National leaders of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity and University of Texas officials are investigating whether the racist chant used in Oklahoma has been sung by members of other chapters.
The University of Texas said in a statement that it is trying to find out if members of its SAE chapter have used the chant.
“Rumors also are circulating that a chant similar to the one at OU has been traditional in the UT chapter of SAE,” University of Texas in Austin President Bill Powers said in a statement. “Our dean of students said Monday she is looking into this matter as is standard practice in such cases.”
SAE national leaders said “several other incidents with chapters or members have been brought to the attention of the headquarters staff and leaders, and each of those instances will be investigated for further action.”
Oklahoma University officials swiftly expelled Sigma Alpha Epsilon members Parker Rice and Levi Pettit this week after identifying them from a viral video as leaders of a fraternity chant that said “there will never be a (n-word) SAE” and that also alluded to lynching black people.
Both college men, who are from Texas, apologized in public statements Tuesday, and one sentence in Rice’s apology raised eyebrows: “Yes, the song was taught to us.”
By whom?
In a statement, the national SAE headquarters responded to Rice’s remark to say, “The national fraternity does not teach such a racist, hateful chant, and this chant is not part of any education or training.”
“Our investigation has found very likely that the men 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,” the SAE statement said.
But one of the Oklahoma chapter’s co-founders, Jay Vinekar, has said that he had never heard similarly bigoted behavior since it was re-established in 1995. A black former member of the chapter, William Bruce James II, told CNN he also hadn’t seen, heard or felt similar racism when he was a member from 2001 to 2004.
The culture of insularity that typically shrouds many college fraternities — especially during controversial episodes — makes it difficult to know exactly how common or widespread the chant is — perhaps even for the fraternity’s national leadership.
“We’re sort of trying to figure out how we can validate that and hold other chapters accountable,” Brandon Weghorst, associate executive director of communications for SAE’s national headquarters, told CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Tuesday night.
This kind of limited knowledge and oversight of local fraternities by national managers has been a point of criticism.
“Fraternities nationwide are allowing self-management by 18- and 19-year-olds with a serious lack of mature oversight,” attorney Douglas Frierberg told the Los Angeles Times earlier this week. Frierberg represented the family of George Desdunes, a black student who died in a 2011 hazing incident while a pledge for membership in the SAE chapter at Cornell University in New York.
But social media this week have offered possible glimpses through the veil, suggesting the chant was not isolated to the University of Oklahoma.
The outrage over the video that blanketed social media this week has been flecked by claims that the same chant has been heard at other campuses, with one Twitter user claiming she had heard the chant at Angelo State University in Angelo, Texas, as long ago as 1974. She could not be immediately reached for comment.
“I was an SAE at a university in Texas from 2000-2004. The exact same chant was often used then. This is not isolated,” another Twitter user, MikeEvans25, wrote in a tweet that is no longer publicly viewable.
The user declined to give more specific information on the incident after an inquiry from the Los Angeles Times, adding, “I am requesting for the focus to be not on myself and my experience, but on the state of today’s society that sometimes not only allows, but encourages and/or forgets such behavior.”
One of the most damning posts on social media was published weeks before the incident, when a user on Reddit wrote the racist lyrics in a comment about a fraternity at the University of Texas, adding that his friends in an SAE fraternity chapter called it “their favorite song to sing.”
That appears to be the post that has caught the attention of University of Texas officials.
The Reddit user has since deleted the post. But social media, as the members of SAE’s University of Oklahoma chapter now know, is an effective gatherer of information: The lyrics were captured in a screenshot, and remain available for the world to see.
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