Vicious hazing attack has no place in any school

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Editorial

December 9, 2025 — 5.00am

The forms of violence known by the term “bastardisation” loom large enough in Australian culture to have given rise to the very word itself as a peculiarly Australian coinage.

It has been aired again with a brutal ceremony reportedly carried out on a 17-year-old student at The Scots College by classmates as part of an apparent school tradition called “Bob 2025” for boys in years 10 to 12.

The boy’s mother told 2GB on Monday her son had been lured on a private Snapchat group to attend a private party. Instead, the hazing occurred off school grounds on Saturday afternoon near Woollahra Golf Course. The woman said her son was pummelled and had beer and abuse poured on him as he walked the gauntlet, before he fled and was found by a Rose Bay resident who helped him phone his parents and police.

A still from the video where a Scots College student was humiliated after being forced to walk through a human tunnel.

The mother said she contacted staff and provided videos, and although she heard from the head of the senior school within 24 hours, there was no word from the principal of the all-boys school, Ian Lambert. NSW Police have begun an investigation.

That this type of incident still occurs in 2025 is a disgrace – and the school’s response seems inadequate, at best.

Bullying among children and adolescents has been recognised as a public health concern for more than a decade, and federal and state governments are pushing anti-bullying programs. Some private schools, however, remain largely autonomous in responding to bullying.

The Supreme Court of NSW in November 2024 ruled that schools can be found negligent for failing to protect students from bullying, even when bullying incidents occur outside of school hours and beyond school grounds.

Frankly, we are surprised that in an environment of rising awareness of the damage wrought by bullying, the beast of boys behaving badly has been able to raise its ugly head so easily.

Tellingly, the attack occurred just days before the Albanese government’s groundbreaking ban on teen social media comes into effect. Cyberbullying was one of the drivers behind the ban.

The Scots College portrays itself as a “distinctive Australian school that defends the honourable traditions, adventures and learning of boys”.

The principal eventually issued a press release nearly 48 hours later, following extensive media coverage, saying he was disappointed and disgusted with the boys’ behaviour. He said the school would itself investigate, as well as co-operate with police.

All well and good but this is too little, too late. Lambert’s failure to immediately and personally contact the family is a glaring oversight.

Taking a broader view, bullying behaviour in schools does not occur in isolation. Those children who become bullies, or who believe such behaviour is acceptable, enter the school gates already under the influence of formative factors. The most crucial of these is the family environment. There is no doubt a small clique of boys at some elite private schools who are raised in a culture of privileged entitlement act in a manner most Sydneysiders abhor and will not tolerate. Let’s hope that for the majority of decent parents and students at Scots, this type of behaviour is properly investigated and punished, and a message is sent to all students about how unacceptable it is.

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