned to announce a degrading and disgusting awardee as a result.

Mr Fuller said social media had not only given teenage boys the means to share this material, but had also contributed to a breakdown in human interaction that made it more likely to happen.

I am concerned and troubled by the number of incidents reported in the media of late where predominantly male students have treated young women appallingly, with little if any respect or concern for the impact that the circulation of lewd images or commentary about the young women by these boys would have. Parents of the victims are rightly outraged while the families of the male perpetrators are ashamed, embarrassed, disgusted and often having to spend significant amounts of money to hire legal counsel as more students are charged by Police. Let’s be clear, this is unacceptable behaviour that is illegal as well as immoral.

The families of these boys did not believe their sons were capable of such things. And for each and every parent reading this, please do not think that your son or daughter is not ever going to be silly enough to do something like this. It is exactly what all of the parents now facing this with their children thought as well. The days of not discussing these issues are behind us. In order to protect all parties, we must discuss the issues and the consequences. We must put a stop to this behaviour so that respect for girls and boys, men and women underpins all relationships in order that they are respectful not damaging or hurtful.

The rise of social media is fuelling a series of recent incidents at Melbourne schools where teenage boys have shared lewd and derogatory posts about young girls, clinical psychologist Andrew Fuller says.

Victoria Police recently confirmed detectives from the Sexual Offences and Child Abuse Investigation Team had spoken to a 16-year-old boy in relation to reports of "inappropriate images being distributed by students in the St Kilda East area", and that the investigation was ongoing.

In recent weeks it was reported a group of boys at a different Melbourne school posted a video to Facebook of an appalling "Tinder boot camp" where students allegedly urged each other to rate the attractiveness of girls out of 10 and accept "nothing under a seven".

Further still, two students at a third Melbourne school were linked to an Instagram account that posted images of girls and planned to announce a degrading and disgusting awardee as a result.

Mr Fuller said social media had not only given teenage boys the means to share this material, but had also contributed to a breakdown in human interaction that made it more likely to happen.

Please view the Andrew fuller interview at the following address:

https://twitter.com/BreakfastNews/status/763573360416567296

"There's almost a dehumanisation of relationships. We live in a world where we act as if machines are more important than people," Andrew Fuller told ABC News

"You see this all the time with people, they don't think about the effect on another human being and so by distancing ourselves we lose the intimacy, the closeness, the friendship."

"Social media has facilitated the ability to do that ... being able to capture images of young women they know and then share them and comment on them."

Mr Fuller said we were living in a society where young men were being socialised by pornography, and this had a dangerous effect on their relationships.

"They're believing that's the appropriate way to act and, of course, sharing that material between one another," he said.

Girls caught in crossfire of male competitiveness

The "likes" and "shares" function of social media platforms formed a toxic mix with the competitive nature of teenage boys, according to Mr Fuller.

"We live in a world where basically your value is about how many times your things are shared or how many likes you receive," he said.

"We're ranking kids and so they're finding ways to bolster their rankings.

"This is very concerning that young boys are then turning their competitive nature and involving women in that battle."

He said it was important to teach teenagers about healthier relationships if we wanted to break this culture.

"Machines allow us to share this lurid material but if we don't think about what it means from the other person, we're in peril," he said.

"Learning how to develop a good relationship is something teenagers are particularly interested in, but we're obviously not doing a good enough job in educating them."

Andrew Fuller will be the guest presenter to our families at the start of 2017 for the Family Information Evening where staff, parents and students are encouraged to join together to listen to Andrew on raising adolescents and helping them navigate through the challenges they face in partnership with the school. I invite families to mark this date in the diary now and not miss the opportunity to hear Andrew Fuller speak.

Parent Information

Important Dates