The market, the media and the family in a school excursion rape case

Abstract

This paper examines a local and specific instance of the effects of neoliberal markets on individual and institutional subjects of schooling. It reviews a court case between a prestigious private girls’ school and an ex‐student who sued the school for failing to provide adequate supervision on a school trip to Europe during which she was raped. It considers the incident in relation to the legal and discursive complexities of school excursions and turns towards neoliberal imperatives that drive school competition for an explanation of how the crisis was managed. Through analysis of print media reports during the week of the trial it traces how discourses of femininity, sexuality and sexual violence came into collision with ideals of reputation, control and proper behaviour, upon which elite schools depend for their marketing. Finally, the paper explores how figurations of the ‘family’ were mobilized by the school and those involved in the events.

Notes

1. State schools are also subject to crisis management, as Youdell points out in her work on ‘educational triage’ (2004).

2. Although others writing about private schooling do not always identify the particular schools they are writing about (e.g. Meadmore & Meadmore, 2004, discuss Schools A, B, C, D, E and F, while Mills, 2004, and Saltmarsh, 2005, both name the schools they write about), I have chosen to retain the name of the school. Although a suppression order was sought by the school, this was lifted on the second day of the trial and a number of the media texts used in this paper include the name of the school in their headline. All the documents referred to in this paper are in the public domain.

3. School pamphlets, magazines and other materials are widely distributed via annual expositions held in major cities in Australia. These materials are often packaged in corporate ‘showbags’ of publicity materials with add‐ons such as pens, pencils and bookmarks bearing the logo of the school.

4. There have been numerous instances of student injuries and deaths on excursions. In the UK, several deaths on outdoor education excursions and the jailing of a teacher for manslaughter in a different case (Bunyan, 2003), have led to calls by teachers’ unions there to ban excursions altogether (Lightfoot, 2003). In the US, several instances have been recorded of female students being raped on school excursions with varying legal consequences for the school authorities involved (AASB, 2000; Shakeshaft, 2004). This paper ventures into the unruly spaces of school excursions and of sexual safety to examine the particular case of an Australian student in an Australian school and what happened to her in Italy (and after).

5. Australian young people acquire adult rights to vote and drink alcohol at 18 years of age. The age of consent for heterosexual sex, in most states, is 16. N was 18 at the time of the trial and 15 at the time of the alleged rapes.

6. ‘Schoolies’ has become an end‐of‐school rite of passage for thousands of young people who descend on designated sites, such as Queensland’s Gold Coast, for a week of excess often involving alcohol, drugs and sex.

7. Undisclosed but reported as potentially being up to A$750,000 (Australian dollars).

8. Corporate practices intended to focus on school reputation, including glossy brochures and prospectuses and rebranding, are increasingly evident as public secondary schools compete with private schools for student enrolments.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Susanne Gannon

Susanne Gannon is a Senior Lecturer in Education at the University of Western Sydney. Amongst other research interests, she is interested in tracing media representations of educational issues, particularly those pertaining to gender and social justice.