Since The Brown Daily Herald’s Fall 2021 poll results dropped, there has been one question on the Brown community’s mind: how did 68% of respondents identify as heterosexual in the gay wonderland that is Brown? How could this possibly be a representative sample of the student body? Is taking surveys just a really straight thing to do? We gays of The Rib took to the streets to see what students had to say about this.
“How would you describe your sexual orientation?”
“I can count the number of straight people I know on one hand,” says a woman in a Phoebe Bridgers crew neck, counting fingers on a hand that is absolutely suffocating in 12 chunky silver rings. “I know gay people, like, magnetically flock to one another or whatever, but if that’s true, then this campus is literally like our North Pole last time I checked. Even all of the men my bi friends are dating are bi. Explain that, BDH.”
“So, like, I only really saw the people polling for The Herald outside of the Ratty? The Ratty is definitely the straightest dining hall on campus,” a person in converse, baggy cargo pants, and a beanie tells us. Their partner, who (as one would expect) looked exactly like them, adds on, “Yea, it’s honestly so surprising given how close it is to zeta. But we all know the gays of campus prefer to flock to Jo’s in the deepest depths of the night, when their Rocky Horror rehearsals are over… or they finally wake up for the day to find the Ratty already closed.” According to this couple, waking up early and eating on a normal schedule is also a pretty straight thing to do. It seems as though The Herald did not take this into account.
We stop another man in a floral cardigan, penny-loafers, and thin-wire glasses who appeared to be inconspicuously humming ‘All Too Well’ (the ten minute version, of course). He told us that he “literally” did not know a single woman on this campus who isn’t gay or bi. “Everytime I walk around campus, I see practically every dorm room lit up with purple LED lights. We all know the purple setting is only for gay people.”
To counter the suspicious stats reported by The Brown Daily Herald, we Ribbies decided to conduct our own survey with metrics we feel paint a truer picture of what the Brown student body is really like. We found that:
- 72% of Brown students had at least one member of boygenius in their Spotify top 5 artists
- 15% of Brown students have their hair unevenly dyed an obnoxious color
- 84% of women and gender nonconforming people at Brown have a nose piercing
- 63% of Brown students cuff their jeans
- 80% of Brown students know what Jake Gyllenhaal did
- 31% of Brown students are INFJs
- 92% of Brown students have their caps lock turned off
- And 55% of Brown students have a water sign in their big three
We feel as though these stats (gleaned from Today@Brown, Dear Blueno, and our favorite queer hot-spot on campus, The Rock – so quite a cross section of students) exemplify just how fruity Brown University truly is. We at The Rib encourage you to take a critical eye when the queerness of your peers is undermined and under attack.
Image via. Lucy Lebowitz