Following the release of a documentary exposing the brutal sorority recruitment process, a former sorority member has revealed the rules and reality of Greek life and what lead to her being kicked out.
20-year-old Sydney Thomas, a sophomore at the University of Alabama, frequently shares videos about her day-to-day life as a college student on TikTok, where she has more than 355,000 followers.
In a series of videos, she speaks about her experience as a member of Alpha Phi, one of the university's most popular sororities and the 'ridiculous' reasons she was forced to leave.
This comes just days after HBO released Bama Rush — a bombshell documentary exposing the dark underbelly of the University of Alabama's Panhellenic culture.
In a three-part series on TikTok, Sydney revealed she was kicked out of her sorority because she stood on an elevated surface, went to a bar and has a large social media following. No, really!
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"I wanted to come on here and talk to you guys about why I was kicked out of my sorority," she said in the first of her three videos.
She began by explaining that Alpha Phi had a rule in which members weren't allowed to stand on elevated surfaces in the first three months of being in the sorority.
"So, I'm called into a J-board meeting, which is like a judicial board meeting, like a conduct meeting. And basically, they tell me that I was standing on an elevated surface, which I wasn't allowed to do at the time," she explained.
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"At parents' weekend, a band pulls me up on stage and I go up there along with some other girls in my sorority, and I didn't think much of it at the moment."
Sydney claimed that while she knew she couldn't stand on specific elevated surfaces that fraternities presented, she didn't think the stage counted as one.
She also revealed that they weren't allowed to go to bars.
"So, you're also not supposed to go to a bar during your first three months of being in a sorority," she explained.
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"But, for me, all of the older girls in the sorority had told me and my friends it was okay. They said, 'We did it all last year, they don't really care. It's a rule but no one follows it, so it's fine you can do it.'"
Sydney said that when she went to a bar with friends, someone took a picture of them and sent it to the sorority board.
Each of the girls were then called into an individual meeting with the board - but Sydney was the only one who was kicked out.
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Sydney claims her 'large following on social media' played a role in her removal from the sorority.
"They go into the fact that I have a large following on social media, so I'm more of a liability than the other girls," she said.
In the last of her videos, Sydney explained how she was kicked out of group messages before even being told she was no longer a member.
When she finally got confirmation of her removal, the email read: "After a full review of the information presented during the hearing on Wednesday, September 21, 2022, the Beta Mu Judiciary Board committee voted by a minimum of three-fourths affirmative to terminate your membership with Alpha Phi."
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But, while her experience in the sorority was 'short-lived,' Sydney insists she holds 'no hate' for the sorority or any of its current members.
The HBO documentary Bama Rush further exposes the shocking truth behind Greek culture at the University of Alabama.
Its filmmaker, Rachel Fleit, told Vice: "I wanted to create a documentary that was grounded in this culture, this Greek system.
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"We could talk about feminism, and we could talk about competition between women, body image, racism, sexism, classism, and sexual assault on campus or in general.
"There were all these big topics that I thought we could explore in the film by going into the Greek system. And we did."
Well, a girl in its trailer perhaps said it best: "The culture at Alabama is f**king weird."
Bec Oakes