The petition, which has not yet received 100 signatures, called on the administration and Board of Directors to overturn their decision to go co-ed. Instead, it suggested Newington College become an all-girls school.

“We express our collective concern and disagreement with the recent decision to introduce co-education at Newington College,” the petition’s organiser, “Karen McKaren”, wrote in the description. 

“We firmly believe that the historic boys’ school should remain single-sex, and that a co-ed environment would be damaging to the students’ education. 

“That is why we ask for Newington College to be transformed into an all-girls institution.”

The petition’s organiser first argued the academic ranking of Newington College, ranked 142 as of last year, was not reflective of “a supposedly ‘elite’ school” and suggested an all-girls school would promote academic excellence since research suggests girls are more studious.

“By making this transition, we anticipate an improvement in the school’s academic performance, ultimately justifying the financial investment made by parents,” the petition description read.

McKaren acknowledged the significant backlash from parents, students and old boys of the single-sex secondary school when the decision to become a co-ed school was announced in November last year.

On the first day of school in 2024 last week, parents gathered in protest outside the gates of the Sydney school, claiming “boys will become second-class citizens in their own school” as a result of the change.

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“Considering this, we firmly believe that it would be in the best interest of the new girls who will be attending not to have to deal with the potential challenges and conflicts arising from this transition,” the creator of the petition wrote. 

“In this context, we posit that creating an all-girls school would not only address the concerns raised by the boys, and parents who are afraid of their sons being “educated with girls”, but also streamline the educational environment, making it easier for all students to focus on their studies without unnecessary distractions.”

The light-hearted yet detailed petition was shared by consent advocate and author of Consent Laid Bare Chanel Contos.

“Thank you everyone who has spoked up (sic), for your unwavering commitment to educational excellence and for not succumbing to the absurd notion that boys and girls can coexist peacefully in a learning environment,” McKaren wrote.

‘It’s all just so silly’

Behind “Karen McKaren”, the petition’s organiser, is Susie Dodds, a 25-year-old graphic designer. She is currently in France, but heard about the uproar from the Newington College community regarding the Board’s announcement of the co-ed changes.

“I thought I would treat the issue with as much seriousness as it deserves,” Dodds told Women’s Agenda, “because it’s all just so silly.”

Dodds has volunteered for various consent organisations in Australia and is passionate about consent education. Like Chanel Contos, she believes single-sex education for girls is beneficial, whereas all-boys schools can be problematic.

“Studies have shown that girls’ schools are actually good for girls’ education,” she said.

“It’s nice to be educated in an environment where you’re not having to deal with misogyny on a regular basis.

“Whereas for boys it’s the other way round – it’s not helpful to be educated in a single-sex environment.”

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When her friends back in Sydney told her about the Newington College saga, Dodds couldn’t believe it was happening.

“They say women are the emotional ones, but then you’re crying on TV because your fictional grandchild can’t go to a boys school? It’s just absurd. It’s all silly,” she said.

Dodds used to live close by an all-girls school which recently made the change to become co-ed.

“We didn’t hear anything about that – because when a girl school goes co-ed, no one cares,” she said. “It does highlight the continued issue that Australia seems to have with boys’ schools – they’re so precious.”

In response to the “silly event” she created the “silly petition” under a “silly name”.

“I was a little bit apprehensive that if (the petition) did suddenly blow up for whatever reason, I might start getting some nasty messages from old boys from Newington – so Karen McKaren was a joke name as well,” Dodds said.

The petition has received 98 signatures, with a goal of reaching 100 signatures. You can view the petition here.

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On Wednesday morning, the first day of school in 2024 for students at Newington College, dozens of parents gathered outside the gates of the school, holding signs to protest the decision.

One parent accused the school of lying to families of the college. Another cited the “woke” agenda infiltrating society as the reason for the decision. Another was even brought to tears over the change.

Since the call was made in November 2023, parents created a change.org petition, which so far has received nearly 2,500 signatures.

A decision to (checks notes) let girls enrol at a school has shown just how passionate families who are wealthy enough for the $40,000 a year in school fees are about sticking with “tradition”.

