The maverick attorney who has agreed to represent an University of Oklahoma frat at the center of a racial uproar will find himself squaring off against an old opponent.
Lawyer Stephen Jones, who is best known for defending Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, once ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate against David Boren — who went on to become OU’s president and who shut down the Sigma Alpha Epsilon frat house this week.
Jones, a Republican, tried to unseat Boren, a Democrat, from his Senate seat in 1990. Boren, who had previously served as Oklahoma’s governor, swatted away the challenge, taking 83 percent of the vote.
In a statement Friday afternoon, Jones said that he was hired by the chapter’s board of directors five days after OU evicted the members because two students were caught on video singing a racist song that vowed “there will never be a n—– SAE.”
“These young adults have rights, and we must protect those rights,” the attorney said. “We want to be certain that due process rights and First Amendment rights of speech and association are protected.”
It’s good to finally discover the real victims.
Violet
They totally have the right of free speech. And they totally have the right to live with the consequences of that speech.
Pogonip
The real victims are the innocent masses who wait…and wait…and wait for pupdates.
How are you feeling? Do you have a surgery date yet?
Zandar
These shitstains are going to ride the VILE SPEECH IS PROTECTED UNDER THE FIRST AMENDMENT train all the way to the promised land.
Watch.
The only person who will get punished for this is David Boren, whose continued employment as President of a red state public university can be now measured in nanoseconds.
Violet
More youthful indiscretion by a fraternity member:
Litlebritdifrnt
Well the story is bullshit. They identified two of the students on the video that were singing the chant, but from the sound of it the entire bus was singing it, not just two students. Once they manage to identify the rest of them I am sure they will be gone too. Even Scarborough said on MJ this morning that it was a foolhardy lawsuit and the frat should just save its money.
JPL
The lawyer was contacted by concerned politicians and alumni to make sure that the frat brothers, first amendment rights were upheld. The boys who left the university withdrew. Now granted they might have been forced to leave but they signed papers withdrawn. It’s not just the university who kicked them off campus, the national chapter did also, so I’m not sure who the lawyer wants to discuss the incident with.
Remember the next time someone preaches family values, it’s time to bring up common decency. There is little of that left in the country. The treatment of the President attests to that.
Words have consequences, or least they should.
Villago Delenda Est
No.
They can earn their rights. By serving as privates in Afghanistan, on the front lines.
With an African-American NCO riding their affluenza infested asses.
Fuck them. Fuck their parents, fuck their fraternity, and most definitely fuck their asshole ambulance chaser.
trollhattan
Lawyering-up is probably how those families decide to go through that “reflection and healing process” they described when asking to be left in peace.
Speaking of lawyering up, the douchecanoe gun-and-ammo-runner ex-Marine who Obama abandoned in Mexico (until Mexico cut him loose) now needs to be rescued from the clutches of Georgia. Our Georgia, not that other one.
If he ever hooks up with Zimmerman we’re all screwed.
Wag
@Violet:
Takes me back to my college years. Another reason, added to many, that I’m glad to never have pledged a frat.
sharl
Apologies if already mentioned somewhere here…
I dunno about the rights of an expelled frat, but this law-talkin’ defense attorney I follow on twitter thinks the individual expelled students might have a pretty strong case to sue OU:
Elsewhere I saw the suggestion that OU might have already factored in the cost of such lawsuits, and decided that their expense (settlement out of court maybe?) is justified in order to avoid the potential damage this incident may do to OU football recruitment efforts:
In that part of the country, football – the U.S.-style Biblically-approved* kind of football (*look it up – in Revelations, I think) – is EVERYTHANG.
BGinCHI
First, they came for the racists, and I said, “Hey, what fucking took you so long?”
The end.
