Anonymous SLE Student: What Actually Happened with FLIP

I wrote an anonymous article for the Review titled “Don’t Rush to Remove the West from SLE” and was suspended from FLIP Core soon after. I have spoken anonymously to other sources but,here, I will detail the suffering FLIP has caused me this the week.

I care about FLIP. Its members have often helped me cope with the stress of feeling underprepared for Stanford. Events I’ve attended such as an open mic have helped me understand my anxieties as products of economic status rather than some failure of my own. And when I nearly crumbled under stress three weeks ago, a FLIP upperclassman gave me valuable advice and encouragement.

Yet this week, FLIP has done nothing but aggravate the stress of Week 8 and alienate me from the one community where I felt unconditionally supported. I could not focus on my academics, job or research internship. Staying composed when I felt so ostracized by a group I care about became too much to bear. Despite FLIP’s stated mission of fostering a respectful campus environment and empowering first-generation low income students, FLIP’s co-presidents chose to alienate me from the FLI community and its allies. I feel more disempowered than any student should, no matter their beliefs.

FLIP should support all FLI students. No member should feel so unsafe within their community that they fear publishing under their own name. As the author of the Stanford Review article “ Don’t Rush to Remove the West from SLE” and a proud member of both the Review’s staff and FLIP Core, I should not have to fear retaliation for disagreeing with FLIP’s leaders. FLIP must recognize that not all FLI students think alike and should support dissenting voices.

Publishing Anonymously

Though FLIP may assert that my article undermined their response to the Review’s Western Civ petition, I focused specifically on SLE and had been preparing to publish my article for over a week, before I knew about the Review’s Western Civ push or FLIP’s stance. As a FLI student who had interned for FLIP before transitioning to FLIP Core, I knew that FLIP’s Facebook post on Tuesday (2/23) cautioning against overgeneralizing the FLI community to be true. My article claimed to speak for no one else but myself, one of the few FLI students of color in SLE.

Nevertheless, the lack of constructive dialogue within FLIP and its hostility towards the Review pressured me to publish anonymously. Over the past week, FLIP Core’s reactions to the Review had been vitriolic. At one point, a FLIP co-president asserted that Senate candidates’ opinions on Western Civ would be used to screen them for endorsement. Half of the core had already expressed unequivocally their dislike of the Review’s petition. For a group intended to promote the interests of FLI students, such as by encouraging free intellectual inquiry, FLIP acted hypocritically and wrongly. Fearing backlash from the Core, I could not admit I wrote for the Review. I chose to be anonymous because I felt too unsafe to take credit for my article, a week’s worth of effort.

Tuesday, February 23rd: Article publishes, FLIP retaliates

An hour after my article was published, I was removed from FLIP Core’s GroupMe. I reached out to several members of FLIP and received no response until a fellow former intern shared a screenshot of the Core’s GroupMe through a separate GroupMe for frosh interns. Despite my desire for anonymity, people within the Core had been attempting to unmask me. Finally the co-presidents removed me from the GroupMe, citing “security reasons.”

As if that justified booting me from the group, a co-president mentioned that she’d rather have people “openly express when they are in disagreement with an action vs openly undermining it.” She did not elucidate how “security” related to “disagreement”. The Frosh Intern GroupMe confirmed that I had been booted for ideological reasons when I was asked by a former intern whether I wrote for the Stanford Review.

For two hours, I sat emotionally distraught in my dorm’s lounge waiting for a phone call from FLIP’s co-presidents. My fears of retaliation had been confirmed, despite publishing anonymously. No one on FLIP bothered to see how I was doing. FLIP was not the group of compassionate students I thought I knew. That being a mere staff writer for the Review could change so much shocked me. Instead, other writers from the Review consoled me while I waited for a call. When the call finally came, the co-presidents spent twenty minutes pressuring me to admit I wrote for the Review despite my repeated assertions that the article was anonymous. During the call FLIP co-presidents ignored my insistence that the author had a right to privacy. I told them how alienated I felt to be removed from communications due to mere suspicion of a security compromise. They ignored me, telling me that FLIP Core would be restructured, implicitly conveying that I would be suspended from the group.