But after hearing their point of view, I think some need to be brought back down to earth.

Below are the slogans, comments and arguments of the parents protesting yesterday – met with a much needed reality check.

‘Why after 160 years?’

Well, boys, the society we live in didn’t appear out of thin air. For decades, women weren’t allowed to vote, walk on the street alone, drink in the pub, open a bank account – until women fought and changed the way things were.

Change, believe it or not, often occurs in the pursuit of a better society. Of course, it’ll offend those in power the most – it can feel threatening when you hold that much privilege. But don’t be alarmed! Change-makers don’t want excess power and privilege – we just want change.

‘Boys will become second-class citizens in their own school.’

According to statistics from UNICEF, around 129 million girls are out of school. In low-income countries, just 36 per cent of girls will finish high school, compared to 44 per cent of boys. In countries that are affected by fragility, conflict and violence, girls are 2.5 times more likely to be out of school than boys.

Girls are systematically excluded from school in many parts of the world, and when they stand up against the system and fight for an education, they are met with ridicule, oppression and in many instances violence. 

Case in point: Malala Yousafzai – at 11 years old, she spoke publicly on women and girls’ right to education. One day, on her way home from school, she was shot by the Taliban on the left side of her head – just for wanting her and hundreds of other girls to go to school.

Even in Australia, in her work to introduce consent education at school, advocate Chanel Contos received more than 6,5000 testimonies of women and girls who were assaulted by men and boys – many of whom attended these elite all-boys schools.

Should Newington College proceed with the decision to become co-ed, girls enrolling in the school will be entering an environment where, at best, they’re not welcome and, at worst, they’re in danger of being harassed, assaulted or raped.

Reality check for the parents at Newington: that is what being a second-class citizen is like.

‘Co-ed = less diversity.’

I’m not really sure how to respond to this one, other than saying it is completely and utterly nonsensical.

‘I’m an old boy of this school, my son is also an old boy, and the intention was always I’d have a grandson… but I won’t bring him to a co-ed school.’

The waterworks were impressive, I must admit. My answer to Tony? Don’t send your grandson to a co-ed school. No one is forcing you, except presumably your desire to carry on the legacy of the men in the family.

But in case you didn’t know, that desire was conditioned by the patriarchy and old patriarchal “traditions” – traditions which have oppressed women for centuries.

‘I’m just afraid that it’s all part of this sort of woke, toxic masculinity type palava.’

Correct!

We’ve seen so many incidents, scandals and, in some cases, criminal activity at all-boys private schools. Most of the time, it’s fostered by the environment of the school itself, an incubator for toxic masculinity.

Professor Martin Crotty’s research in 2001, covered in his book Making the Australian Male: Middle-class masculinity 1870-1920, found boys were pressured to reach the heights of “real men” and conform to the standards of masculinity in school settings. Whether it was on the playground, the sporting field or in dormitories, the environment of the all-boys school produced a generation of men with the ideals that being a man means being tough, domineering and violent.

Of course, that research was 20 years ago and it was looking at the generation of men from over 100 years ago. However, these ideals are passed on from generation to generation, from son to son. 

What this parent should be more afraid of is the preservation of toxic masculinity, not the dismantling of it via the “woke agenda”.

‘I love the opportunity this school provides, and I would hate to see other boys stripped of that opportunity.’

What sort of opportunities does an all-boys school provide?

Is it academic benefits? No – the Australian Council for Educational Research confirmed there is “no value-add overtime to being a single-sex school compared to a coeducational school”, despite parents on the change.org petition arguing otherwise.

Is it social benefits? Can’t be – our society is no longer a boys-only one, although sometimes it may feel like that.

Is it a chance to preserve a culture of patriarchy, a tradition of exclusion of women, the ever-oppressing Boys Club? You bet it is.

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Newington College, the all-boys school in Stanmore, announced on 20 November the college would become a co-educational school by 2033, which some parents have said is informed by “LGBT, freemasonic and communist ideologies”.

A “proud member” of Newington College in Sydney created a petition on change.org, which has acquired more than 1,800 signatures objecting to the proposed changes.