Calouste
@sharl: But those students were not expelled, were they? Boren suggested to them to GTFO, but they weren’t told to.
dogwood
I don’t know how it works at OU, but my Greek experience is that frats and sororities that have houses have a separate local corporation board that deals with the facility. The national fraternity has pulled the charter so the chapter no longer exists, but the facility still has to be dealt with if it is privately owned. Usually when chapters fold the facility is sold. I’m not sure if it was Boren or the national fraternity that gave the guys 24 hours to move out, but if it was the university, they must own the property. If that’s the case, they probably have the right to evict the occupants.
sharl
@Calouste: According to this WaPo story, two students were expelled over this:
BGinCHI
@sharl: I can’t wait til Ron Fournier hears about this amazing leadership. He’ll tar Obama with it for sure.
VincentN
@Villago Delenda Est:
I’m disturbed by this talk of “earning” rights. Isn’t that what right wingers usually say?
Rights aren’t only for people we like. This is what the ACLU of Oklahoma says:
“Any sanction imposed on students for their speech must therefore be consistent with the First Amendment and not merely a punishment for vile and reprehensible speech; courts have consistently and rightly ruled as such. Absent information that is not at our disposal, it is difficult to imagine a situation in which a court would side with the university on this matter.”
ACLU of Oklahoma Statement in Response to the University of Oklahoma’s Announcement of VP of Diversity Position
Another Holocene Human
@sharl: Conservatives lining up to sue over “hostile learning environment” because trolling to disrupt learning in academic institutions is one of their cherished causes and they’re hoping the Five Republicans will back them up.
Mike J
Are they suing SEA too? The uni shut down the frat, but the national frat had already shut them down hours before.
sharl
@BGinCHI: Let’s hope so. Unlike that poseur David Brooks, Fournier is a real expert on Applebee’s, and therefore just the guy to address this matter.
#Leadership #WhyWontHeLead
BGinCHI
@sharl: Oh what I’d pay to see those two wield pistols at dawn.
JPL
@sharl: The students withdrew from the university. Now one might argue that they were coerced but they withdrew. I doubt their parents want a big lawsuit over this. They want it to disappear.
Scott S.
I say if they sing about lynching, they’re making a threat, and they should be pitched out on their ears.
If they use the N-word, they should be pitched out on their ears anyway, and their names should be prominently listed as racist motherfuckers, so future employers will know not to hire them. Fuck their invented honkey rights — they get the same rights as any of us. You’re free to use offensive language, but you’re also free to deal with what people will think of you for using offensive language.
JPL
I’d like to know what politicians contacted the lawyer. It’s probably someone that voted for the right to discriminate law.
Shakti
FUCK YOUR RIGHTS. Go slink off to the country club and beg Mommy and Daddy for a sinecure. Then you can exercise “freedom of association” by going to the private not accepting federal or state funds Klown Kountry Kollege and hand in that stupid video in your applications materials. Everybody else in the public university is exercising their “freedom of association” by refusing to have you associated with them. They’re also using social media and their right to assembly to protest your stupidity. “Please protect me from the scaawy protesters who are intimidating meeeee and my family….”
Stop complaining about the people outside of your house. Not even if they show up with guns. Remember, they’re just “exercising their Second Amendment rights” by having an open carry rally to defend themselves against wannabe lynchers.
sharl
@JPL: That all may well be – I don’t know and (obviously) I’m not a lawyer – but I can almost guarantee you that certain conservative legal foundations are hounding those kids and their families to sue, with genuine promises to cover all their legal bills. It’s the perfect kind of cause célèbre for outfits like that, and they’ll provide a very tempting offer to those families. Of course, I don’t know anything about what will actually happen, but I’ve seen this dynamic play out before.
Calouste
@sharl: I don’t know how much to believe of that WaPo article, considering that before the University did anything the national SAE organization had already expelled the OU chapter. What could Boren do with the national SAE when they were already no longer had a presence on campus?
moderateindy
Regardless of how repulsive these guys are, since OU is a governmental entity, it would seem that it would be illegal for them to punish people for this type of speech. If it were a private college then they could do as they pleased. The national SAE can also do whatever they like. Had these idiots been chanting this in front of black people as a means of intimidation, or threat, then it might be different. I’m not certain how the law is applied in such instances. But it seems to me that this is exactly what the 1st ammendment is there to cover. The question is whether or not OU is part of the government. If they are then they are not allowed to punish people for speech, regardless how repugnant that speech might be.
trollhattan
@dogwood:
IDK what the situation is at OU, but at my university half a dozen houses were on campus and several more, off. The university seemed to have more influence over the on-campus ones (including SAE, FWIW).
