Sydney University faced another sexism scandal this week. This time it was a public Facebook post on the St Paul’s College group that offered tips on how to “get rid of some chick” after sleeping with her. These words cut even deeper when you remember that students from this college created a pro-rape Facebook group in 2009, and was the site of the rape and murder of an 18 year old woman in 1977. The vice chancellor of the University of Sydney, Dr Michael Spence responded to the latest scandal by calling out a “deep contempt for women” as being a “core feature of the shared culture” of St Paul’s College.

It feels strange saying “this week’s news”. Because it’s not just this week, is it?

A bunch of my high school friends went to St Paul’s. I’ll never forget one night when I was 18, a few of us travelled up from Newcastle to party with them. We’d heard from our buddies that St Paul’s parties were insane. They were. We started the night at the college bar, The Salisbury. The Sals is run by college kids, which basically means they have their own little club they can make the rules for. Who gets in, and who leaves. My old friends were friends with the self-appointed kings of The Sals, giving me a VIP view of the worst private schoolboy attempt at a rave you can imagine.

We hadn’t seen our friends in almost a year and it was terrifying how much 12 months on this specific campus had “changed” them. They bragged about all the ways they’d humiliated women who liked them. They laughed manically at hazing stories (the ones that made the news years later). A group of guys gathered at the back door of The Sals that night, offering to get girls inside only if they flashed them. When they didn’t, one of the boys pulled his penis out and chased them off.

They called women “holes”, and told us about parties where college girls were basically bullied into hooking up with them if they wanted to stay. An image I’ll never forget is of one of my oldest friends screaming “slut” in the face of a woman he’d apparently hooked up with. Screaming it with real rage. And the look on her face as the other boys laughed. I spent the night on this campus about 10 years ago and I didn’t sleep because I was genuinely scared to hear that something horrific had happened while I was sleeping.

This was 10 years ago, sure, but from what I saw St Paul’s was a genuinely toxic and scary environment, and my friends got sucked right up into the fake macho atmosphere. I’m not friends with them anymore, but as you can probably guess they’re all very successful and high paid men in finance, law, and accounting around Sydney and the country. I used to think the school changed them, but now I’m not sure. I think it’s part the environment and part the personality.

All I know is this keeps happening at these institutions, and nothing ever changes. Inquiries aren’t cutting it. Suspensions aren’t enough. And in this specific case, St Paul’s itself is even refusing to take part in a university-wide review on sexual discrimination, choosing instead to conduct its own internal review. This alone betrays a lack of respect for the issue.

It hurts to admit I’d mostly forgotten about all this until I saw the Facebook post on Wednesday. It hurts more remembering I never said anything to my friends. I’m not an educator, and I’m aware that male feminism is a bit of a problem, as guys have a tendency to claim, rather than participate. But these men need to be taught how to be real, compassionate humans from the ground up. Because they’re growing up unaware that their behaviour is wrong, and believing that mistreatment is their right. And the women who know them are growing up feeling unheard, unsafe and believing that they’re nothing.

I spent one night at St Paul’s when I was 18, and seeing yesterday’s news showed me that time hadn’t changed a thing. It is yesterday’s news, and it’s also today’s news. But if institutionalised contempt for women is taken seriously by the universities, it won’t be tomorrow’s.