That’s the brothers of the OU Chapter of Sigma Alpha Epsilon. I should say former chapter, because nationals disbanded them, and OU President David Boren has given them until tomorrow night to pack up their stuff and GTFO and doesn’t care if any of them ever are on campus or in class ever again. Good for them.
The ΣΑΕ chapter in my small town was disbanded in the 70’s for generally being drunken idiots all the time, culminating in an incident in which they got hammered while day drinking and then proceeded to burn all of their furniture in a bonfire and then started “borrowing” furniture from other housing units. They really were animal house before Animal House. They had their own little song:
So lift up your old silver goblet
With the ΣΑΕ upon it
And we’ll all have another round of beer.
For it’s not for knowledge
That we came to college
But to raise hell while we’re here.
MORE BEER!
It seems rather quaint and innocuous compared to the above video.
Speaking of that video, a couple things stand out.
1.) Based on the performance in the clip above, this was not the first time that had been sung at an event. That was passed down, so this is not just a bad few apples. Every single alum should hang their head in shame, although if they allowed that to continue to be handed down, they probably are unfamiliar with the concept of shame.
2.) This is the sort of thing that makes people hate fraternities. The legacies of privilege and the rape and racism along with hazing and alcohol poisoning. I don’t hate all fraternities, but I sure can understand why someone would and why some would never want their kids to join a Greek house.
3.) I feel terrible for the black brothers of the fraternity at different colleges. My chapter of ΑΕΦ look like the United Colors of Bennetton, but if another chapter was caught singing something like this, it would devastate the guys in my house. I don’t even know what I would say or do other than explain that there are assholes everywhere and it is not indicative of what we believe in here locally or nationally.
Between this and all the other shit going on, how on earth did John Roberts decide racism is over?
Baud
He didn’t say it was over, just that we don’t care anymore.
Warren Terra
Add to this that it has damaged Oklahoma U. in a way that people actually seem to care about: a top prospect hand-egg player (possibly in the top dozen in the country) has rescinded his commitment to
matriculate atplay professional football for Oklahoma U. The scholar-athlete in question is Black, and felt he would not truly be welcome at Oklahoma.jharp
When I look back on my college years I shudder to think of the drunken stupidity. I feel very lucky to have survived. A few friends didn’t. And I never got arrested either.
browser
Folks might enjoy this reaction from a Sooner linebacker.
Violet
The SAE chapter’s I knew were all filled with white, rich, entitled guys. The ones whose families had their names on buildings at the school. The ones who broke the school rules that got other people kicked out, but in the cases of the SAE members their daddies or granddaddies intervened and nothing happened to them.
SiubhanDuinne
As I mentioned several threads down, the Wikipedia entry on ΣΑΕ notes:
(My emphasis.)
I hope other chapters have long abandoned this silly, offensive song, but when you think about it, the chapter at OU was just honoring a piece of their heritage, right?
And huge props to OU President David Boren for his quick, decisive, principled, and totally appropriate action. No hiding behind “internal investigations” or “we don’t yet know all the facts” or any crap like that. He cut ’em loose and cut ’em hard. Good for him.
beltane
The young men of that fraternity probably agree with John Roberts that racism is a thing of the past. Now they only sing about lynchings, their grandfathers got to live the dream.
WaterGirl
@Warren Terra: Good for him. But what is a hand-egg player?
JPL
It was a good idea for the SAE frat house at Oklahoma State to remove this flag
link
JPL
@beltane: They probably have black friends.
Warren Terra
@WaterGirl:
(slang, uncountable) A humorous term for the game of American football, or for any other sport called “football” that uses a prolate spheroid instead of a round ball and in which the ball is regularly handled, such as Canadian football or Rugby football.
TR
@Violet: Same Assholes Everywhere.
beltane
@JPL: When I was a teenager in the mid-1980s I used to regularly walk past one of the NYU dorms on my way home from my friend’s house. I’ll always remember the big Confederate flag that covered one of the windows for the entire 1985-86 school year.
WaterGirl
@Warren Terra: thank you!
Violet
@SiubhanDuinne: Google “Kappa Alpha” and “Old South” if you want more southern fraternity traditions.