Other than the handegg sportsball, I’m more curious as why anybody voluntarily goes to OU?
retr2327
@Villago Delenda Est: Much as I might be tempted to agree with your sentiments, I’m not so sure about the legal analysis. The Volokh conspiracy (admittedly right-wing) published a pretty solid-appearing analysis claiming that, given that OU is a governmental entity, dismissal of these two racists students was completely contrary to the First Amendment. Somewhat more persuasively, one of the bloggers over at LG&M conceded that the analysis was almost certainly correct. So it’s not clear that Boren’s actions would withstand a serious legal challenge.
Of course, fighting to get re-admitted to OU after you’ve been outed as racist scumbags is not such an appealing prospect . . .
sharl
@Calouste: Boren would need to show action, I assume, even if he was just “piling on” after SAE national HQ had already expelled the OU chapter. Perhaps more significantly, as dogwood noted upthread, if the University owns the SAE house there, then expulsion of the chapter might have been a prerequisite to take over and shut down the house.
There’s a lot I haven’t read on this (and probably won’t read), but I still think the football thing is probably bigger than anyone at OU would be willing to acknowledge, given all the horrible things university administrators nationwide allow athletic directors, coaches, and students to get away with in order to preserve The Precious.
Eric U.
There was a frat at Penn State that was housed in a building that was in the way of one of Graham “see no evil” Spanier’s pet projects. They were caught having illegal drinking in their building, and were on probation, no more alcohol in the frat house. Some alumni came for a football game and decided to defy that rule. The frat was evicted and the building torn down in record time. If the building is on campus, the university has a lot of power. I assumed that when the national organization closed the OU frat, the local chapter didn’t exist and thus had no right to be in the building.
I’ve always wondered why minority players go to historically racist schools. They gotta know that the average alabama fan describes the football players with a word that starts with ‘N’
trollhattan
@retr2327: Presumably, all students have a code of conduct they agree to. Was the behavior covered by the code? Is expulsion a sanction included in punishments for code violation? At the very least, they’re 18 so are bound by a contract they would have inked.
Mike in NC
We had a drunken ex-frat boy in the White House not too long ago. No doubt an inspiration to many pledges.
trollhattan
@Mike in NC:
Everything you wrote is accurate aside from the “ex” part.
JaneE
They are free to associate, and chant anything they want. But the national pulled their frat charter, and most universities only allow official frats. They might be able to get a conditional approval, but after that video, I don’t see how they can meet any university guidelines for fraternal organizations. Given that their house killed a black pledge not too long ago, I would hope that the investigation into that death could be reopened to see if it was not, in fact, a murder.
Shakti
Honestly, if he hadn’t kicked the two students out or “constructively expelled them” and kicked the frat out, the university would have been sued anyways. If you believe that Boren would lose his job for that, it’s equally likely he would lose it if he hadn’t acted. If there was no action taken, I would expect class action suits from the minority students and their parents on the grounds of a “hostile educational environment” or a 42 UC 1983 claim. In addition it’s already cost the university in football recruitment. I would seriously think about getting my (hypothetical) kid a gun for self protection in the mean time (as long as they were there) and I would find ways to make every single member very miserable, as well as any university officials who protected them. I’m sure many people are very nice and sweet until you fuck with their family.
Another Holocene Human
@Eric U.:
But they’re all historically racist schools, except the HBCU’s, I guess, although James Baldwin wasn’t so sure about that, either.
Another Holocene Human
@Shakti: I don’t understand how “goobermint” changes the fact that it’s a hostile environment. If you create a hostile working environment on a goobermint job you’ll be out on your ass by next Tuesday so why do con-jobs get a super seekrit pass when it’s skool … oh that’s right, they hate knowledge, learning, and free inquiry so they have a team of lawyers ready to shut that whole thing down.
