On March 8, an anonymous YouTube user uploaded a video of multiple members of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity at the University of Oklahoma singing a chant to the tune of “If You’re Happy And You Know It” on a bus on the way to a date function.
However, this was not the song you may remember from your childhood. The chant, as SAE fraternity brothers were recorded singing in the video, features the lyrics: “You can hang him from a tree, but he can never sign with me, there will never be a [expletive] in SAE.”
Almost immediately after the video’s release, the SAE national organization and the University of Oklahoma released statements expressing serious discontent with the actions of those involved.
“When we learned about the incident, I called an immediate board meeting, and we determined with no mental reservation whatsoever that this chapter needed to be closed immediately,” Brad Cohen, the fraternity’s national president, said in a March 8 statement posted on the SAE national organization’s Twitter account regarding the organization’s move to close its Oklahoma chapter.
University of Oklahoma president David Boren also took quick action, releasing a statement on his Twitter page on March 8.
“If OU students are involved, this behavior will not be tolerated and will be addressed very quickly,” he said in the statement. “If the reports are true, the chapter will no longer remain on campus. This behavior is reprehensible and contrary to all of our values.”
On March 9, Boren announced via Twitter that members of SAE were to remove their belongings from the now-closed fraternity house. Just one day later, Boren tweeted that he had taken action to expel from the university two students that he deemed to be “leaders” in the singing of the chant.
SAE was founded at the University of Alabama, a school that has come under fire for its famously segregated Greek system. So it’s not shocking that former SAE members from other schools have come forward to various media outlets and said that they were taught the song heard in the video as well, and that this is not an isolated incident of racism within SAE.
SAE member Parker Rice, who can apparently be seen leading the song in the nine-second video, and was one of the two students expelled by Boren, released a statement Tuesday that claimed that the song was “taught to” the brothers, even though that “doesn’t work as an explanation.”
In response to this, the fraternity’s Associate Executive Director of Communications Brandon Weghorst released a statement Friday stating that “the fraternity does not teach such a racist, hateful chant,” and that the men in the video likely “learned the song from fellow chapter members, which reiterates why Sigma Alpha Epsilon did not hesitate to close the chapter completely because of the culture that may have been fostered in the group.”
One would think that would be enough racism from fraternities for the week. However, the Kappa Sigma fraternity at the University of Maryland disproved that. An email sent by one of the brothers to the rest of the chapter in January 2014 just surfaced, and the author could not make its content more disgusting if he tried. Among other things, the member wrote “above all else, [expletive] consent … no [expletive] untouched.” In the email, he also instructed the fraternity members to not invite anyone but white girls to the rush events, telling the brothers, “Don’t invite any [expletive] gals or curry monsters or slanted eye chinks” — “unless they’re hot,” of course.
The brother who sent the letter at the University of Maryland was suspended by the Kappa Sigma national organization, and the fraternity said in a Friday statement that its Maryland chapter “is also presently engaging in proceedings to formally expel the individual from Kappa Sigma.”
While both of the incidents that came to light this week brought forth action from fraternity and university officials, one was significantly more publicized than the other, and it was not the incident that included the sentiment “[expletive] consent,” along with the racist statements.
So why is it, exactly, that we shy away from punishing fraternity members who are accused of promoting sexual assault but immediately expel those who exhibit racism?
Sexual violence in fraternities, and at colleges in general, seems to be a much deeper, darker and more insidious issue. It only ever comes to light when someone is accusing another person of sexual assault. And even then, you’ll always have people who fight against those accusations, because there seems to be a collective attitude of “we don’t talk about it.” Sexual assault is sadly not seen as something that’s black and white, right or wrong. People see some sort of middle ground. And maybe that’s the difference: with racism, people can’t make excuses. We see it right in front of us on video.
And that brings up another issue: there is video evidence that these words were gleefully chanted by members of a fraternity on a bus, and nobody can say that they didn’t do it. In cases of sexual assault, there’s always someone — or someone’s parent — who wants to say that the victim is “making it up” or that it’s even the victim’s fault. The video was not only incriminating for the fraternity’s chapter and as a whole, but also for the university, and it made them act quickly. Universities seem to prefer sweeping sexual assault under the rug.
People are more comfortable decrying racism than they are sexual assault, to put it bluntly. Society supposedly knows that racism is always wrong, and people can feel better about that by openly condemning things like the SAE chant. Racism is something we’ve been dealing with and condemning for a long time, whereas real conversations about sexual assault haven’t surfaced until very recently.
It’s also “easier” to deal with incidents like the SAE video because though there is a group of boys singing racial slurs, which is of course reprehensible, it’s different than going out and committing hate crimes. Dealing with sexual assault is different because there is real, physical violence involved. Universities avoid taking action on sexual assault because by taking action, they admit they let it happen under their roof. It’s a lot easier to admit that it’s their responsibility that some fraternity boys sang a song than it is to admit that the same boys committed a violent assault. But regardless of the university reaction, both things still happen. Maybe it’s time people start paying closer attention.
