Barricades in the bathroom. Damage to school property. Teenage girls laughing like hyenas as they livestream their despairing teachers pleading for calm.
This is how students gleefully describe the ‘spontaneous rave’ that brought an elite Catholic girls’ school on Sydney’s lower north shore to its knees on Tuesday.
During the raucous dance party at the normally strict Loreto Kirribilli private college, toilets were broken, a locker was used to block access to the bathroom, and senior staff were filmed and ridiculed as they tried in vain to restore order.
Principal Nicole Archard sent 130 girls home and then cancelled classes completely after declaring the Year 12 girls’ untamed end-of-year rave was ‘unsafe and disrespectful’ and had put hundreds of other pupils and teachers ‘at risk’.
Some of the videos and photos of the rave being circulated by students – and seen by Daily Mail – are crudely AI-generated to make it appear as though the teachers who tried to stop the rave were in fact involved in it.
One such example is a fake image of Principal Archard wearing a black bra outside her shirt above a wild throng of excited students. An even more absurd fabrication shows Deputy Principal Romalina Rocca crowd surfing with a boom box above her head.
While those AI mock-ups may raise a laugh, the real footage of the party is chaotic.
One unaltered video of the crazy scenes at Loreto during morning recess shows teachers panicking as a mob of girls, all in their blue school uniforms, shout and stomp in the common room with their arms thrust into the air.
Year 12 students at Loreto Kirribilli barricade themselves in the bathroom during an end-of-year rave that has been condemned by the school’s principal
Loreto schoolgirls mocked the school officials who tried to stop the rave by producing fake AI-generated images such as this one of Principal Nicole Archard
Another fake AI-generated image depicted Deputy Principal Romalina Rocca crowd surfing with a boom box above her head. In reality, Rocca had tried to shut down the rave
An ex-student told Daily Mail that while the ‘rave’ has been a tradition at Loreto for more than a decade when girls graduate, the school tolerates, rather than authorises the event.
Determined to break a previous rave record of 22 minutes, the Year 12 girls had secretly planned to go longer – but when teachers shut it down at the 13-minute mark, they retreated to the toilets to continue the chaos.
In the video, as the students move on into the girls’ toilets, Deputy Principal Rocca can be seen pointing anxiously and a male teacher pokes his head above a partition from the disabled toilet and urges them to stop.
Another image shows clearly identifiable girls in their uniforms pushing a black locker as a barricade against the toilet doors as other teachers frantically try to shut the rave down.
Loreto is a traditional girls’ college, with stringent codes for students to have uniforms below knee length, their hair tied back, and wear no make-up, earrings or jewellery. Year 12 fees are $35,000.
On Tuesday, Principal Archard suspended Year 12 – aside from, a former student told Daily Mail, ‘a few nerds who didn’t participate in the rave’ – and halted on-campus classes on Wednesday.
Despite the chaos of the week, Loreto’s ‘Staff Appreciation Day’ went ahead as planned on Thursday. The school and Principal Archard were contacted for comment.
In a letter to parents, Ms Archard wrote that the ‘behaviour that was unsafe and disrespectful’ displayed collectively by the 130 girls , ‘collectively … placed students and staff at risk, caused damage to property and disrupted the learning environment.
Excited Loreto Kirribilli schoolgirls pack the common room as their end-of-year rave kicks off – but when staff shut it down, the party spilled into the bathrooms and spiralled out of control
A real image of Deputy Principal Romalina Rocca (left) in the girls’ toilets trying to shut down the rave, while another teacher (right) appears above a partition from inside the disabled toilet. Gen Z use ‘I’m dead’ or ‘I’m deceased’ to refer to something they find very funny – as in, this is so funny I could die
Loreto Kirribilli is a conservative private girls’ school with strict rules for uniforms and behaviour. Headmistress Nicole Archard said the rave ‘was unsafe and disrespectful’
‘Such behaviour is taken very seriously, as it undermines the respectful, safe and caring culture we strive to maintain at Loreto Kirribilli,’ Ms Archard wrote.
‘We ask that you take the opportunity to discuss this incident with your daughter and reinforce the importance of personal responsibility, respect for self and others, and care for our school environment.’
Former students told Daily Mail that Tuesday’s rave was intended to break the previous 22-minute record in a tradition that dates back to 2013.
For years, Loreto has tried to tame end-of-year celebrations. After the usual ‘muck-up day’ was banned on the last day of school, the girls instead organised a ‘scavenger hunt’ while not in their school uniforms.
An alarmed male teacher pokes his head above a partition and urges the girls to stop partying
Principal Nicole Archard’s letter to parents decrying the out-of-control rave which she said put pupils and teachers ‘at risk’ after she sent 130 girls home and shut down on-campus classes
Headmistress Nicole Archard wrote to parents urging, ‘We ask that you take the opportunity to discuss this incident with your daughter and reinforce the importance of personal responsibility, respect for self and others, and care for our school environment’
Known as the ‘scav hunt’, girls split into teams and would run around Sydney completing bizarre tasks, such as chugging two litres of milk, kissing a businessman over the age of 50 on the lips, or getting a tattoo.
But from 2013 onwards, the preferred way for girls to let their hair down was holding a ‘blackout disco’ – known as ‘The Rave’ – in and outside the Year 12 common room, which is where this year’s ruckus began.
The ‘naughty’ students are still expected to graduate on Friday, meaning they will escape further punishment.
