Fraternity vows look into use of racist chant
NORMAN, Okla. — As the University of Oklahoma expelled two students Tuesday for leading a racist song that sparked outrage across the country, the fraternity involved said it would investigate incidents at other campuses as it faced questions over the chant’s use by members at other universities.
Former members of the fraternity, Sigma Alpha Epsilon, claimed on social media that the same chant was used at colleges in other states, and University of Oklahoma officials investigating the episode said they did not believe the song had originated on their campus.
“I’m not sure that it’s strictly local,” said the university’s president, David L. Boren, a former Oklahoma governor and U.S. senator.
Boren expelled the two students Tuesday but did not identify them, saying they had played a leading a role in the singing of the chant and “created a hostile learning environment for others.”
The fraternity’s national headquarters said the song was not a part of the “Sigma Alpha Epsilon tradition.”
“The chant is in no way endorsed by the organization nor part of any education whatsoever,” the national fraternity said in a statement.
The campus here has been reeling since members of Sigma Alpha Epsilon were shown in two videos chanting a song whose lyrics included racial slurs boasting that there would never be an African American member.
The song also referred to lynching, with the words “You can hang ’em from a tree.” The videos were recorded on Saturday night as fraternity members and their dates rode a bus to a formal event celebrating the national organization’s Founders Day.
The fraternity — started in 1856 in Tuscaloosa, Ala., before the Civil War — celebrates its Southern heritage. Its online magazine, The Record, described an initiative “to bring Sigma Alpha Epsilon closer to its antebellum roots, closer to the original experience and goals shared by the founding fathers.”
Boren, as well as the fraternity’s national headquarters in Illinois, shut down the chapter after the first video appeared Sunday, and university officials severed all ties to it Monday. Dozens of black and white students marched to the fraternity’s house Tuesday evening, hours before the midnight closure of the house.
“This is reflective of a larger issue,” said Marquis Ard, 23, an African American senior who is a member of the black fraternity Alpha Phi Alpha and captain of the university’s debate team. “If they’re doing that on a charter bus what are they doing in the library, at football games?”
As about 70 fraternity members moved their belongings out of the house, university officials worked to identify all of the students involved in the chant, who Boren said, would be “subject to appropriate disciplinary action.” The expulsion letter to the two students states that the action takes effect immediately and that they can contact the university’s Equal Opportunity Officer to contest the decision.
One of the students, identified by The Associated Press as Parker Rice, 19, of Dallas, apologized in a statement to the news service emailed by his father. Rice said in the statement that the chanting had most likely been fueled by alcohol and that “the song was taught to us,” though he did not say by whom.
“For me, this is a devastating lesson, and I am seeking guidance on how I can learn from this and make sure it never happens again,” he said.
The parents of another student in the video, Levi Pettit, released an apology on a website. “He made a horrible mistake, and will live with the consequences forever,” it read.
A libertarian group, Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, said Tuesday that it was unconstitutional for the university to expel fraternity members for their speech, no matter how hateful.
A new video spread on social media on Tuesday showing the white woman who was the fraternity’s live-in “house mother,” Beauton Gilbow, 79, laughing as she repeatedly says a racial slur while singing along to a rap song in the background. The footage was posted in 2013 to the video sharing service Vine.
Gilbow, who acknowledged in a statement to a local television station that she was the person in the video, said she was “heartbroken by the portrayal that I am in some way racist.”
She said that she had been singing along to the song, but that she completely understood “how the video must appear in the context of the events that occurred this week.”