In an extraordinary newsletter, principal Jeremy Ludowyke said the school had stamped out a strip show tradition at the Year 12 formal known as the "House Captains' Strip", which triggered complaints from female staff members and guests.

He was responding to a final-year speech delivered on Wednesday by Year 12 student leader Ben Qin, who declared that he "no longer believed in Melbourne High".

Mr Ludowyke said that while he disagreed with most of Ben's speech – which created a stir on social media – he congratulated the Year 12 leader for the "courage and eloquence of his presentation".

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According to Mr Ludowyke, the criticism stemmed from the school's decision to change three social events.

Mr Ludowyke said the house captains strip was the product of a problematic "locker room culture" – noting that it was a phrase US Republican candidate Donald Trump used to justify his own misogynistic comments.

He said he axed the social because students' discussion of the event on social media had "descended into sexist and misogynistic puerility".

"Several times across the course of this year, we have seen the consequences played out in the media of football clubs, board rooms and schools where a locker room mentality has been allowed to flourish unchallenged," the principal wrote. "It is the responsibility of all men to redress this uncomfortable truth about our own culture." He did not resile, he said, from addressing it at Melbourne High.

The principal said he also cancelled a "Milk Run" where students drank milk and lemon juice until they vomited.

"For the past two years, the Year 12 leaders have been charged with cleaning up afterwards and on every occasion it has been left to the staff to undertake the very unpleasant task of cleaning up a substantial amount of vomit," he said.

While Ben did not explicitly criticise the school's decision to cancel social events in his speech at the school assembly, he said the school had failed to listen to students about major changes. Many students are unhappy with the changes the school has made to social events.

In the speech, Ben accused teachers at the sought-after school of being out of touch with students. He said that while society had changed, the school still problematically treated students as gentlemen.

"Melbourne High students are not gentlemen. We stopped being gentlemen a long time ago. We stopped being gentlemen when the demographic changed. We stopped being gentlemen when the world changed.

"Someone who once wholeheartedly believed in this school is telling you, 'you don't understand your students anymore. You don't know who and what we are'."

He criticised the school for a recent clamp down on muck-up day – an Australian tradition where students dress up and carry out pranks to celebrate 13 years of schooling coming to an end.

Melbourne High School now requires students to register their pranks and have them approved by senior staff. Many students say this has taken the fun out of the event.

Ben, who is the student representative council vice-president, also took aim at the school for suggesting that the Year 12 students' legacy would depend on their fundraising efforts.

"A threat about a month ago that our legacy as a year level was contingent on demands of $50 donations ... I hardly think this was ever a good attitude," he said.

"Don't we give back our intellect and our academic ability? Don't we give back our physical, artistic and musical talents? We thought this was valuable. Don't we, every year, give back in leadership, student representation?"

"Don't our parents pay? Don't they donate yearly to the school?" The school raised nearly $4.5 million in donations, fees and other private sources in 2014, the latest MySchool data shows.

The Year 12 student told a crowd of students assembled for the end of the year that the school had failed to treat students respectfully, drawing loud applause from the audience and a standing ovation.

Ben hinted that the school had mishandled a 3000-word submission that students wrote for a curriculum review, and said student consultation on a summer uniform change was insufficient.

The student told Fairfax Media that he wrote the speech because his year level felt disillusioned and "needed something". He never expected that it would uploaded to Facebook, and watched so many times.

The 17-year-old said the select-entry school did not spend enough time listening to students or trying to understand them.

"It was a big regret that we weren't able to feel connected to the school," he said.

But despite his concerns, Ben said Melbourne High was a good school that gave students great opportunities.

"It's the culture I have an issue with," he said. "The speech was never meant to bash the school, I was trying to raise student concerns. It is about trying to understand students as they are today, we don't fit any caricatures."