The high school in the heart of Bethesda has held local news coverage and headlines over the past week as a result of the actions of a group of male students, and the controversy regarding the action of it’s administration.

Another fellow Montgomery County high school has made headlines this month as a group of Bethesda Chevy-Chase high school boys had created a digital list of 18 of their female classmates accompanied by a rating on a scale of 5.5 to 9.4, some ratings even reaching the hundredths place.

This list wasn’t newly established, the rankings had been edited, and girls circulated throughout the page for over a year.

“Knowing that my closest friends were talking to me and hanging out with me but under that, silently numbering me, it definitely felt like a betrayal,” Lee Schwartz, a senior on the list told the Washington Post.. “I was their friend, but I guess also a number.”

Schwartz, as well as dozens of other female students, both on and off the list, decided to speak up to the school and administration in hopes to stifle the “boys will be boys culture”. As disciplinary action, the school gave in-school suspension to one of the primary contributors of the list, one  which would not appear on his permanent record, but the students were unsatisfied.

A group of girls, 40 to be exact, who were unsatisfied with the disciplinary action and  showed up at the assistant principal’s office, and requested more action to be taken to eliminate any presence of objectification and misogyny from erupting once again. Junior jake Goldberg, agrees with the dissatisfaction, “If I were them, I would request more action too. One suspension isn’t going to stop people from being disrespectful, it’s just going to teach them they need to be more careful to not get caught”. Class discussions regarding respecting of fellow students as well as privacy policies took place as a result.

“I’m really surprised that the school’s administration took such minor action to punish those guys, especially in today’s day and age when intergender respect has become such a big deal,” junior, Gwen Rodriguez said.

After their feature on the Today Show on March 28, the listed female students opened up about how the list had affected them; feeling self conscious and viewed as solely a number on a physical scale rather than as a complex individual. Regardless of the varying opinions regarding actions taken by all parties involved, the courageous efforts of these women in order to correct and promote exposure of something they deemed unjust has been recognized as incredibly admirable and truly exhibits the impactful results of the unification of women with a cause.