INSIDE THE CHAT
Published in El Estoque Volume XLVII Issue II and elestoque.org at http://www.elestoque.org/2016/10/23/print-2/chat/.
UPDATE: THIS STORY WAS TAKEN DOWN FOR THE TIME BEING AS THE SANTA CLARA COUNTY POLICE DEPARTMENT RE-OPENED THE INVESTIGATION INTO THE CASE. THIS STORY HAS YET TO BE RE-PUBLISHED.
Published in El Estoque Volume XLVII Issue II and elestoque.org at http://www.elestoque.org/2016/10/23/print-2/chat/.
UPDATE: THIS STORY WAS TAKEN DOWN FOR THE TIME BEING AS THE SANTA CLARA COUNTY POLICE DEPARTMENT RE-OPENED THE INVESTIGATION INTO THE CASE. THIS STORY HAS YET TO BE RE-PUBLISHED.
Editor’s note: We generally do not report on stories involving El Estoque staff members, however, we determined this story needed to be told. The fact that it involved a staff member, sophomore Ruth Feng, is irrelevant to the importance of the topic. This chat included many explicit messages. For the purpose of keeping this article as clean as possible and protecting the identities of those involved and victimized, we have removed names and explicit language from this article. MVHS administration declined to comment on this incident as a whole for legal reasons.
Guys, can we all agree women shouldn’t use their heads unless they’re sucking d—.
CHAT TITLE “MEN ONLY.”
When sophomore Ruth Feng first opened this Instagram chat on Sept. 28, 2016, she was shocked by what she found. Not knowing what it was about, Feng accepted the chat request, only to find a plethora of sexist remarks, mentions of the Ku Klux Klan and a hit list that included specific students from MVHS.
“My heart just skipped a beat, because especially guys [doing] this, their group, it’s like they’re all coming at you,” Feng said.
The day she was added to the group chat, Feng screenshotted what she could, saved it on her phone and showed a group of her friends the comments the boys were making. On Sept. 29, the next day, after talking to a teacher who encouraged her to report the incident, Feng went to the office. Feng thought the boys needed to understand they had crossed the line because people get away with this kind of behavior too often and their comments were directed at people who didn’t know about what was happening.
“The main goal I want to have is for them to realize what they did wrong, instead of holding a grudge against me or not [learning] from anything,” Feng said.
Two of the boys, who were involved in the chat, but say that they weren’t contributing, said the group chat did not start out as a way to talk about others. To protect their identities, they will be referred to here as Student X and Student Y.
According to the boys, the chat began in the middle of last year, when the group sent each other funny pictures like memes and commented on the photographs other members of the chat posted on their Instagram accounts.
But on Wednesday, Sept. 28 of this year, three girls were added to the chat. The boys said most of the incident occurred in a span of two to three hours that night. In fact, Student Y said he didn’t even know what had happened until the next day. He still doesn’t know exactly what was said that night. According to Student Y, some of the messages from that night were deleted, but after seeing screenshots of the conversation, he was able to piece together a general idea of what occurred on Sept. 28.
Another girl added to this group chat was junior Natalia Osorio, whose reaction to the event was confusion.
“I didn’t let it affect me too much because I know it was out of anger and rage,” Osorio said, “but it did hurt a little bit to be called those names and to be singled out and having a group of guys up against me.”
She felt bullied.
“Bullying is unwanted, aggressive behavior among school aged children that involves a real or perceived power imbalance,” according to stopbullying. gov. “The behavior is repeated, or has the potential to be repeated, over time. Both kids who are bullied and who bully others may have serious, lasting problems.”
This may bring to mind the image of young children on the playground calling each other names, but in the digital age, it has morphed into a new beast. With the ability to hide behind a screen and type feelings without seeing the emotional repercussions, a non-confrontational type of bullying has been created.
REALIZATION
The boys were gathered in the school office on Friday, Sept. 30 during second period. They sat down, confused as to why they were called into the office, to see the administration and police in front of them.
Because the conversation was taking place on Instagram, on the night of Sept. 28, according to Student X, the school didn’t intervene with punishments, as it was out of their jurisdiction. Instead, the local police took on the investigation.
Student X and Student Y said it was when the administration and police sat in front of them and began discussing why they were there that they began to understand the severity of the situation. They said the other boys understood what they did that night was wrong. But Student X and Student Y didn’t participate in the discussion—they said they were bystanders.