“I have witnessed firsthand the unique culture that has been cultivated over generations,” wrote John Ramarque, the petition’s creator.

“This culture is being threatened by recent decisions made by our headmaster and council. 

“The decision to make our school co-ed is not just a change in policy; it’s an erosion of our heritage.”

Ramarque said the college, which can charge up to $40,000 a year in individual school fees, has “always been a place for boys to grow into men, surrounded by their brothers”.

He suggested the 160 year old school becoming a co-educational institution risks losing the “potential benefit” of “improved academic performance and increased self-esteem among students”.

“Please sign this petition if you believe in preserving Newington’s heritage while ensuring its continued excellence for future generations,” Ramarque wrote.

More than 100 people commented on the petition, expressing their own concerns over the proposed change, which some said was announced with little to no consultation with the college community.

One person wrote: “Co-ed has failed already for the great majority of students, but this is political,” saying the changes should be seen as “LGBT, freemasonic and community ideologies… anti-life, anti-truth and as satanic.”

“Integrating the school is a means to hinder boys becoming leaders in society and future roles as fathers. Keep the school as it is,” said another.

“It is a school not a Disney movie!” a third wrote.

While Ramarque references a report from the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) saying single sex schools can provide “potential benefits” for students, the council says “there is no value-add over time to being in a single-sex school compared to a coeducational school”

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Potential legal issues

A group of parents from Newington College also sent a letter to the chair of the Newington College Council, Tony McDonald, protesting the move to go co-educational from a legal perspective.

According to reports from The Australian Financial Review (AFR), lawyers from Brown Wright Stein sent the letter on behalf of the parents, suggesting there may be legal issues with transitioning from a single-sex to co-educational school.

The parents and lawyers argued that while the school council, headed by McDonald, has the power to make certain changes to the college, Newington is ultimately run by rules of a trust that controls the property of the school itself.

It is in those rules that state the property of Newington should only be for educational purposes of young men and boys only.

“The college… was intended to be and has been a college… for the advancement of education of boys and young men,” the letter read.

“It was never contemplated that girls and young women would be educated at the college.

“As a result, any use of the property vested in the council [to educate girls] … may be a breach of trust.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Instagram @newingtoncollege_official

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Recent allegations of sexual misconduct at parties involving private-school students have exposed the toxic culture in many schools.

The ex-schoolgirl who launched the online petition that led to the revelations, Chanel Contos, told the ABC schools needed to address:

locker room talk […] and throw-away comments because I really think they lay the foundation of the rape culture.

Contos also pointed to all-boys schools where she said objectifying women was normalised. The interview came after a prefect at an all-boys school wrote an opinion piece talking about the need to shift the way boys see women. He wrote:

[…] there have been times when I’ve heard about disgusting behaviour and not done anything about it, times when I’ve tolerated boys referring to women in derogatory ways […] times when I’ve stood by.

I interviewed 32 teachers in three elite private boys’ schools, in two capital cities. I conducted this yet-to-be-published study between 2015 and 2017 just before the #MeToo movement really took off.

At the time, I wanted to understand the teachers’ moral purpose and their ability to seek and make change in the privileged schools they taught. I was unprepared for the accounts of sexual harassment and sexism female teachers relayed.

How boys behaved

One young teacher described a troubling account that had her almost leaving the profession:

I had year 9, year 10 boys, being very sexually explicit to me […] making nasty rumours up, being quite, very sexual, very, very sexual. Telling me I’m wearing hooker shoes and I look like a hooker to claiming that they saw me on the weekend doing particular things with particular people.

I also heard stories of up-skirting (taking a sexually intrusive photograph up someone’s skirt without their permission), boys participating in sexually explicit discussions about their teachers on social media, and propositioning them. I observed inappropriate personal questions and teasing with sexual innuendo in classroom interactions.

One teacher reported a harrowing experience of a boy stalking her, saying:

[…] he had hundreds of pictures of me […] he was filming me and stuff […] I told people and they didn’t believe me.

For victims of sexual harassment disbelief is the first great silencer. But denial and victim-blaming are also factors.

