By ANEEKA SIMONIS
SHOCKING footage capturing a group of school girls hitting and pulling the hair of another female student at a Cardinia Shire school has gone viral, with close to a dozen students suspended over the violent brawl.
A 34-second video, viewed close to 25,000 times in less than 24 hours, shows up to six female students from Kooweerup Secondary College in a violent brawl captured at recess on Tuesday 8 March.
One girl can be heard yelling “stop, stop, stop” among the screaming, but the fight continues on film with one female victim being slammed against the lockers before a group of four other girls began pounding their fists into the girl’s head and pulling her hair.
The fight is broken up for moments before one of the brawling students launches themselves at the female student who finds herself in a five-second headlock before the group eventually disperses.
Male voices can be heard laughing in the background.
The viral video attracted hundreds of comments and shares on Facebook, with many publicly describing the fight as feral, disgusting and pathetic.
“As a mother with primary school kids I don’t find ANYTHING funny about this. If school isn’t hard enough you’ve got this crap to deal with too. Feel sorry for everyone involved,” a comment read.
Kooweerup Secondary College’s Acting Principal Felix Patton said about 11 female and male students including those who filmed the brawl have been put on suspension.
He said the school has a strict zero tolerance policy on bullying and hopes their “hard line” response to the assault will educate students about the negative impacts of online posting.
“It was a complete misuse of social media,” Mr Patton said.
“The main thrust of this all is for kids to learn the negative implications misusing social media can have.
“The fight was not nice, and it’s not to be dismissed. But the flow on effects and hurt caused by the filming is what we want to stamp out as totally unacceptable.”
Students were disciplined with varying internal and external suspensions.
Mr Patton said parents gave the school “full support” on the disciplinary action, further explaining “they were not too impressed, especially with the filming.”
He said the assault did not reflect the behaviour of the vast majority of students at the college.
Pakenham police Senior Sergeant Nathan Prowd said an assault report had not been filed in relation to the incident, but described the assault as “unacceptable”.