“Originally we saw it as just a joke,” Student Y said. “But then later when the admin explained [what we did]to us and we saw how serious they were, it showed us how serious this thing actually [was].”
To the boys it was harmless joking, but the effects rippled through those who were targeted.
“FLAT A–.”
Osorio wasn’t the first one in her family to see the messages.
Around 10 o’clock on Sept. 28, Osorio noticed that a lot of people were commenting on a recent picture of her getting asked to Homecoming, and that all of the comments were of people tagging other people. The next thing she knew, she was in an extensive group chat.
Chat title: “Leave the chat b—-.”
According to Osorio, the boys even changed the chat title for her. As they spammed her Instagram notifications, telling her to leave the chat, she couldn’t feasibly leave. Her phone was with her dad. He was the one seeing the notifications and he asked her what they were about. But she didn’t know what the chat was about, and when she stayed, according to Osorio, they started sending inappropriate images and using explicit language.
According to Student X and Student Y, the boys were just doing everything they could to get Osorio out of the chat. In those attempts, some of the images they sent were sexually explicit. Those pictures, according to the boys, were not of any of the boys involved in the chat, but rather pictures that came from the internet.
“They were pointing out that I had a ‘flat a–’ and they were calling me the n-word and f—– and a lot of bad things like that,” Osorio said, “And then they started sending me d— pics … I felt kind of singled out and a little bit betrayed.” Her dad immediately sent an email to administration detailing the identities of the boys involved in the chat. Osorio took a few screenshots to illustrate what had happened and then left the conversation. Through her email, she sent these screenshots to the administration.
THE BEGINNING
“Grow an a–.”
There was a screenshot of another girl.
“Babe alert.”
“HAHAHAHHA SIKE N—-”
According to Student X and Student Y, the crude thread of discussion that night all started with a picture. Feng posted a picture of a Syrian boy whose house just got bombed with the caption: “Why I like Hillary and why you shouldn’t vote third party and why Donald Trump is unfit to be president.”
After seeing this, one boy commented on the picture itself to express his opinion on the issue, an opinion which differed from Feng’s. She, along with others, disagreed with him. According to Student X, the comments all started off as a way to vent their frustration at being attacked for expressing how their opinions differed from those of Feng, not to specifically target any individual.
Ten minutes later, Feng was added to the group chat.
Student Y said he believes the frustration over the debate sparked the chat.
“Frankly, I think she got frustrated when any of us brought it up and we like started talking about it or debating about it,” Student Y said. “I found that sort of weird, because if she posts something really controversial, there’s going to be someone that’s going to say something about it. When she got mad that we said something against it, I think that’s what started the whole thing.”
However, Feng said her frustration began when she was added to the group chat and saw the title of it and what they were saying. She said it didn’t have to do with their comments on her political post.
It started as a chat among friends, but quickly spiraled out of control. According to both Student X and Y, the kind of behavior that happened recently wasn’t what the chat was originally for or an accurate representation of their friend group.
“I know all these guys and they wouldn’t have said that stuff had they known that she was in the chat,“ Student X said.
On Instagram, the boys said, the notification that says someone was added to the chat is tiny, and as the boys sent more messages the notification that was to alert them of her being added was buried in the messages. So, the boys assumed their thoughts were only being shared within the security of their own “men only” chat.
They were wrong.
“Only when [our friend]sent a screenshot of ‘ruthsprout has been added to the group,’” Student X said, “did everyone realize, ‘Oh we’ve been saying all this mean stuff without us knowing that she’s been reading all of this and talking about it.’”
As it was happening, Student X messaged Feng in a private direct message on Instagram to apologize for what his friends were saying about her. Feng said he did not have bad intentions in the chat and hadn’t participated, but still made the decision to turn the group of boys in to ensure that the boys that were involved understood what they had done wrong.
THE AFTERMATH
“The n—- killing spree masters.”
On Sept. 30, the group of boys were called to the office.
“After they realized I was going to the office they apologized,” Feng said, “Most of them [apologized].”
According to Feng, all but four of the boys apologized to her, but she still doesn’t think they realize what they did wrong.
For Osorio, it was upsetting that the boys were not apologetic about what happened. In her opinion, they were angry over what happened and didn’t regret their actions. No one has apologized to her.
As bystanders, Students X and Y were solely given a verbal warning and no call home to their parents.
“We got off with nothing, but we seriously learned our lesson because the police were involved and they came in and that really taught us that that was a mistake,” Student Y said. “If it’s something of that gravity, that’s something we should never be doing again.”
