The Shame of University of Oklahoma

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Clarissa

March 13, 2015

Members of a fraternity at the University of Oklahoma were recently filmed chanting that they’d rather see a black student lynched than as a member of their clan. The now viral video of dapper, privileged white men shouting, “There will never be a nigger at SAE, you can hang him from a tree” reminds us of our greatest national shame. The chant has been roundly condemned as abhorrent. But after university president David Boren announced the expulsion of two students leading the chants, prominent legal scholars from the right and left have come to their defense. The university is a public institution, they say, and punishing the students for what they said—no matter how vile—violates the First Amendment’s commitment to “uninhibited, robust, and wide-open” discourse.

I believe that a much better response form the school would be to make a public statement saying, “We haven’t managed to keep our fraternities civilized, so they are disbanded forthwith. We apologize for sponsoring extremist organizations on campus.” Just throwing out those two individual pieces of garbage will solve nothing. If the university can’t make fraternities serve the cause of advancing academic goals, they have no business being on campus.

All of these vapid discussions about free speech, legal scholars, etc. are distracting everybody’s attention from the obvious solution: universities should be about education. Trying to make them about anything else leads to trouble.

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2 responses to “The Shame of University of Oklahoma”

Shakti

March 13, 2015

I agree, the white Greek system is toxic. I’m thankful my university’s social life was not dominated by them. I had no interest in rushing a sorority because they didn’t get their own house, and they just functioned as auxiliary to the fraternities. I stayed in the women’s dorm simply because it was one of two dorms in which I shared a bathroom with five people instead of an entire floor. Kid logic. :p

Oh that chapter is being disbanded and the chapter is suing. Whatever.

This is also an example of failed parenting and how bullies are made and sanctioned by their parents and by their primary and secondary schools. Their families apologies do not apologize for failing at parenting. One family insists their son is a “good boy” and “not a racist” and that they raised him to be “loving and inclusive” and they need to “heal.” Another family says it was “reckless” and complains they are not able to” be in our home because of threatening calls as well as frightening talk on social media” and mentions alcohol.
There’s just no way in hell they grew up in a United Colors of Benetton commercial or a Rosetta Stone software course (everyone speaks several languages and is so nice!) and one fine day decided as adults to start singing a song that would fit right in at a lynching party or a Klan rally. No, they had years and years of people excusing that kind of behavior, and their schools were either all white or they bullied the minority kids who were told to ignore it or that they were wrong or oversensitive or PC or troublemakers.

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1. Clarissa
  
  March 13, 2015
  
  I agree COMPLETELY that these parents are hugely at fault here. We need to stop divorcing parenting from its results. Young people don’t do such shit unless it was legitimized snd supported at home. So yes, there is something massively wrong with these parents.
  
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