AndoChronic
Now the little man-children are complaining that they’re getting death threats? Two-way street my
man.Keith G
@Villago Delenda Est:
No.
Sound a bit wing-nutty, since those right are thought by liberalism to be endowed and not earned by people we like doing things that we approval of.
The OU policy regarding student expression needs to be followed to the letter. If it says that the students can be removed and that removal follows Constitutional quidelines, then that process should be followed.
When the abusive power of the state has been curbed in this land, more often than not it has been because a case was brought and argued before a court. The good and the bad have access to those courts. The sublime and the evil have access to those courts.
What those students did was sickening, but the sin of their hatred does not deprive them of due process or the right to explore what the limits of that due process is.
We should not treat them they way they treated others. Cole’s framing of this is a bit immature, but this is a blog, so there ya are.
grandpa john
@Eric U.: They also know that players at certain schools get more national recognition in sports media, thus increasing their chance of being drafted to play in the professional leagues. Not all, of course, but some
Mike S.
OU doesn’t have a leg to stand on wrt to both the first amendment and due process issues.
http://www.thefire.org/robert-shibley-and-oklahoma-state-prof-joey-senat-take-on-arguments-for-punishing-racist-chant/
http://www.thefire.org/after-quick-expulsions-u-of-oklahoma-taking-heat-on-free-speech-and-due-process/
Volokh was mentioned up thread, look him up.
Villago Delenda Est
@VincentN: I’m sorry, I should have said something along the lines of “get some rights back after committing an act of blatant celebratory racism that they have forfeited through their deplorable actions.”
Better? Because these vile shitstains apparently don’t realize that there are consequences for doing what they’ve done. Now they’re whining that they’re not racist assholes for behaving precisely the way racist assholes behave, which is why people draw the very understandable conclusion that they’re racist assholes.
Let them do their time and perhaps come back from Afghanistan in coach, not cargo.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Mike S.:
It’s not clear who’s being sued for what, though. Since the lawyer was hired by the frat chapter, it sounds as though they’re contesting their eviction from their fraternity house, and they probably don’t have a leg to stand on because they’ve been ejected by the national chapter, so they no longer have a right to live there.
Everyone is talking about the two expulsions being challenged, but is that actually what the lawsuit is about?
shelley
I know everybody is entitled to a good defense….but Timothy McVeigh.
Man, I wonder what Jones’ strategy was? Can’t remember,did he do some kind of insanity thing or just do his best to keep McVeigh from the death penalty
Villago Delenda Est
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): I think it’s high time that the death of the black pledge be investigated in depth, as he will never get a second chance, unlike the white shit that was chanting the chant on that bus.
sharl
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): I think you’re right about that, i.e., the fraternity has filed suit, but the expelled students have not (yet).
ETA: Or maybe to put it more precisely, the frat has verbally committed to suing – I don’t know whether they’ve actually filed the paperwork yet – while no word has come from the students as of yet regarding their intentions.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@sharl:
If it is the fraternity suing over their eviction from the frat house, I’m not sure they have a leg to stand on. The house is subject to an agreement between OU and the national fraternity, and if the national fraternity says that chapter is no longer a part of their organization, those former frat members are now squatters who have no right to live there.
mak
I think the dissolution of the frat and the expulsion of the students would be two separate issues. The frat, as a private organization, is allowed to (and no doubt, does) discriminate based on all kinds of subjective criteria. But as someone said above, the national SAE dissolved the local chapter, which is the one making noise about suing. All but two of those kids are still students, at least for the moment, so i can’t see how they would have standing to sue OU. If they want to sue someone, maybe they should sue their national parent org.
But I don’t think that a state entity like a school would be permitted to expel someone based solely on their speech, however vile. We’ve probably all, at one time or another, nodded in agreement when someone said something like “I don’t agree with what you said, but would defend to the death your right to say it.” This is that situation.
So assuming that one of the expelled students decides to sue, the question then becomes: do you want to forever be known as the guy who sued for the right to chant “you can hang them from a tree. . . there will never be a n****r SAE”?
