A student at Central Connecticut State University has been arrested and suspended for fabricating anti-gay notes she said were slipped under her door by others. 

In March, Lexi Pennell, 19, reported finding gay slurs written on a dry-erase board outside her room and on papers slipped under her door. Hundreds of students held a rally shortly after to support her and to denounce hate crimes. 

School officials installed a security camera outside Pennell’s dorm room and caught her sliding a note under her own door on April 5. She confessed to writing the notes and was arrested May 9 for fabricating evidence, falsely reporting an incident and lying to police. She’s now suspended from attending any state university campus for five years. 

In a letter to her roommate, Pennell said she fabricated the notes because she feared her friends and her girlfriend were slipping away, and she continued to write them for the attention.

University spokesman Mark McLaughlin said in a statement: “While we are confident that the perpetrator has been identified, we are nonetheless saddened by the student’s actions, which are likely to bring serious consequences for her.  We remain proud, however, of the campus community’s response to what we believed was an act of bias, and we reaffirm now what was said then: acts of bias and hate will not be tolerated at CCSU.”

On one hand, I do feel bad that this girl felt so isolated she needed to draw attention to herself like this. On the other hand, this reflects so, so poorly on the rest of the LGBT community, as if all of our struggles are merely cries for attention. Props to her school for speaking out against hate crimes, but what a bad judgment call on Lexi’s part.