In an ongoing investigation, some boys haven’t received their punishment yet and many of the boys have yet to know what the future holds. Our staff has currently submitted a Freedom of Information Act request for police documents on the issue.
And with this, the boys still have trouble coming to terms with what Feng did when she turned them in. Although the two in no way think that what Feng did was unfair, they are still surprised by what happened. Student Y said out of all the boys, he was probably the most frustrated at Feng for what she had done. He said Feng turned them in for the wrong reason because after talking to her, he understood that she turned them in not to give them dire consequences after what had happened, but show them exactly what they had done wrong.
“I feel like it’s a lose-lose situation at that point,” Student Y said. “Because honestly, she told us to stop, we didn’t stop, she tells the office, we get something we don’t deserve, so there is no median here. Either way, we’re gonna go completely unharmed or we’re gonna go actually getting something that we really don’t deserve.”
And while the boys say they remain remorseful over what has happened and scared about what still could happen to them in the future, Osorio wishes administration stepped in to do just a little more. For her, these feelings come hand in hand with a lack of understanding of why they targeted her. She wonders whether or not she did something wrong in their eyes.
Osorio feels that administration was really supportive of her in helping her overcome what had happened. They made sure she still felt safe on Instagram and gave her the ability to go around campus without worry. However, she still feels as though there’s a lack of closure.
“[Administration] could’ve at least, maybe had a sit down where all of the boys could tell me themselves that they’re sorry about what they did and that their action were wrong and maybe what their motive behind it was because right now I have no idea, maybe something I did wrong, or if it was just because they were mad, or if it was someone else’s fault,” Osorio said. “It’s really clouded and it’d just be really nice to clear that up.”
Now, the situation is out of her hands.
The two boys agree that this incident wouldn’t have happened in person because somebody would have physically told the other boys to stop rather than just ignore a tirade of Instagram notifications.
But for Feng and Osorio, there’s a lack of closure. They were personally attacked in the chat, yet neither feels like they’ve received a full apology.
“We’re not trying to undermine the topic by saying it wasn’t bad; it was pretty bad,” Student X said. “It’s just not as bad as everyone makes it out to be.”
But the jokes escalated.
“Do you have anything to say or yourselves? Why would you do something like that?” Osorio said. “I thought we were okay and I hope that it doesn’t happen again.”
For the boys, Osorio and Feng the consequences of the incident are unclear. For some of the boys the ongoing investigation means the effects of their choices on their future is unclear. For the girls, the lack of clear resolution has left them unsure of the motives behind the chat and whether any true understanding has come from the situation. For both parties the situation has been taken out of their hands, and for now all they can do is wait.
If you feel like you are being bullied in any capacity, contact a teacher or a counselor who you feel comfortable talking to, or talk to student advocate Richard Prinz to help you deal with the situation.
Guys, can we all agree women shouldn’t use their heads unless they’re sucking d—.
CHAT TITLE “MEN ONLY.”
When sophomore Ruth Feng first opened this Instagram chat on Sept. 28, 2016, she was shocked by what she found. Not knowing what it was about, Feng accepted the chat request, only to find a plethora of sexist remarks, mentions of the Ku Klux Klan and a hit list that included specific students from MVHS.
“My heart just skipped a beat, because especially guys [doing] this, their group, it’s like they’re all coming at you,” Feng said.
The day she was added to the group chat, Feng screenshotted what she could, saved it on her phone and showed a group of her friends the comments the boys were making. On Sept. 29, the next day, after talking to a teacher who encouraged her to report the incident, Feng went to the office. Feng thought the boys needed to understand they had crossed the line because people get away with this kind of behavior too often and their comments were directed at people who didn’t know about what was happening.
“The main goal I want to have is for them to realize what they did wrong, instead of holding a grudge against me or not [learning] from anything,” Feng said.
Two of the boys, who were involved in the chat, but say that they weren’t contributing, said the group chat did not start out as a way to talk about others. To protect their identities, they will be referred to here as Student X and Student Y.
According to the boys, the chat began in the middle of last year, when the group sent each other funny pictures like memes and commented on the photographs other members of the chat posted on their Instagram accounts.
But on Wednesday, Sept. 28 of this year, three girls were added to the chat. The boys said most of the incident occurred in a span of two to three hours that night. In fact, Student Y said he didn’t even know what had happened until the next day. He still doesn’t know exactly what was said that night. According to Student Y, some of the messages from that night were deleted, but after seeing screenshots of the conversation, he was able to piece together a general idea of what occurred on Sept. 28.