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
Why do these assholes even give a shit whether they go back to college or not? Now they’re all set for a lifetime gig at whatever wingnut welfare outlet they choose. They can go on Fox News or write for Clown Hall or the Washington Times Brietbart’s shitty thing or wait a year and be the next big hit at the C.P.A.C. convention. If these assholes had even the least little bit on the ball, they’d understand that getting thrown out of school for singing about hanging niggers from trees was the best thing that could have ever happened to them.
mtiffany
Can we maybe start killing lawyers who either don’t understand the law or deliberately misrepresent it? These entitled fratholes were never subject to criminal or civil prosecution for their actions, just expulsion for being caught violating the terms of an agreement they assented to when they accepted admission to that particular college. So there’s no due process violation and this douchy lawhole knows it. Same thing goes for his bullshit raising of a “First Amendment” issue. Can we at least agree we should stop letting this guy waste precious oxygen?
OzarkHillbilly
1st Amendment John, it guarantees the right of free speech to assholes everywhere.
Including you and I.
rea
@Zandar: “The only person who will get punished for this is David Boren, whose continued employment as President of a red state public university can be now measured in nanoseconds
I don’t know–David Boren has been pretty huge in Oklahoma politics for the last 40 years or so.
rea
The frat, as a private organization
The frat is not exactly a private organization. It’s recognized by the University, and gets a bunch of benefits from that, including lease of an on-campus house.
liberal
Screw Volokh, but Scott L. at LawyersGunsandMoney is extremely liberal..
liberal
Not getting the “hostile environment” claims here—they were in a bus, not a public place, and they themselves didn’t post the clip on YouTube.
John M
@mtiffany: I’m not sure what you think is being intentionally misrepresented here. The University of Oklahoma is a public university and is bound by the First Amendment. Those of us who aren’t state actors are free to shun, scorn, not hire these jerks, and hopefully that happens. But your scare quotes aren’t warranted here. The real live First Amendment is in play here.
Craigie
I don’t understand. The First Amendment say Congress shall make no law… Etc.
Where in this has Congress restricted their right to be dicks?
gwangung
@John M: It’s not clear what people are talking about here. And it frakking matters WHAT we are talking about.
Ideally, what we’re talking about is what the University of Oklahoma is actually doing.
Fort Geek
So I bet the SAE fellas wouldn’t be interested in my modest change to their letters to reflect the true nature of their “gentemanly” frat
Joel
Now there’s a track record of success that you can be proud of!
John M
@Craigie: No time to rehash 200 years of constitutional jurisprudence, but the First Amendment constrains state governments as well as the federal government. And even if it didn’t, Oklahoma’s constitution probably has a similar free speech clause.
John M
@gwangung: I don’t think it’s all that unclear. The University of Oklahoma is a state actor and therefore is bound by free expression provisions in federal and state law. Con law isn’t part of my everyday practice, so I’m far from the final word, but if OU expelled students purely because of the content of their speech, then there may be a problem. Mtiffany suggests a contract approach, but we’re but talking about a private school. Public universities are more restricted in their ability to sanction students for the content of their speech, even repugnant speech like what we saw here.
John M
Sorry, meant to say we’re not talking about a private school. Can’t seem to edit on my phone.
Fred
@Fort Geek: I think those guys would be most proud of that logo. That seems to be their problem, they are living in a dead past.
Barry
@dogwood: There was a case here in Ann Arbor; a frat got into deep trouble, so that the national terminated the chapter. They still owned the house, and had a management company maintain it and rent it out. Then, four years later, after the original members had graduated, the national sent a representative to restart the chapter.
In OK, the national will probably have such a company operate the building, renting rooms out to students. Remember that a building like this can make a great student rooming house.
Barry
@retr2327: “Of course, fighting to get re-admitted to OU after you’ve been outed as racist scumbags is not such an appealing prospect . . . ”
As has been pointed out, that’s the biggest issue for these kids.
They could sue, and they could certainly find a right-wing foundation to support that suit (at least at first), but they’d just amp the publicity up.
Their best bet (as has also been pointed out) is to find a private college, ‘transfer’ there, finish their degrees, and use connections to get a job.
