Student rates female schoolmates on Facebook, suspended

LONDON - A US high school has suspended one of its students for making a list of female schoolmates rating them on their looks and alleged promiscuity on the online social networking website Facebook and making racial and hateful comments.

The act of the Illinois student was similar to a scene from the Hollywood film “The Social Network” in which Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, played by actor Jesse Eisenberg, is seen rating college girls.

However, according to the British newspaper Daily Mail, the student of the Oak Park-River Forest High School took things much farther.

He ranked 50 girls on their looks and alleged promiscuity, and then wrote descriptions filled with “hateful” comments and “racial slurs”.

He published the list, which gives girls titles such as “Fallen Angel”, “Blond Bombshell” and “The Hangover”, on Facebook and even made hard copies and distributed at his school, the British daily said.

Two of the gils whose names were on the list, Haley Rea and Julia Levy, have complained about the incident.

“Hundreds of students cheered him on,” Rea told local news network CBS 2. They didn’t see the fundamental wrong, and the sexism and racism of it, and the misogyny of it,” Levy added.

This is apparently the third year the student has put together such a list, and has been reprimanded for doing it in the past.

“He’d already been expelled for it one year - his freshman year - and now he’s doing it again, so I don’t know what he’s doing,” a fellow student Niles Sykes was quoted as saying.

The student will face a disciplinary review by the school and could well be expelled for his actions.

The girls have started their own forum on Facebook to speak out about the incident and stop the spread of misogynistic views, which they believe is a problem that affects much of society.

“These attitudes are not OK and shouldn’t be tolerated,” Levy said.