University of Oklahoma Fraternity suspended

Parents Forum
721

“I am amazed at so many of you who are excusing these kids. Is this not a site full of tiger parents and high achieving kids who are the cream of the crop? These kids should know better, right? Just SMH.”

No one is excusing them.

But you’re also not getting that there are a lot of shades of gray between stupid/ignorant/thoughtless/dumb and ready-to-hang-the-nearest-black-from-the-nearest-tree. And 10 seconds of a stupid song isn’t enough to make me think there is some organized movement among this fraternity to hang the nearest black from the nearest tree. If it were coupled with aggressive behavior (let’s say they had a history of picking fistfights with black fraternities), you’d have more evidence of that.

722

I think you need to distinguish, Cardinal Fang, between “racist but legal” and “racist and illegal”. Once you do that you will be better able to understand what others are saying. Some racism is indeed legal.

723

Isn’t it possible, PG, that this does reflect the racist tone of the house? Given the video of the house mom? Nobody is saying they are going to lynch someone, but does seem like they are racist. There is also a lot of room between lynching and being not a racist.

724

I accept the first amendment arguments as reasonable, measured and valid. I too am a little bit concerned about the slippery slope. I still think Boren’s gambit is worthwhile, since they probably won’t sue, and it is probably worth it even if they sue.

I do not accept the boys will be boys arguments. They are racist. If they are not an example of racist, then only KKK’s are racist. I would be worried about my kids safety around a group of these guys, especially if they are drunk. They are willing to go beyond levels of normalcy.

725

Come on CF. Seriously? That may top the most ridiculous thing I have read on CC, and I usually really like your posts (and always respect your arguments even when I don’t). This, however, is just nuts. Nowhere on this thread has anyone said anything even remotely like you are insinuating. Not even within 100 orders of magnitude.

726

We are not speaking of acceptance policies, are we? We are speaking of singing in the bathroom, to draw an analogy.

I fear of a state that tracks perfectly legal private behavior of citizens and then punishes them based on that as the court of public opinion would like such punishments, the Constitution be damned.

727

From the blog of Will James, last black SAE, in the comments section:

728

I would think they were a bunch bigots who are offensive, disgusting pigs. I would not, however, believe that they had any intention of gassing Jews any more than I think the racist, offensive, frat boys intend or ever intended to lay a hand on any AA. And in both cases, I don’t believe either group of bigots intended to harass or frighten their targets because they never intended their targets would know that they sang these disgusting songs. And saying that should in no way lead to an inference that I condone that speech. But people have a right to express their disgusting opinions without government punishment in all but very few circumstances. In order to have a free society we are forced to take some of the bad with the good.

I believe in fighting words with words, not censorship. Outrage, exposure, verbal condemnation, sure. I have a particular disgust for Westboro Baptist. But like racists and anti-semites, they have a right to state those hateful opinions in a hired bus on the way to a private party and still be allowed to get a public education.

729

Except that they have case law in their favor.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/03/10/no-a-public-university-may-not-expel-students-for-racist-speech/

730

TV,
What both said was horrible and racist and wrong. I see that, but many here don’t seem to be able to.

BTW, for the *nth time, I am not here to get into the first amendment tussle!!

Pizza, so do you think it is possible for someone to sing a song about molesting a child but not be a pedophile? Could you dismiss that person’s song as just being a “giggly” silly boy?

731

It looks like the chapter is preparing to sue the university, and Boren personally :http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2015/03/13/reports-ous-sigma-alpha-epsilon-fraternity-plans-to-sue-the-university/

732

This is generally true with regard to formal rush, but there are a number of campuses where greek organizations hold informal rush, and the students who participate in informal rush often do so because they met a few members of the fraternity in class or through their dorm and got along well with them.

