HUNTER principals are concerned students will be seriously or fatally injured and their future prospects endangered, by attempting increasingly risky and depraved challenges in end-of-year scavenger hunts.
NSW Secondary Principals' Council Hunter president Mark Snedden said he and his colleagues were disturbed at how challenges had escalated to involve unethical and criminal behaviour.
He said schools tried to act proactively and in some cases to prevent hunts, by speaking with students, families and the community and notifying the Department of Education and police.
"I've never had a situation where I've had to stand up in front of a community and have to talk about a young person tragically losing their life because of a situation like that - and that's a principal's worst nightmare," Mr Snedden said.
"It's a really small percentage [who participate in high-end challenges] but all young people and great young people make mistakes.
"It's about keeping people safe, both the people that are participating and... that other people are safe too and are not becoming victims of scavenger hunts.
"It's a ripple effect in a community, these things."
As previously reported, Merewether High students participating in a hunt on September 23 were challenged to send messages defending pedophilia to a sexual assault survivor.
A student who sent a message was barred from the year 12 graduation last week.
A department spokesperson said a meeting had been held "with the student who taunted another student online and their parents".
"The student is facing further disciplinary action when school resumes."
A 19-year-old responsible for setting the challenge was one of the school's 2019 hunt winners and helped write this year's list of challenges, which also included smashing a classroom window and filming a sex tape at school.
A 2019 Merewether graduate said she and other alumni were "very disappointed" to hear about the incident.
She said the culture around hunts had "deteriorated" and hit a new low this year.
"I think certain individuals take it a little far just to try to push the boundaries from what had happened last year."
Some teens may sign up not knowing what to expect, she said, but only a very small proportion did the more "extreme" pranks.
"The majority of people look at it as a joke, no-one's expecting anyone to actually do it."
She said more opted to participate in the "nice" challenges.
She said the school was not to blame and had discussed with her cohort expected and appropriate behaviours and made consequences clear.
University of Newcastle Professor of Nursing Alison Hutton, whose work involves how to support young people at social events such as schoolies, said the "abhorrent" and "devastating" incident would have long term impacts for both teens.
She said she wasn't defending the student who sent the message, but they were unlikely to have been thinking about the consequences.
"I think to support young people to reduce harm from an overall perspective we need to think more broadly than just targeting the individual and saying 'You didn't do the right thing'," Professor Hutton said.
"I think we need to actively engage young people in the choices that they make that affect their health and the reason I say that is how the adolescent brain is wired.
"They're still evolving... they don't plan well, they don't have great self regulation in regards to how they feel emotionally. In regards to their impulsivity and decision-making they can still be quite immature."
They want to fit in and impress others.
She said schools, families and the community needed to "support teenagers in making smarter choices".
She said while schools were not responsible for or condone hunts, she'd like to see conversations with students every term about their motivations plus "agreed upon principles of behaviour".
"This gives young people an opportunity to say to their friends 'Hey, we agreed upon this at school, we agreed as a group of friends that this isn't how we were going to act and behave'. It just gives them some boundaries."
Mr Snedden said conversations about cyber safety and digital footprints were also needed earlier.
"What's intensifying the nature of these events is the fact students are so connected across schools now with social media," he said.
"That's why some of these over-the-top inappropriate and quite frightening things are becoming listed for these events.
"It's out-doing each other and it's not just out-doing each [previous] year, it's out-doing other schools."
He said students may regret pressing record.
"If it is recorded and shared it's gone, you lose control and these things can come out 20 years later," he said.
Criminal charges can affect employment and travel.
"One moment in a two hour event could cost so much."
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