The reactions, the haha emojis, the comments and the memes arrive right behind them.

This year was no different. I was scrolling through Facebook without any plan when I came across a video of a very bold girl asking the cameramen not to shoot from an inappropriate angle. Below it, I saw the hahas and the comments and a few memes. Many people found it funny. But when I saw it, I knew exactly what she was talking about.

I remember my own HSC result day. I came home to find my friends shaken by the angles their videos had been published from, and even more by the comments under them. My camera shyness has saved me from a lot of trouble in life, and that day is one of the biggest examples. Still, I watched my own classmates, people I knew to be the most modest and decent, appear on screen from angles that made the videos look vulgar. It made me sick. That day was supposed to belong to them after two years of hard work, and someone with a camera took it away.

So when I saw that girl boldly tell the cameramen to stay away from bad angles, I understood where she was coming from. She even said she would file a complaint if anyone used one. I felt proud of her. She was questioning grown adults who are so desperate for views and money that they feel no discomfort sexualising a girl who could be the age of their own daughter or sister. The complaint she spoke about is something the authority of that institution should have taken up ages ago, but it never did.

I honestly do not understand what kind of greed or obsession makes a person do this. I remember a video from last year taken from an extremely low angle while a group of girls were celebrating together. It did not end there; the video was then published in slow motion to make it worse.

A camera cannot choose an angle by itself. Someone placed it down there, someone sat through the footage and decided to slow it down, and someone pressed publish. To capture a shot like that, you have to be thinking of these girls in that way in your head. A bunch of young girls are happy about their results and hugging each other, and the only thing going through your mind is how their bodies will look from the right angle?

A video like that stays online for years. The girl in it does not get to delete the comments, and she does not get to choose who watches her anymore, whether it is a relative, a neighbour or a stranger who has never seen her face before.

Then there are the institutions, which fail every single time. They fail to protect their students and they fail to say what that girl said out loud. I wonder how detached they must be from their own students if their blood does not boil when they see them portrayed like this. 

How ignorant can an institution be if its girls are not safe from people who stare at them as if they were food, ready to devour it the second they get the chance? 

If a college lets cameras walk onto its premises, it should decide who gets in, where they are allowed to stand and what happens when a student complains. A school that cannot keep its own students safe inside its own gates has failed at something very basic.

When people see these videos, many of them call the students shameless, or beyadob, or arrogant. I cannot see any of that. 

What I see is an 18-year-old, vulnerable to a few drooling hyenas who feast on her with a camera, after every single entity, be it the institution or the nation, who was supposed to protect her has failed. 

I wore the exact same uniform a year ago, so I feel sad, and my eyes blur right past the hahas, the memes and all the takes about how students should behave. She said what the adults around her should have said years ago, and she said it on camera, to the very people she was asking to stop. What I see in that video is courage, extreme courage.