Many years ago, when I was just out of college and working as a leadership consultant for my fraternity, a number of fraternity and sorority headquarters were pushing their chapters to incorporate informal rush into their membership recruitment programs. A chapter that makes use of informal rush would absolutely be meeting potential candidates and hanging out with them socially before inviting them to participate in rush.

733

Not a surprise. Boren reacted to the court of public opinion and got it wrong. The university will suffer as a result.

The court of public opinion is usually wrong.

734

Do those former SAE’s really want the discovery that would come with this lawsuit? Do they want this publicity? Do they want these former SAE’s up on the stand being questioned about how they learned this song? Do they want other Greek members on OU to testify about other times when they heard SAE’s singing the lynching song? All the former SAE’s names splashed all over the news?

This suit sounds ill-advised to me, and I don’t think it will happen.

735

TV4, I’ve seen defenses of all those behaviors as not being racist, on CC threads.

736

It will, and the university will lose. That would be a good thing, too, as other universities will hopefully learn that if they are run based on public money they need to respect the Constitution more than the court of public opinion. I am amazed that senior executives already don’t know this and need a reminder by the legal system.

737

Excuse me! Neither I, nor anyone else, has said this was “harmless silly fun,” or that these kids weren’t racist. Of course they were racist! I don’t need to know anything about them other than they thought it was fun to sing this song to know they are racist.

I agree with almost everything Cardinal Fang says in #703 (which is a good deal more nuanced than some of the things she was saying a few hundred posts ago). I’m just not as certain as she is what implication I draw from that. If one of my kids had done this, they would face real fury at home, but one of my kids would never, ever have done something like this.

Look. There are people in the world who think it’s a good idea to lynch Black people. Those are really dangerous people. These kids are not those people. These kids are dangerous, too, but dangerous in a different, and far less dire, way, and conflating the two does not really help anyone address the particular threat from either group.

In the same vein, yesterday morning on NPR there was a segment that included part of an interview with a 12-year-old Palestinian boy whose ambition when he grows up – which will be soon, since he is essentially deprived of any real educational opportunity – is to kill all the Jews. All of them. He meant it, you could tell, although of course he didn’t really understand the meaning of what he meant. There’s very little in common between him and some frat boy who may tell kike jokes.

My first week in college, I heard explicitly anti-Semitic comments from two people who, at another school, could easily have been SAE members, addressed particularly to me. One of them was one of my new roommates, and after we had known each other for maybe 10 minutes he said, “They told me back home this was going to be Jew Haven, but I had no idea it would be this bad.” He was being a snotty jerk. We’re still friends 40 years later. He’s probably still somewhat anti-Semitic, but he doesn’t act on it, so who cares? The other, from the rural Southwest, on hearing my name, asked me if I was Jewish, and then commented laconically “There’s a Jewish family in my town. Own everything.” He cleaned up real well as he grew up, and he’s a prominent and respected public servant, who is deeply embarrassed by his 18 year-old self.

Obviously, those things bothered me 40 years ago, and I sure haven’t forgotten them. They were harmful; they weren’t OK. But they weren’t an existential threat, either, and shouldn’t have been dealt with like one.

738

That’s just not true. People are allowed to be racist and attend state schools. They may certainly not have the right for their social groups to be funded/subsidized or recognized by the administration, but they certainly are allowed to be racist and attend public schools.

739

"Excuse me! Neither I, nor anyone else, has said this was “harmless silly fun,”

Uh, PG said it.

“Look. There are people in the world who think it’s a good idea to lynch Black people. Those are really dangerous people. These kids are not those people.”

How do you know this?

740

I don’t think that I’m required to believe that the SAE members actually intended to lynch black men, in order to believe they created a hostile environment, or would create one if they’d sung the song in public. Recklessly singing about excluding black men and killing black men is hostile in itself, even if they didn’t actually intend to kill black men. I also have not defended Boren’s expulsion of the two kids, although I don’t feel bad about it. I have been interested to hear whether the Hunt wing would defend the right of students to sing the lynching song in public.