Girls gone wild: Top Adelaide school under fire
An elite all-girls school has become embroiled in a huge scandal after senior students created a “hook-up wall” with pictures of boys they had been involved with romantically while “shaming” them on social media.
Girls from the Wilderness School in Adelaide posted images and a slide show to social media with derogatory comments about the boys including the hashtag “#quantitynotquality”, according to The Advertiser.
The boys were largely from high-profile private schools.
School staff apparently allowed the Year 12 girls to create a collage of young men they had "hooked up with".
The school's principal Jane Danvers told the newspaper staff initially deemed the exercise "innocent and acceptable" when they were posted to a wall in the school's common room.
"The images were considered entirely respectful as they were portrait shots sourced mainly from the boys’ Facebook profile images or photos from the school formal," Ms Danvers said.
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"The context in which they were placed on the common room wall was deemed by staff as innocent and acceptable – girls displaying photographs of boys who were friends and boyfriends."
The reportedly staff did not react until the girls published the photos online along with humiliating comments.
"Steps immediately were taken to have it removed and Wilderness School does not tolerate such behaviour," Ms Danvers said.
"The matter is being investigated and those involved will be dealt with appropriately.
"We take it incredibly seriously. It goes against everything we believe in as a school."
Private school boys complained of a double standard to the paper, saying they would have faced severe punishment for objectifying girls in the same way.
One male student said the school knew about the wall of shame for three months but did not care because he said it was "girls doing it to boys", according to The Advertiser.
"If we did it, there'd be a massive outcry," he said.
"People think girls can't sexually harass guys so (boys) don't think they can talk about it."
The young women were forced to take the collage down as well as the social media campaign.
The school, which charged $23,562 for Year 12 fees this year, said there had already been “consequences” for girls involved in the video, according to the paper.
In mid-2015 more than 500 teen girls and young women in Adelaide discovered their intimate photos were being shared across a number of online sites, many pictures having been privately to individuals before they were widely shared.
