Frat Boys Lose OU Chapter After Uproar on Racist Video
“We don’t provide student services for bigots” said University of Oklahoma president David Boren in a news conference, referring to members of Sigma Alpha Epsilon (SAE) fraternity.
The statement was in response to a racist video posted on the Twitter and YouTube accounts of black student organization Unheard. The nine-second-long video shows students in a bus chanting lines including “You can hang him from a tree, but he can never sign with me. There will never be a *censored* in SAE.” Unheard received the video via a private message on Twitter. The sender requested anonymity.
SAE members in Oklahoma University (OU) will now have to make their own housing arrangements after both Boren and SAE’s national organizers ordered the closing of the fraternity’s chapter in OU.
“SAE is a diverse organization, and we have zero tolerance for racism or any bad behavior,” said Brad Cohen, SAE national president via the fraternity website. “When we learned about this incident, I called an immediate board meeting, and we determined with no mental reservation whatsoever that this chapter needed to be closed immediately.”
In a statement condemning the students’ actions released via his Twitter account, Boren said “You have violated all that we stand for. You should not have the privilege of calling yourselves ‘Sooners.’ Real Sooners are not racist… Real Sooners believe in equal opportunity.” OU students are referred to as “Sooners“, the name of the university’s sports teams.
You can view the video in question here (warning: the linked video contains racism).
