Not here to be ranked: the ongoing online harassment of female DSA students

     “Hot but too chatty,” “Have you seen her softball uni?” “She’s too ghetto.” These degrading comments were just a few of the many on the now-infamous spreadsheet created by a group of DSA junior boys to rank and potentially compile personal information about their female classmates.

     Several weeks ago, rumor of this spreadsheet and an accompanying screenshot spread around DSA like a wildfire. In response, the DSA Feminism Club organized a “purple-out,” encouraging students to wear purple in support of the victims of the harassment and to provoke administrative action. Rumors had spread that administration had intentionally been ignoring the issue in order to protect the aggressors. On the contrary, they had been investigating the issue for a week already. At this time, no culprits have been found.

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     “Rumors started circulating in my circle of friends about a week to a week and a half ago [as of January 23],” Kendall Babb, president of the DSA Feminism Club, recalled.

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     Babb claimed that these rumors started when some DSA students overheard their classmates discussing the spreadsheet. In the following days, a screenshot displaying the objectifying and misogynist nature of the spreadsheet circulated, sending ripples of shock and rightful outrage throughout the student body.

     “The biggest thing that scared me was [the idea] that high school boys think comments like that all the time, [and] these ones were just dumb enough to write it down,” Babb worried, “That’s what made me feel like ‘Oh my God, am I being viewed as an object all the time?’”

     To denounce the misogyny displayed on the spreadsheet, Babb and the rest of the Feminism Club organized a “purple-out”. They encouraged students to wear purple on Wednesday, January 15, the week after the rumors of the spreadsheet blew up. At the time, much of the student body believed that administration was turning a blind eye in order to protect the spreadsheet’s creators.

     “What we had hoped to accomplish the most was attention,” Babb explained. “We wanted administration to see that we as a student body, as a collective, wanted to see something happen with this, we wanted to see that they were working to find the people who were doing this. Another thing that was super important was we were standing with the victims.”

     While it may have been perceived that administration was not taking action against the spreadsheet, Dr. Tobias, Mr. Dickerson, and the IT department had been working behind the scenes to seek out the aggressors for over a week before the purple-out. This was cleared up following the event, but many students did not know this before or during it.

     “All somebody had to do was to come in here and ask, and we could have said ‘No, we’ve been investigating this for over a week,’” Tobias said.

     Tobias and Dickerson interviewed over a dozen students to try to find the source of the spreadsheet, but were unable to because the students they interviewed had only heard about it by word of mouth. Tobias then sent out an email for all junior English teachers to read to their students. The email denounced the spreadsheet and encouraged anyone with information on it to submit it to administration anonymously.

     “That’s how that rumor got started about how administration doesn’t care,” Tobias speculated. “Somebody misread or misinterpreted the email I sent… basically it was threatening folks that when I find out, they’re gonna get the full measure of the law.”

     Rumors that the spreadsheet contained personal information such as the class schedules, phone numbers, and addresses of the victims also spread, which Babb said would make it especially dangerous. She believes that if the perpetrators are not caught and they continue similar ideas outside of high school, they could be a danger to women around them.

     “[In college,] it’s very easy for men to move past things just being comments in their head or comments that they’re putting online [and turn them] into physical action, whether that be rape, sexual assault, even physical violence,” Babb explained.

     Some students have expressed that they are afraid to even walk in the school halls for fear of being objectified and ranked. This incident leaves a blemish on DSA’s reputation and undermines the trust that students have in each other.

     “I want this to be brought to light and I want people to know that this is not okay,” Babb concluded.