Another girl added to this group chat was junior Natalia Osorio, whose reaction to the event was confusion.
“I didn’t let it affect me too much because I know it was out of anger and rage,” Osorio said, “but it did hurt a little bit to be called those names and to be singled out and having a group of guys up against me.”
She felt bullied.
“Bullying is unwanted, aggressive behavior among school aged children that involves a real or perceived power imbalance,” according to stopbullying. gov. “The behavior is repeated, or has the potential to be repeated, over time. Both kids who are bullied and who bully others may have serious, lasting problems.”
This may bring to mind the image of young children on the playground calling each other names, but in the digital age, it has morphed into a new beast. With the ability to hide behind a screen and type feelings without seeing the emotional repercussions, a non-confrontational type of bullying has been created.
REALIZATION
The boys were gathered in the school office on Friday, Sept. 30 during second period. They sat down, confused as to why they were called into the office, to see the administration and police in front of them.
Because the conversation was taking place on Instagram, on the night of Sept. 28, according to Student X, the school didn’t intervene with punishments, as it was out of their jurisdiction. Instead, the local police took on the investigation.
Student X and Student Y said it was when the administration and police sat in front of them and began discussing why they were there that they began to understand the severity of the situation. They said the other boys understood what they did that night was wrong. But Student X and Student Y didn’t participate in the discussion—they said they were bystanders.
“Originally we saw it as just a joke,” Student Y said. “But then later when the admin explained [what we did]to us and we saw how serious they were, it showed us how serious this thing actually [was].”
To the boys it was harmless joking, but the effects rippled through those who were targeted.
“FLAT A–.”
Osorio wasn’t the first one in her family to see the messages.
Around 10 o’clock on Sept. 28, Osorio noticed that a lot of people were commenting on a recent picture of her getting asked to Homecoming, and that all of the comments were of people tagging other people. The next thing she knew, she was in an extensive group chat.
Chat title: “Leave the chat b—-.”
According to Osorio, the boys even changed the chat title for her. As they spammed her Instagram notifications, telling her to leave the chat, she couldn’t feasibly leave. Her phone was with her dad. He was the one seeing the notifications and he asked her what they were about. But she didn’t know what the chat was about, and when she stayed, according to Osorio, they started sending inappropriate images and using explicit language.
According to Student X and Student Y, the boys were just doing everything they could to get Osorio out of the chat. In those attempts, some of the images they sent were sexually explicit. Those pictures, according to the boys, were not of any of the boys involved in the chat, but rather pictures that came from the internet.
“They were pointing out that I had a ‘flat a–’ and they were calling me the n-word and f—– and a lot of bad things like that,” Osorio said, “And then they started sending me d— pics … I felt kind of singled out and a little bit betrayed.” Her dad immediately sent an email to administration detailing the identities of the boys involved in the chat. Osorio took a few screenshots to illustrate what had happened and then left the conversation. Through her email, she sent these screenshots to the administration.
THE BEGINNING
“Grow an a–.”
There was a screenshot of another girl.
“Babe alert.”
“HAHAHAHHA SIKE N—-”
According to Student X and Student Y, the crude thread of discussion that night all started with a picture. Feng posted a picture of a Syrian boy whose house just got bombed with the caption: “Why I like Hillary and why you shouldn’t vote third party and why Donald Trump is unfit to be president.”
After seeing this, one boy commented on the picture itself to express his opinion on the issue, an opinion which differed from Feng’s. She, along with others, disagreed with him. According to Student X, the comments all started off as a way to vent their frustration at being attacked for expressing how their opinions differed from those of Feng, not to specifically target any individual.
Ten minutes later, Feng was added to the group chat.
Student Y said he believes the frustration over the debate sparked the chat.
“Frankly, I think she got frustrated when any of us brought it up and we like started talking about it or debating about it,” Student Y said. “I found that sort of weird, because if she posts something really controversial, there’s going to be someone that’s going to say something about it. When she got mad that we said something against it, I think that’s what started the whole thing.”
However, Feng said her frustration began when she was added to the group chat and saw the title of it and what they were saying. She said it didn’t have to do with their comments on her political post.
It started as a chat among friends, but quickly spiraled out of control. According to both Student X and Y, the kind of behavior that happened recently wasn’t what the chat was originally for or an accurate representation of their friend group.
