National officers of the sorority Delta Zeta say the issue was recruitment. Some former members say it was about looks. Either way, after officers interviewed 35 members of the organization’s DePauw University chapter in November, the 23 who were asked to vacate the sorority house included every woman who was overweight, as well as the only black, Korean, and Vietnamese members, The New York Times reported.

DePauw’s president, Robert G. Bottoms, who has written a two-page letter of reprimand to the sorority, called its action a stunning lack of sensitivity. “I had no hint they were going to disrupt the chapter with a membership reduction of this proportion in the middle of the year,” he told the Times. “It’s been very upsetting.”

Cynthia Winslow Menges, Delta Zeta’s executive director, told the newspaper that the evicted members had, in effect, evicted themselves by demonstrating a lack of commitment to meeting recruitment goals. The group didn’t leave itself much of a cadre for recruiting, though. Of the 12 women allowed to stay — all slender and popular with fraternity men — six were so infuriated they quit.