‘Finding Jesus’ would also be a good move – probably in August, so they could spend most of the summer partying and getting laid.
Barry
@Eric U.: “I’ve always wondered why minority players go to historically racist schools. They gotta know that the average alabama fan describes the football players with a word that starts with ‘N’ ”
Playing on a good team, and the career prospects. Being a Crimson Tide alumni is probably a great leg up in Alabama, and elsewhere.
chromeagnomen
as far as the argument goes, that fighting to get reinstated after being outed as racist scumbags is not an appealing prospect? heh. feature, not bug.
JR
The Word of the Day is “discovery.”
An example sentence:
When this lawsuit reaches the discovery phase, and the university’s lawyers subpoena the fraternity’s emails and scour their social media posts, a lot more than two racists will be named and shamed in this debacle.
BankerNole
While I certainly join everyone else in condemning the students’ behavior, expulsion seems like an excessive penalty given that the hateful words – reprehensible though they were – were not directed at anyone but were sung in a private gathering and, more importantly, that seemingly worse actions – like violence – do not typically result in expulsion after a first offence.
I am not in a position to offer an informed comment on the legal merits of the students’ lawsuit, but from a moral point of view, I think they have a reasonable case that a more appropriate punishment would not be this severe.
Perhaps, they could do 100 hours of community service in a black church. Would that not be more fitting?
sharl
Been thinking about this OU business, and wondering if it could be a teachable incident for white kids (probably teens) who might be asking something like this: ‘so what’s the big deal? They’re just stupid words in a stupid song.’
It occurred to me that a lot of AA folk have family stories of murder and lynchings that didn’t happen all that long ago, really. Maybe white kids whose families don’t have such stories would benefit from hearing stories of “the good ol’ days” from folks for whom those days were definitely not so good.
So if I had kids – they would be named Chaz Bubba and Muffy Wilbur, probably – I might direct them to something like the writings of Courtland Milloy of the Washington Post. For example, here’s how a June 2005 column starts:
Then I might have Chaz and Muffy read this February 2012 column, which starts out thusly:
After that, I would probably ask my kids something like this: “Do you think that, if you grew up hearing that your ancestors, even those as recent as your grandparents and great-grandparents, went through stuff like that because of the color of your skin, you would just laugh off such racist, violent songs like what those frat dudes were singing? Are you sure you wouldn’t be just a little bit afraid of those bad ol’ days coming back again for you, just because of the color of YOUR skin?”
And then if that didn’t seem too convincing, I might bring up Ferguson, where the cops seem more like the plantation overseers of old than law enforcement officers – in fact they broke the law quite a bit – as well as Trayvon Martin, and Eric Garner, and John Crawford III, etc., etc.
sharl
…Chaz and Muffy may have become bored early on in the previous discussion, so maybe something visual would help. Old preserved postcards showing photos of lynched corpses might bring the matter home to them in a way that mere words cannot. They might just be old enough to learn something from these without being traumatized (or maybe not; probably good that I don’t actually have kids).
The site WithoutSanctuary.org has a whole bunch of these, and while they don’t all contain lynchings of black folk exclusively – a significant number of non-AA folks were lynched as well, and on occasion black folk lynched their own – most lynchings appear to have been of AAs.
Here’s one, with this description: “The lynching of Rubin Stacy. Onlookers, including four young girls. July 19, 1935, Fort Lauderdale, Florida.” Here’s more detail on that:
Here’s another one, with this description: “The lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith, a large gathering of lynchers. August 7, 1930, Marion, Indiana.” And further information:
Elsewhere it was noted about this photo that
sharl
Anyhoo, I don’t expect that the usual community service alone would likely make much an impression with these douchey frat boys. Maybe writing a report on the lynching postcard photos, including a discussion of why the white folks in some of those photos seemed to be having such a gosh darn good time at “the show”, would be educational. Or maybe finding some old white folks in their own communities to interview who were known to be alive and in the proximity of one or more lynchings, like what they tried in Marion Indiana. Or maybe even interviewing someone like Courtland Milloy’s dad would make for productive community service.
Or they could just sue OU; whatev…