“I know all these guys and they wouldn’t have said that stuff had they known that she was in the chat,“ Student X said.
On Instagram, the boys said, the notification that says someone was added to the chat is tiny, and as the boys sent more messages the notification that was to alert them of her being added was buried in the messages. So, the boys assumed their thoughts were only being shared within the security of their own “men only” chat.
They were wrong.
“Only when [our friend]sent a screenshot of ‘ruthsprout has been added to the group,’” Student X said, “did everyone realize, ‘Oh we’ve been saying all this mean stuff without us knowing that she’s been reading all of this and talking about it.’”
As it was happening, Student X messaged Feng in a private direct message on Instagram to apologize for what his friends were saying about her. Feng said he did not have bad intentions in the chat and hadn’t participated, but still made the decision to turn the group of boys in to ensure that the boys that were involved understood what they had done wrong.
THE AFTERMATH
“The n—- killing spree masters.”
On Sept. 30, the group of boys were called to the office.
“After they realized I was going to the office they apologized,” Feng said, “Most of them [apologized].”
According to Feng, all but four of the boys apologized to her, but she still doesn’t think they realize what they did wrong.
For Osorio, it was upsetting that the boys were not apologetic about what happened. In her opinion, they were angry over what happened and didn’t regret their actions. No one has apologized to her.
As bystanders, Students X and Y were solely given a verbal warning and no call home to their parents.
“We got off with nothing, but we seriously learned our lesson because the police were involved and they came in and that really taught us that that was a mistake,” Student Y said. “If it’s something of that gravity, that’s something we should never be doing again.”
In an ongoing investigation, some boys haven’t received their punishment yet and many of the boys have yet to know what the future holds. Our staff has currently submitted a Freedom of Information Act request for police documents on the issue.
And with this, the boys still have trouble coming to terms with what Feng did when she turned them in. Although the two in no way think that what Feng did was unfair, they are still surprised by what happened. Student Y said out of all the boys, he was probably the most frustrated at Feng for what she had done. He said Feng turned them in for the wrong reason because after talking to her, he understood that she turned them in not to give them dire consequences after what had happened, but show them exactly what they had done wrong.
“I feel like it’s a lose-lose situation at that point,” Student Y said. “Because honestly, she told us to stop, we didn’t stop, she tells the office, we get something we don’t deserve, so there is no median here. Either way, we’re gonna go completely unharmed or we’re gonna go actually getting something that we really don’t deserve.”
And while the boys say they remain remorseful over what has happened and scared about what still could happen to them in the future, Osorio wishes administration stepped in to do just a little more. For her, these feelings come hand in hand with a lack of understanding of why they targeted her. She wonders whether or not she did something wrong in their eyes.
Osorio feels that administration was really supportive of her in helping her overcome what had happened. They made sure she still felt safe on Instagram and gave her the ability to go around campus without worry. However, she still feels as though there’s a lack of closure.
“[Administration] could’ve at least, maybe had a sit down where all of the boys could tell me themselves that they’re sorry about what they did and that their action were wrong and maybe what their motive behind it was because right now I have no idea, maybe something I did wrong, or if it was just because they were mad, or if it was someone else’s fault,” Osorio said. “It’s really clouded and it’d just be really nice to clear that up.”
Now, the situation is out of her hands.
The two boys agree that this incident wouldn’t have happened in person because somebody would have physically told the other boys to stop rather than just ignore a tirade of Instagram notifications.
But for Feng and Osorio, there’s a lack of closure. They were personally attacked in the chat, yet neither feels like they’ve received a full apology.
“We’re not trying to undermine the topic by saying it wasn’t bad; it was pretty bad,” Student X said. “It’s just not as bad as everyone makes it out to be.”
But the jokes escalated.
“Do you have anything to say or yourselves? Why would you do something like that?” Osorio said. “I thought we were okay and I hope that it doesn’t happen again.”
For the boys, Osorio and Feng the consequences of the incident are unclear. For some of the boys the ongoing investigation means the effects of their choices on their future is unclear. For the girls, the lack of clear resolution has left them unsure of the motives behind the chat and whether any true understanding has come from the situation. For both parties the situation has been taken out of their hands, and for now all they can do is wait.
If you feel like you are being bullied in any capacity, contact a teacher or a counselor who you feel comfortable talking to, or talk to student advocate Richard Prinz to help you deal with the situation.