Girl Who Exposed Sexist Group Chat Has Dropped Out Of College In Fear For Her Own Safety

In an official statement released today, 28 April, Brickfields Asia College (BAC) clarified that they'd advised the female student to remove her tweets about the rape joke as they were concerned about her safety online after her phone number was revealed in one of the tweets.

"As educators entrusted with the safety and wellbeing of our students, our first response in the recent unfortunate rape comment tweet incident was to advise the student to bring down her tweets containing her mobile number because in our view this is an internet safety procedure to ensure identity and location security. It is unfortunate that this advice has been perceived as an infringement of her right to free speech or our attempts to silence her on the event which was never our intention.

In fact, we acknowledge it takes courage to speak up and that this young woman has been through a distressing event and our hearts go out to her. She will continue to have both establishments’ support," said BAC founder and Managing Director Raja Singham in the statement.

In an interview with SAYS, BAC's Head of Legal and Compliance Mr. Andrew Kalish explained that the college has worked with over 80 NGOs via the college's CSR initiative - the Make It Right Movement (MIRM). In line with the initiative's goal to keep the students as well as the faculty aware and up to date with societal issues, the movement covers 12 cause pillars, including women's rights.

"We at BAC and IACT as educators with over 20,000 graduates have always emphasised and inspired our students to fight for the voiceless, the marginalised, and powerless. We believe that in light of this event, we can and we will make it our priority to uphold transparency, integrity, and ethical behaviour among our students, staff, and every department of both establishments," said the statement.

It is explained in the statement that "both institutions have always conducted and supported programmes to highlight gender sensitivity, equality, and sexual harassment on campus and we will now further increase our efforts."

"BAC and IACT will continue to conduct awareness campaign comprising workshops, dialogues and talks emphasising on the following areas which will be extended to the public as well. These areas include:
- Gender sensitivity and equality
- Zero tolerance to sexual harassment
- Cyber bullying
- Social media sensitivity
- Cyber security, ethics and procedure
- Atress, anxiety and depression

In this regard, we are fortunate to have the services of Ivy-Josiah, a women’s rights activist and Gender Consultant who has voluntarily agreed to assist us as part of our advisory board to monitor and promote a safe, hospitable, and inclusive campus environment."

He further assured us that the college is currently talking to their NGO partners and beneficiaries to that account. The student, whom he clarified is a freshman, is currently suspended.

On a related note, BAC founder and Managing Director Raja Singham related their side of the events in an exclusive interview with Malay Mail Online. In the interview, he explained what happened during the meeting between the female student and the college staff as well as how her parents' concerns for her safety eventually led to her quitting her studies at IACT.

Last week, a series of tweets from the female student about a sexist WhatsApp group chat was widely shared on social media after it emerged that the group chat is used by the some male students from another college (note: both colleges share the same campus) to "critique the new batch of female students", one of whom made a rape comment about the female student in question.

Read the tweets and screenshots here.

"I got called in by BAC and IACT staff the following day, prior to the tweets blowing up. I was grilled on the spot on how it was my fault that things got messy. It was lopsided because the other party was stressing on how WRONG I was for voicing my opinion but never stressed on how wrong the boy was," she wrote.

"The BAC staff didn't want to hear WHY I resorted to Twitter. They already painted a picture and forced me to fit into it. I was intimidated and scared and couldn't voice my true feelings or even argue diplomatically."

"Fast forward to two days ago, the boy who said those nasty things approached me along with a friend of his. He apologised but his friend was also stating that I was wrong as well. That's when I asked him, what he got from the BAC team, he said NOTHING. He didn't get any disciplinary actions towards him. He said the most that he got was a slap from a girl but nothing from BAC. NO counselling, NO temporary suspension, NOTHING. He walks free," she wrote.

"Not only that, because he didn't get anything, he felt like it was okay to tarnish my name and reclaim his to his seniors. I had a phone call from a senior of his asking me what my deal was. I even have a recording of the phone call.

Also, someone approached (one of my close friends) and said if I were to made a police report, someone would pull some strings and make sure the report doesn't go through. This boy has powerful friends and they support him for the wrong reasons."

However, it is not known what the community service entails, nor if the other boys involved in the group chat will also be investigated in regards to the incident. At the time of writing, the identit(ies) of the boy(s) involved also remain unknown.