One administrator suggested gender simply didn’t matter, and she wasn’t alone in this sentiment. For her, it was the case that “naive women teachers have a harder time, if they’re not quite firm”.

This mentality among some school leaders may point to why one teacher said she was “worried that people might view us as having done something wrong”.

Another teacher told me:

[…] even if I do take it further […] like what’s the point? Nothing’s really seriously going to be done about it.

But this same teacher excused the behaviour as that of “just boys”, who were “silly” and “trying it on”.

Another female school leader, who complained about sexism herself, participated in this type of victim blaming. She said:

I’m having problems with some of my staff, they’re lovely, lovely girls […] they dress very feminine, and the boys are just ga-ga […] it causes havoc.

Excusing such behaviour is a form of internalising. This is when women’s learnt behaviour may be intrinsically sexist towards themselves and other women. It is crucial to understanding how insidious such logic can be.

It comes from peers too

Some female teachers told me of the everyday sexism of their male colleagues:

I experience sexism and discrimination every time I do speak up […] from day one I knew that I was in a place where women didn’t have equality.

Parents also played a part. A school leader told me the fathers:

don’t like being told what to do by a female […] a male member of staff wouldn’t get that treatment whereas as a female they do and it’s disgusting […] how do you educate the parent body?

It may be that elite private schools, with high fees and high expectations struggle to speak back to their clientele. Studies have suggested when a scandal arises in such a school and puts its reputation at risk, this can seriously jeopardise their market share and viability.

As one teacher put it: “they are the client, they’re the ones who you need to please”.

Teachers also talked about their school heads who “don’t want any surprises” and are “worried about parents ringing up”. One of my participants said:

we are basically told […] keep the parents at the gate […] don’t let them go for you, because they will, they will attack you.

Of course, I am not claiming all boys in elite private schools harass their teachers, or indeed all teachers are harassed. There are more progressive elite boys’ schools and my sample of interviewees was limited. There were differences too, in teachers’ experiences both across and between schools I studied.

Still, the evidence of sexual harassment and enabling social mechanisms at all three sites in my study calls on school leaders to look deeply at their practices.

Unpicking and reforming these mechanisms of gender oppression, which include silence and disbelief, will be crucial if we want to have meaningful change.

Some schools have taken good steps since the petition came about. These include schools hosting sessions about consent and principals acknowledging the need to change the culture.

But it is clear that more courage, and moral leadership, will be required to shift entrenched attitudes and behaviours.

George Variyan, Lecturer, Monash University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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When Cassie utters her friend’s name to those she believes are responsible for her death, she is met with the same blank gaze.

“Who?”

Nobody remembers her name. Everybody remembers Al Monroe though. Women are often erased from history — especially women who are victims of male crimes.

In the film, Al Monroe has become a successful doctor and is about to get married. His life is wonderful and clean. Nina’s life has completely been erased. She was Cassie’s best friend.

In real life, things don’t look much different. Little to no forms of justice exist for women and girls who are attacked by men buoyed by their wealth, status and pedigree, and in our society, the most concentrated cesspools of wealth, status and pedigree are the elite private schools within Sydney’s richest suburbs. Think Cranbrook, Scots, Shore and Waverley.

“Once a Scots boy, always a Scots boy.”

It’s not surprising then, that an online petition which went viral a few days ago has ‘boys’ from these colleges sprayed across 72 pages of testimonials from their female victims. 

Last Thursday, Chanel Contos took to her Instagram account to ask her friends (she has a following of over 7,000 people) how many of them had experienced sexual assault from students at all-boys’ schools.

Three quarters of her friends who responded said they or someone they knew had been victims of assault by these boys. 

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Contos, who went to Kambala, one of the wealthiest all-girls’ private schools in Sydney’s Rose Bay, began a petition calling for more direct education on consent in schools.

Speaking to Rebecca Maddern on the TODAY show, Contos said “the best way to approach this is to attack the education system because ultimately it’s the education system that failed us on this.” 

“It became very apparent to us that all of us had tens or hundreds of friends who had experienced sexual assault or harassment” she said from London via zoom. 

