As a special treat for my newest book "A Queen's Pain" dropping this Black Friday, check out this free chapter from the book! "Messy" talks about HBCU Pettiness in a real way and is the first fictional account of expose pages and the impact that it has on students and the social atmosphere on a college campus! "A Queen's Pain" is available on Amazon now! Follow HBCU Pulse on IG: hbcupulse
Enjoy!
Going to an HBCU is a different type of experience. Sure, it's rich with culture and it's great being around so many people who look like me. We love to be messy though. I hate to say it but it's true! We care so much about other people's business and what they're doing with their lives. It doesn't take long for people to start being nosey and spreading around what they think you're trying to do. Laketon is only but so big so everybody's name is in somebody's mouth. You know, if that makes sense.
Not even a whole 24 hours after my meeting with Tyler, an anonymous Twitter account called the "LSU Tea Spillers" popped up on the school's hashtag. According to the page, its purpose was to "expose who's real and who's fake on the yard". No one knew who was behind the page, as it wasn't linked to anyone. The AVI was a picture of Kermit the Frog drinking tea with a Laketon State purple and gold shirt photoshopped onto him.
This wasn't the first time an "expose" page has been made. It happens every school year, especially in the Spring. The pages content is always the same. It tweets out allegations about people who are in the closet or cheating on their significant other. A couple of weeks and a little buzz on the yard, the page will get deleted after people start reporting it. Things were different this year though. The tweets were really direct. They were calling people's names out and even adding their profile handles to the tweets if the person they were talking about had one.
If they didn't say your name, they'd say everything about you but your name. People who knew of you would immediately link what was tweeted to you. They were even posting screenshots! I don't know who was running this expose page but they were ruthless. Normally, I didn't care about the expose page. Sure, I'd look at tweets but I'd lose interest quick. This year was different though. I knew somehow, someway I'd be mentioned .
I know it sounds negative and like I was inviting problems to myself but you have to think about the timing. Election season was coming up and we had to write a letter declaring our candidacy before Fall Semester ended. The list of the candidates would be out the first week in January when we return from Christmas break. Election season is when Laketon State is at its messiest.
Plus, the page popped up at the start of probate season. Everybody is trying to find out who made what line, who got dropped from line and who didn't get accepted right off. The Eta's bringing out a new line was a huge topic on the yard so I knew my name would be circulating around as the few who didn't make it. Plus, I'm double connected to Laketon State's Greek Life. My boyfriend Josiah is a Lambda Phi man.
Tyler brought him up the day before she was trying to make the argument to me that Lambda Phi runs the yard. I met Josiah in my engineering class last semester. We got close after we did a group assignment together that required us to spend about two weeks going to the library to put together a presentation. He was trying his best to talk to me the whole time we were working together. He was cute, sweet and really funny but I wasn't feeling him at first. He kept trying to get me to go on a date with him.
He finally talked me into going to the Georgia National Fair with him one Friday, which turned into us spending the whole weekend with each other. We even went to church together. That's when I really started liking him. I started to have fun being around him. He was sweet and he seemed generally interested in me.
We officially started talking a couple of weeks after that and put a title on it in December. Josiah was my first real boyfriend. I don't count my little situationships in high school and all the guys who tried to talk to me my first couple of years at Laketon, especially after I got on court. The other guys just wanted clout off off my crown. Josiah really cared about me. And to think, I was hesitant to even talk to him because he was a Lambda man.
When you want to be an Eta, everything factors into getting on the line. They don't only look at your grades and community service hours. They also assess who you are as a woman. That's what the interviews are supposed to be for. That's why you have to be extra cautious when you're trying to get on the line. I was already at a disadvantage talking to a Lambda man. The Mu Thetas have a huge beef with Lambda Phi that goes back to when their chapters were chartered on campus. They were the first two Greek organizations chartered at Laketon after all. The Etas are big on loyalty. They're known to reject a girl if they're dating a Lambda. That's why I tried to keep my relationship with Josiah underwraps.
The Tea Spillers page said they'd be tweeting new information every night at 10 PM. So of course, every night, I was tuned in. The first few nights they tweeted the normal mess. Who's allegedly "gay", who's smashing on the low and who's cheating. They mixed a couple of things in about the elections but about the candidates running to be a part of the Student Government Association executive board. They sent out a scandalous accusation about SGA Presidential candidate Demarcus Brown saying he used to abuse his ex-girlfriend from freshman year named Marissa. They retweeted Marissa, who admitted she sent the information and that she was going to "expose" him even more on her Facebook Live on Wednesday.
Seeing that got me more and more nervous. The Tea Spillers were going all out. After what they did to Demarcus, I thought I was even more of an easy target. I started to look at the page in fear. If they were going through SGA talking about people and even said something about Demarcus, one of the most well-known student leaders on campus, I knew they would have something for me. I knew wouldn't be long before they started talking about Royal Court. They didn't wait until then to bring me up though. They targeted me on Tuesday. My heart skipped a beat when I saw them tweet,
"Tonight let's talk about the Greeks. The tea is hot for people who are on line and trying to get on line. We not gonna name people for discretion but I'ma let y'all fill in the blanks tho #LakeSU"
The timing of them deciding to talk about Greek Life wasn't coincidental. They did it a week after the Rho Eta interest meeting, even down to the time the interest meeting was scheduled to start. I knew people would be tuned in to what they had to say. I didn't even have to guess. People were tweeting how excited they were on the school hashtag with GIF's of people eating popcorn. I thought I was gonna be sick when they tweeted out,
There was no need to even fill in the blank. It was clear who they were talking about. They weren't done with just one tweet either. They even put out another tweet. Mind you, they never put out two tweets about anyone! I was fighting back tears when they tweeted out a minute later,
Immediately, I got ten notifications. I checked to see what it was and saw it was people quoting the tweets and saying "Raynetta Duram". Riyan, of course, was the first one to do it. All of her and Jessica's friends followed suit. Even the girls on the Mu Theta court were retweeting what the Tea Spillers put out about me. One of them even mentioned my Twitter name. They had a whole discussion about me that I had to mute. At that point, I didn't even try to fight back the tears anymore.
I was so hurt I couldn't move. I couldn't even take my eyes away from the phone. I just kept reading the tweet. I felt tears starting to come down my face. I just couldn't stop them. Before long, I was full fledged crying. I ran outside to the sink and grabbed some paper towels to try and dry my face. Then, I looked in the mirror and saw my bloodshot red eyes. My eye shadow had started to smear, making me look like some type of weird clown. That's how I felt. Seeing that made me sob harder. I finally got a chance to see what I'd become. I was pathetic.
I heard the dorm room door open. I didn't even care who it was. I'd been holding in my pain for so long, really since freshman year. The last time I even cried was when I ran out of my room to the yard that Saturday night and saw Tara was gone. I tried to be strong and stay poised but I knew everything that I'd been through would finally hit me.
Out of nowhere, I heard something drop. Tyler came rushing towards me. I was bent over by the sink, hands holding onto the counter.
"Oh my God! Are you ok Raynetta?"
I gasped for air and shook my head. Trying to remain calm, she gently placed her hands on my shoulder. "What's wrong?"
I shook my head again and looked at her. "I'm done. I'm just...I'm done."
She led me to the den, as I continued to sob. She helped me over to the sofa, where I laid down. She sat in the sofa chair. If you walked in and saw us, you'd think I was in therapy. That's how it felt too. I won't deny that I needed it. I was hurting and I couldn't find a solution to make me feel better.