'Marginalized' Heterosexual Girl at All-Female Smith College Vilified for Proposing 'Straight-Only' Sorority
A heterosexual student attending Smith College, a private, all-female school in Northampton, Mass., was vilified online and had her life "ruined" for penning a now viral email proposing to start a sorority for "straight-only" women because she felt "marginalized" at the school.
The email, which was originally posted on Tumblr along with the identification of the woman by another Smith student, identified as "aQuieterRioter," was later removed because of the backlash against the straight student.
"Hello, this is [XXX] and I am sending this message to girls I think might be interested in this idea and I would also love to hear your opinion on this. so I have this crazy idea but tell me what you honestly think. I want to start a sorority at smith (Delta Gamma/DG), which would basically just be an exclusive group for straight girls, a little friend group," read the text of the email posted on Jezebel.com.
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"We would have sorority mixers with Amherst men, weekly dinner dates, weekly photoshoots where we would dress up nice, baking nights.. We would also get Sorority apparel (even Lily Pulitzer has the cutest DG stuff!) and we'd have traditions, like every wednesday we wear pink haha," she continued in the email.
"I got this idea because personally as a straight girl at Smith, I feel marginalized and I feel like the minority, and I think this could be a really great way to socialize with people we identify more with at smith, and to meet more guys," she wrote.
The email, however, sparked a mob attack on the woman which forced aQuietRioter to quickly remove the post and apologize for making the student's identity public.
"i terribly regret having her name on the post for a little while, i honestly had no f*****g clue it would blow up in such a huge way, and i posted the email in anger without thinking about the repercussions for her," she wrote in a Tumblr post.
"it was never my intention to ruin her life. obviously she's homophobic and doesn't have a clue about her straight privilege but she still deserves dignity and respect, as we all do. our anger over this is valid and real but i don't support gratuitous meanness and don't see that changing what we're actually angry about," she added.
Mary Ellen Hardies, director of communication for the national chapter of Delta Gamma told USA TODAY that she had only recently heard of the controversial email in a Google news alert.
"Our attorney has been in contact with the university trying to figure out what the heck is going on, who this girl is, to what extent things are happening" said Hardies. "That sort of approach does not fall in line with our values at all."
Hardies said Delta Gamma is a gay-friendly sorority opposed to any kind of discrimination.
Smith College's Student Body President Augusta Gronquist assured her peers in an email that an exclusive sorority like the one proposed would never come to life as the "SGA (Student Government Association) practice has been to not charter exclusive organizations."
