Queer Bash Email Incident

The Queer Bash E-mail (QBE) scandal of 2003 concerned a series of e-mails between Nate Winstanley on one side and Jon Pritchard '07 and Brandon Lucien '07 separately on the other side. See here for the text of the e-mails. Although Pritchard and Lucien were members of the same class and of the football team, they seem to have acted independently. The Record reported

A series of e-mails sent to Queer Student Union (QSU) social coordinator Nate Winstanley ’04 rocked the queer community and incited heated discussions on campus last week.

Three e-mails were sent between Oct. 10 and 14 by two first-years, John Pritchard ’07 and Brandon Lucien ’07, in response to the all-campus e-mails Winstanley sent out to publicize the annual Queer Bash party on Oct. 11.

The first two e-mails, sent by Lucien, objected to receiving e-mails about queer events.

The third e-mail, written by Pritchard, provoked Winstanley to forward all three e-mails, with the names of the writers still included, to the Dean’s Office, President Schapiro, the Committee on Diversity and Community and the Queer Student Union (QSU), College Council (CC) and Junior Advisor (JA) listservers by Tuesday afternoon.

The text of that message, which has since been cited in an all-campus e-mail sent out by CC included the following excerpt: “Why don’t u [sic] faggots keep to ur [sic] god damn selves. You people disgust me...i [sic] almost threw up when i [sic] saw all that crap you people wrote on the sidewalks last week.”

President Schapiro and Dean Roseman both assured Winstanley at that time that the College would take appropriate action.

It is not clear what actions, if any, the College took. Both Lucien and Pritchard took time off from Williams and became members of the class of 2008. Pritchard has since left the College. It is not clear if he will return.