The inspiration behind the campaign began during a conversation Contos had with her friends about rape and consent. She discovered one of her friends had been a victim of assault by a man who’d also assaulted Contos years ago. 

“If I knew that was wrong, if I’d done something about it at the time, then that wouldn’t have happened to that girl,”  Contos said. “The boys don’t know. They don’t know any better. How do we expect them to know better if we don’t teach them?” 

Within 24 hours of the petition going live, more than 200 women had reached out to Contos to share their experiences of rape, assault and harassment by male students from nearby all-boys’ schools.

Since the weekend, more than 12,000 people have signed the petition and Contos has received over 1600 testimonies. In the 72 page testimonial, perpetrators from Riverview were named 21 times. Scots College, 36 times. Cranbrook, 45 times. Knox Grammar, 8 times. Waverley College, 13 times. Shore, 13 times.

The women who shared their stories were students from all-girls schools including Kambala (Rose Bay), Kincoppal-Rose Bay (Rose Bay) Monte Sant Angelo (North Sydney), St Catherine’s (Waverley), SCEGGS (Darlinghurst), Ascham (Edgecliff), St Vincent’s (Potts Point), Queenwood (Mosman), Wenona (North Sydney) Loreto (Kirribilli), St Clare’s College (Waverley) and Pymble Ladies’ College (Pymble). 

Contos hopes her petition will draw attention to “the prevalence of rape culture in this very specific bubble within Sydney private schools.” 

She wants all-boys schools to combat slut-shaming and “locker room talk.”

“There needs to be a holistic approach, and single-sex schools need to incorporate factors specific to their students,” she told The Guardian. “This means addressing slut-shaming in girls’ schools, and addressing locker room talk in boys’ schools, because that’s the foundation for this culture.”

In her book, “Boys and Sex”, Peggy Orenstein writes that it is through culture that boys often learn the truth about power…”about asserting masculinity through the control of women’s bodies.”

Our culture still insists on pressuring men to be sexually active as a way to feel more like “a man”. Orenstein spoke to over one hundred young boys for her book. A common pattern she found in her discussions with the boys was their compulsion to be ‘mean’ to girls in order to feel more like a man.

“The biggest single determining factor (re: masculinity) is assertiveness,” said an eighteen year old she interviewed. “If I am dominating other people, I am being masculine.”

Another boy, 16, told her, “If you want to get girls, you’ve got to be mean. You’ve gotta be an asshole.”

Which makes me wonder whether having a one hour lesson at school as a 14-year old boy will shift your behaviour and attitude toward girls. By the time a boy reaches Year 7 or 8, he’s already had more than a decade’s worth of cultural lessons from movies and books and television that teach him how to be a man.
 
“What we consume becomes part of our psyches, unconsciously affecting how we feel, think and behave,” Orenstein writes in “Boys and Sex”.

I think of all the movies my straight male friends revere; Kill Bill. Fight Club. The Godfather. Psycho. Films which promoted hypermasculinity, violence and the degradation of women.

Through this culture, young men learn to see sex as “ impersonal, and female bodies as vehicles for their own gratification,” Orenstien writes. “The idea of promiscuity is still part of growing up male.” 

If the government listens to Contos and enacts concrete sexual education around consent in boys’ schools, my next question would be — who’s writing these lesson plans? Who is teaching them?

I spent almost ten years teaching in all-boys private schools and most of the staff were made up of male teachers. How do they begin to teach these lessons if they haven’t been taught how to teach them? How do we know they’re modelling feminist (and therefore, fair) attitudes? 

It’s also hard to change your behaviour if everyone around you continues to perform a socially valid way of belonging; ways of being a ‘man’ that are passed down from generation to generation.

The principals of these all-boys schools are very often alumni. They are invested in their own histories, and given their $38,000 a year education got them to where they are today, why wouldn’t they?

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These are the richest schools in the country. They are often nowhere near the top of the list when it comes to academic results. So why do parents send them there? 

Besides connections, sport and status, money provides you immunity from bad behaviour. Money shields you from accountability.

Educating young students on consent laws in schools alone will not change things. Women continue to be nameless and ‘anonymous’ because they know the consequences of putting their names to these stories.

