Twitter apologizes for frat-themed party

A photo of the party, which included a beer pong table, keg and a sign that read “Twitter Frat House”, surfaced on social media Tuesday and a group called Global Tech Women then tweeted out the picture.

Twitter issued a swift apology following the image generating serious traction on the site with Twitter’s spokesperson Jim Prosser issuing this statement: “This social event organised by one team was in poor taste at best, and not reflective of the culture we are building here at Twitter”.

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It might seem petty to chastise Twitter for its poor party planning skills (somewhere Angela from the office is righteously grinding SOLO cups underfoot), but there’s a direct correlation between a workplace’s tendency towards thoughtless bro-ishness and its diversity stats: women make up less than a third of Twitter’s employees, and the company is now embroiled in a gender discrimination lawsuit.

A person familiar with the matter told Fusion the party was for Twitter’s revenue team.

Twitter has emphatically asserted that it is a “a diverse and supportive” place.

Twitter is wrestling with a diversity problem common among major technology companies: Too few women and minorities are represented in its ranks and leadership. A rep for the 70%-male company has apologized.

Gender diversity has become a hot topic in Silicon Valley especially after a discrimination lawsuit that Ellen Pao, a former junior partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, lost against the venture capital firm in March. Former software engineer Tina Huang claimed Twitter’s promotion process was biased toward advancing male employees over female employees up for the same job.