At Southern sorority, Trump's women problem just not 'as big of a deal'

They're millennials. They're female. They're educated. They believe in equal rights for women. And you can bet they're voting for Donald Trump.

So it goes at the University of South Alabama in Mobile, Ala., a conservative campus in a red state where student activists last month campaigned for the right to carry concealed firearms to school.

At a recent debate-night mixer at Alpha Gamma Delta's sorority house on Greek Row, about 20 Republican friends wedged onto couches and jockeyed for space on the floor. Chips and pop were served.

Sarah Glenn, 21, wore the forest-green shirt she bought from Future Female Leaders, the conservative website for which she blogs. A sorority sister wore her Trump 2016 T-shirt.

The co-ed gaggle sat before a TV, scrolled through their smartphones and monitored social-media reaction.

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"Because you'd be in jail!" Glenn retweeted, quoting Trump's threat to imprison Democrat Hillary Clinton over her mishandling of sensitive emails.

As with many conservatives, Glenn, a junior and a Harry Potter fanatic, complains of a "liberal bias" in the election coverage.

"I just feel like, if you're gonna believe all the accusations of sexual assault against Trump, you have to believe the ones who accused Bill Clinton as well," the Mississippi native said, referencing allegations of sexual misconduct against Clinton's husband, the former president.

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The Clinton name is toxic here in the anti-progressive Bible Belt, but it's no secret Trump has a woman problem. The candidate has been called out as misogynist by his Democratic rival, as a sexual predator by women accusing him of sexual assault and as a woman-hater by the right-leaning website The Federalist.

1st time voters embrace Trump

Yet even at a time when campus rape culture has become a national conversation, with sexual assaults reported at nearby colleges — the University of Alabama and Auburn University — first-time female voters at in Mobile, Ala., see good reason to embrace Trump.

"He's a successful businessman," Glenn said last week from the chapter room where Alpha Gamma sisters hold their meetings. "I feel like a businessman is more equipped to make those decisions to revive our economy and get us out of debt."

Sickened as she is by the Republican's caught-on-tape boasting about grabbing women by the genitals, the Republican candidate has her vote.

'Dirty comments'

Sitting beside her, Lani Kosick, another Alpha Gamma sister who writes for a conservative website, dismissed Trump's "dirty comments" as distracting from the pro-life and Second Amendment values she really cares about.

"You go to a party any day, and there's fraternity guys — any guys — grabbing girls, doing this and that," said Kosick, 21, a junior. "I don't think it's out of the normal realm of things. I don't think it's as big a deal. "

Her friend winced slightly.

"That's where I, um, disagree," Glenn said. "No man should say such things about a woman."

Glenn objects to Trump's lewd swagger being "normalized."

"If I heard my father say that about a woman? If I heard my husband say something like that about a woman? I would be disgusted," she said.

Reading her laptop on a couch nearby, Megan Manas, 20, joined the discussion. It was homecoming week, so politics was taking a backseat to party planning. Lately, though, Manas's thoughts are consumed by this election.

Yes, she was bothered by Trump's comments. But it was part of a private conversation from 11 years ago, even though Trump was 59 at the time.

"When you think about the other accusations for Clinton. Which are more extreme? Which accusations are going to affect people on a wider scale?" Manas said.

Seeing Trump as trustworthy

Following the FBI announcement last week that the bureau was reviving an investigation into Clinton's mishandling of sensitive emails while she was Secretary of State, Manas decided Trump was trustworthy enough. (The FBI has admitted it does not know whether the emails involved in the revived probe will contain meaningful information.)

Glenn, Kosick and Manas have seen electoral college maps showing an almost entirely Democrat-blue nation, based on a hypothetical scenario that only counts the female vote. They're aware their support for Trump, given their demographics, puts them at odds with national trends.

Trump's core base skews towards older white, working-class, less-educated men. College-educated female millennials? Not so much.

What changes things is geography. Alabama is solidly red and overwhelmingly pro-Trump, with polling analysis website FiveThirtyEight forecasting a staggering 99.9 per cent likelihood the New York real-estate magnate will triumph in the Heart of Dixie.

And while colleges are often thought of as left-wing laboratories, many University of South Alabama students are proudly conservative.

For equal rights, not feminism

In April, the campus's bronze jaguar sculpture was defaced with chalk, proclaiming, "Make America Great Again" alongside the campus-spirit message "We Are South." The vandalism made national news. Offended students who volunteered to wash the statue did not want their names published.

Campus activists this year also demanded the administration change its gender inclusion policy, which allowed for gender-neutral bathrooms that would accommodate transgender people.

Last week, Manas recalled a recent Student Government Association meeting in which a student made a startling proposal.

"He presented the idea of getting a shooting range in the student centre," she said.

Like her two sorority sisters, Manas dislikes the "feminist" label, though the trio believes in gender equality. They would like to see a female Commander in Chief, just not Clinton in office.

"I know plenty of men who don't think a woman should be president. I think a lot of men in the South think that," Glenn said.

"Some men just have a complex about it."

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As political as Alpha Gamma is, college life goes on after election day, Glenn said. There are football games ahead, parties to plan, finals to study for. She remembers hearing about two Alpha Gammas during the 2012 election pitting Republican Mitt Romney against Democrat Barack Obama.

"They were best friends. One was a huge Republican; the other was a big Democrat," she said. "And when Romney lost, she cried in her friend's arms. So, sisterhood still beats out politics."