SGA Election Stirred by Accusations

The Daily Collegian - 3/30/07

Ruth Thompson, candidate for the trustee position of the Student Government Association (SGA), claims that offensive remarks she is accused of making were taken out of context.

Varun Vuppala, a University of Massachusetts junior and reported friend of Thompson, wrote a Facebook.com note regarding Thompson's remarks.

"1) Black people cannot be racist. 2) To be homophobic means you want to kill gay people. 3) I would not feel comfortable sitting next to a lesbian, for fear that she would hit on me," the Facebook note paraphrased Thompson as saying.

"The statements that I made in the SGA office were taken vastly out of context," Thompson said in a written statement yesterday. She continued by saying that focusing on internalized oppressions in society was the main point during the discussion in which these comments took place.

"I - like most everyone - have internalized racism (internal

racism that exists WITHIN the Black community), internalized homophobia, and internalized sexism," Thompson said. "It is clear to people who know me that there is nothing that I care about more than challenging these oppressions."

"I fully understand that this conversation [took place] just after a recent hate crime on February 28…this assault was inspired by an extremely violent form of homophobia, and in fact, one of my misconstrued comments was that homophobia means 'killing gay people.'" Thompson continued by saying that she used this example to help show the different levels of homophobic behavior.

"I know that to say that 'homophobia means only to kill someone you think is gay' is like saying 'you can only be racist if you kill or want to kill someone because of their race.' Both of these statements are quite obviously absurd and if anyone interpreted my comments in that way that is a matter of their interpretation, not my beliefs," she said in the statement.

"Oppression is oppression and it should not separate [the different groups on campus]," Thompson stated. "We as marginalized groups should be addressing the issues of oppression as a whole, but this takes hard work and dialog, which is exactly what I am and have been committed to, and this is exactly why I was participating in the discussion in the SGA in the first place."

Thompson's comments were "insulting and frustrating," said Jaimie Corliss, SGA Secretary of the Registry. "Ruth genuinely tries to work on many social issues, but has some work to do herself, much like the rest of us."

The note, published on Facebook early Tuesday morning, was made to "allow the voters to see some of the things that Ruth has said and allow them to decide," Vuppala wrote.

David Humphreys can be reached at dhumphre@student.umass.edu.

Go to DailyCollegian.com to view Ruth Thompson's complete statement regarding the allegations.