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Unheard, student group that revealed racist SAE video, causes change at Oklahoma

Unheard, student group that revealed racist SAE video, causes change at Oklahoma

At a news conference announcing the findings of an investigation of the racist chant that prompted the shuttering of Sigma Alpha Epsilon’s Oklahoma University chapter and the expulsion of two fraternity members, OU President David Boren saluted the student activists of Unheard, who first brought the now widely viewed SAE video to light.

“I want to commend the students and leaders of that group because they brought things to my attention that we needed to address,” Boren said Friday. He joked that, at a meeting ahead of the press conference in which SAE members apologized to representatives from Unheard and other black student leaders, he'd told members of Unheard, “I wish you’d change your name to ‘Heard,’ because they have been heard.”

Unheard, which was founded at OU at the start of the current semester, gained national recognition earlier this month for tweeting the cellphone video seen round the world: of Sigma Alpha Epsilon members emphatically chanting racial slurs and lynching references to the tune of “If You’re Happy and You Know It,” while on the bus to a fraternity event.

But the group had been actively pushing for change since January, when it presented a list of grievances in a letter to Boren (PDF). The letter, among other things, called on the school to hire more black faculty members “beyond the African American studies department”; to combat low retention and graduation rates among black students, who make up a little more than 5 percent of the undergraduate population; and to provide more funding for programs that support black students at the University of Oklahoma.

The video sparked national outrage, prompting accusations of inherent racism at SAE and calls for the abolition of Greek life altogether. But it also brought OU’s own specific issues with race and diversity into the public eye, with African-American students speaking out in the press about their experiences with racism on campus, and the football team demanding change by refusing to practice.

At a meeting earlier this week, members of Unheard along with the Black Student Association’s Freshman Action Team moderated a conversation about “Being Black at OU.” Students from all backgrounds shared their own tales of racism on campus — one African-American student recalled being asked if she had “horse hair” earlier that day; a white student said she was once invited to a party and told not to bring her black friends — and discussed ways to facilitate more diversity and cohesion at Oklahoma.

Following the discussion, OU junior and Unheard member Cori Womack told the Oklahoma Daily, “I feel like our objective was complete today. We have heard solutions that we can implement that can break some of these barriers down so that the university can be a much more cultivated place.”

At his press conference Friday, President Boren said that in a plan to further Unheard’s efforts he'd be instituting a mandatory diversity and sensitivity training program for all OU students.

“It’s important that when we make serious mistakes as individuals or as organizations, we are held accountable for them,” he said. “We pay a price and then we move forward.”

The university’s investigation had traced the origins of the racist chant in the video back to a national fraternity leadership cruise from four years go, where SAE members learned the offensive lyrics and later taught them to new recruits at the OU chapter, Boren reported.

Two days earlier, attorney Stephen Jones (who famously represented Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and was hired by OU’s SAE chapter in the wake of the video scandal) told the Associated Press that he had reached an agreement with university officials to not expel any more fraternity members. Boren did not confirm any agreement, but said that 25 of the disbanded fraternity’s members were being disciplined, including the two already expelled, and no further action was planned.

It’s “the close of the chapter as far as our response,” Boren said. Now the school’s focus, with the help of Unheard and other groups, is “rebuilding trust in the community.”

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