I knew my former safe space had ostracized me. For the next hour, one of my RAs talked to me while I dealt with my stress. Meanwhile, the Review’s editor-in-chief emailed FLIP asking for comment on why my anonymity had not been respected and to inform them that an article would be published. FLIP never replied, but, even then, the editor-in-chief waited for my consent to release the article on my suspension.

I hesitated out of concern for FLIP as an organization that I loved being a part of. I sent the FLIP Core an email detailing the extent of the alienation I had been experiencing. Neither the co-presidents nor anybody who had pushed for my removal from the GroupMe replied. At that point, I approved the Review’s article hoping FLIP would explain themselves.

Instead, soon after the article was published at 11:38PM , FLIP’s co-presidents called me again. They demanded that I lie by commenting on the Review’s FB page that FLIP had not suspended me. When I hesitated, a co-president emphasized the concerns other members had about me, due to my involvement in the Review. Stressed about the whole situation, I was willing to forget how wronged I felt until FLIP’s FB post refused to constructively engage with the substance of the Review’s accusation, lied about having no time to comment, and, most of all, erased my trauma.

My dorm rallied around me that night seeing how hurt I was. My SLE resident tutor informed me that, though FLIP disliked my article, SLE alums thought it was the defense that the program needed and that it was brave of me to speak up. Everyone that night empathized with my feelings and showed the genuine care for my well-being that FLIP Core had not. Even dorm mates who vehemently disagreed with my article stood by my right to voice my opinions without retaliation.

Wednesday, February 24th: Seeking Help from FoHo and Stanford Admins

In the morning I contacted the Fountain Hopper and asked them to seek out information from the FLIP Core. In the meantime I attempted to resume my life, but I could not ignore how many people in my frosh intern cohort, people who knew me personally, on FLIP core shared FLIP’s FB status. I felt utterly abandoned and carried the stress of that throughout the day. I could not focus on my academics but remained silent hoping that the issue would resolve itself. I emailed the Stanford administration for support, hoping that the conflict could be dissipated privately.

Thursday, February 25th: Campus Publications Contest FLIP’s Telling of the Events

FLIP posted on FB in the early morning, this time more explicitly denying that I had been wronged. I was so shaken up by FLIP’s willingness to ignore the human cost of their actions, that I could do nothing but sit quietly, simmering in my stress, alone in the hallway outside my room. At this point, I felt there was no other option but to rely on the Review, who had managed to obtain screenshots of the FLIP GroupMe from an independent source, and on the Daily to report the actual story.

By choosing to speak to campus publications, I wanted Stanford to know that I was suffering without an identity community to rely on. Throughout the day, I felt so stressed that I could not attend any of my classes. My RF met with me to address concerns about my emotional health that week and suggested that I rest. I tried my hardest to hide my pain from my dorm but could not help but feel hurt when, within East FloMo, people insisted on liking FLIP’s post despite knowing the immense emotional duress FLIP had burdened me with. FLI allies touted how unsafe the Review’s article on SLE must be making FLI kids feel. I wonder if anyone considered how unsafe I must have felt to not even be comfortable publishing under my own name; or how it felt to not be able to confide my hurt to other members of the FLI community.

Final Thoughts

I did not plan on revealing my identity. My stress compels me to speak publicly since I know that FLIP will continue to perpetuate a version of the events that refuses to acknowledge the trauma they inflicted on me. The Review will continue to be unfairly demonized and discounted despite the length it went to assist me, a marginalized member of the FLI community. Campus dialogue, within and outside residences, will grow even more toxic if we forget that behind opinions are actual people.

My wish is for recognition that, even within organizations claiming to prop up safe spaces, people are silenced. I should not have to be told that I am brave for speaking up; rather, I should not fear being ostracized. Because FLIP claims to act in the interest of all FLI students, it ought to recognize the diversity among those it claims to speak for. If FLIP values its mission as much as I did when I elected to become a frosh intern, its leaders must recognize the diversity among those it purports to represent. I may not be able to undo the trauma I endured. But I hope that, as a campus, we work to ensure that organizations such as FLIP cannot batter the dissenting voices among their ranks.