They’ll lose their jobs. They’ll be tossed into the ‘victim’s bin’. And the men?

“He is now a high profile investment banker,” wrote one rape victim of her perpetrator in the testimonies.

The films reflect real life. He is the Al Monroe.

1800 Respect national helpline: 1800 737 732
Lifeline (24 hour crisis line): 131 114
Beyond Blue: 1300 224 636

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Was it just “poor behaviour?” 

An incident that occurred on Melbourne trams over the weekend has triggered an avalanche of backlash across social media and National news.

A group of male students from the independent Catholic boys school St Kevin’s College, in the affluent inner suburb of Melbourne were filmed performing an extremely disturbing chant on a tram, that included the lines:

“I wish that all the ladies
Were holes in the road
And if I was a dump truck
I’d fill them with my load”

and also:

“I wish that all the ladies
were wives in the ocean
And I was a slipper
And ride them with my motion.”

The students were on their way to a Saturday sports event.

On Monday afternoon, the principal of the college released a public statement, saying “I apologise unreservedly for the offensive and inconvenience caused by this group of students.”

But while the Principal’s swift condemnation is welcome, it must be stressed that this isn’t typical teenage behaviour. It’s a toxic culture propped up by some of the country’s wealthiest, elite male private schools.

The same sort of culture that exists and emboldens men like Donald Trump. A culture which enables a US President to brush off criminal behaviour as ‘locker room talk.’

Like I said last year in The Guardian’s Op Ed page, there is a link between the particular sort of gendered confidence that is exclusively pertinent in boys’ private schools and the men who end up in positions of great power in our society.

There seems to be two very different systems of valuing conduct in our society. One that breeds respect, mutual consent and equality to all humans, regardless of gender. And the one that performs a rigorous adherence to the belief that a woman and her body is a thing that is available, accessible and takeable.

On Twitter, commenters called the Melbourne tram incident “obnoxious”, “disgusting”, “staggering”, “vile.”

The principal also said in his five sentence apology statement, “Students upset by the behaviour have already come to me and we have been following through in both a disciplinary and pastoral manner today. We have always and will continue to challenge such poor behaviour and misogynistic attitudes through programs at school and with the co-operation of parents.”

But to me, the incident wasn’t merely ‘obnoxious’. It was violent. 

Disgraceful behaviour. It’s much more than a sexist chant. https://t.co/O2nJHNlVyW

— Michael Rowland (@mjrowland68) October 21, 2019

Let us use that word in its full, broad capacity — the intentional use of power, threatened or actual, against another person, or group.

Patty Kinnersly, the chief executive of domestic violence charity Our Watch told the ABC, “This disturbing behaviour also emphasises the need for respectful relationships education in schools, giving children and young people the skills to reject aggressive behaviour and discrimination, challenge stereotypes and learn about respect.

I am dismayed to learn that even today, the politics of male supremacy continues to be rooted in female sexual objectification.

It’s easy to brush away the incident as mere adolescent cruelty. But this cruelty leads to our frightening statistics of gendered domestic violence. It’s a cruelty that has a trajectory.

I thought about Jia Tolentino’s piece in The New Yorker last year about how men perform for other men in a bid for peer approval. This is a prime example.

When I watched the video of the tram incident, I thought of Lili Loofbourow’s words; “Woman being mistreated exists in a room where the men are performing for each other—using the woman to firm up their own bond.”

It’s what she calls, ‘the cruelty of male bonding’, or more precisely, a vigorous performance of heterosexuality.

It concerns me that when boys perform intimacy and solidarity with each other, it seems to often necessitate the degradation of women. This may seem like a harmless chant, but there’s a link here to the fact that 90% of the most-viewed pornography videos involve a woman being violently treated.

Dominance and coercion begin with the use of language, and we saw the seeds of violence in this video.

“In high schools, in colleges, at law schools, men perform for one another and ascend to positions of power,” Tolentino writes.

Let’s hope this incident doesn’t simply dissolve amidst the commotion of the daily news cycle but that it instead, reminds us to be wary of the different worlds we operate within, and to protect the version of society that respects all human beings.

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