MomSense
I just read an incredible piece written by a former member, William Bruce James, II. http://betweenthenotes.me/2015/03/09/there-will-never-be-another-black-s-a-e/
Tim F.
I would not worry about black brothers at other chapters. SAE is very proud of its heritage as the only existing frat to represent the slaveholding south from before the Civil War. You could say inordinately proud.
Show me a black guy in a SAE and I will show you a dude who needs to find a campus map STAT.
Pogonip
That kid whose face is clearly visible may end up with it rearranged. If so, he asked for it.
JPL
@beltane: A house in my older neighborhood had a confederate flag inside a window and a UGA flag hanging outside. It was a pretty nice neighborhood and fortunately we sold the house before the market tanked. My share allowed me to buy a smaller house in a well kept neighborhood without confederate flags and a homeowners association.
Pogonip
John, today we’ve had Hilary’s e-mail, Congressional dipshits, and mean people on a bus. After all that–how about a cute pupdate?
Just Some Fuckhead
Clearly Roberts was ΣΑΕ, to answer your question.
shelley
You mean nobody’s offered up the ‘boys-will-be-boys” defense?
Pogonip
@JPL: The house was without the flag but was it with or without the homeowner’s association?
aimai
SteveM at NoMoreMrNiceBlog has the goods.
Among other important points:
Tim F.
@MomSense:
Daaaamn.
Ryan
I for one am glad that I did not join a fraternity.
Tree With Water
I just read a top football recruit opted out of Oklahoma as a result of those idiot frat boys. What’s kind of funny is he’s decided to attend the University of Alabama instead.
beltane
David Boren is a Democrat. Perhaps this contributed to his no bullshit response.
JPL
@Pogonip: I just noticed that.. without… What’s interesting is how well kept the yards are. There is pressure to maintain. haha. I jest but only a little.
also.. my older neighborhood I was sent a registered letter in mid April because of weeds in the lawn. The new neighborhood laughs when I tell them the story. BTW.. I wasn’t home when the letter came and chose not to pick it up at the post office.
Pogonip
@MomSense: I liked Mr. James’s description of a true gentleman so much I bookmarked it and will show it to any young man who comes under my influence.
chopper
when I was in college an old dorm roommate of mine rushed SAE. buncha dicks. the epithet “same assholes everywhere” really does apply.
lamh36
@MomSense: I was just reading that earlier, it’s important to note that that blogger was the LAST BLACK MEMBER of that chapter in 14 years.
Violet
@aimai:
No love for the KAs?
Do they not count because they changed their name? Surely this must help their case as a true fraternity of the Confederacy:
Woodrowfan
@chopper:
I heard the same thing, and my undergrad school didn’t even have an SAE house. Their rep reached us though.
SAE used to be the single largest frat in the US in term of members. Wonder if it still is.
Villago Delenda Est
Because John Roberts has absolutely no problem with the concept of white supremacy
This is why he’s on a tumbrel manifest.
Mike J
SAE have always been the southern asshole frat, haven’t they?
While I’m no fan of frats myself, I think Wonkette went overboard with their criticism. Not of the local, they deserved everything they got, but they continued to pile on the national, even after they rapidly did exactly the right thing. It didn’t take six months of fact finding. They dropped them asap, with no mealy mouthed “sorry if anyone was offended” crap. Perhaps the national are trying to actually loose the racist rep.
Sifu Snafu
In my younger days a friend of mine was walking with a buddy through the section of Northeastern College Town that held all of the frat houses, referred to locally as “the Greek”.
Several drunken idiots followed them, taunting and yelling “get outta Greek you insert-slur-for-homosexuals-here.” My friend, who is admittedly a snarky loudmouth hollered back “I thought Greeks invented that, we figured we’d be fine.”
One of the fratboys took a swing at said friend, under the mistaken impression that every person you see dressed like they just rolled out of a rave is weak or averse to fighting. My friend took off his spiky dog collar, wrapped it around his fist, and used it to punch a painful series of dents into the fratboy’s forehead.
There’s no moral to the story (other than its not a good idea to talk shit to a person wearing a spiky dog collar), but it does play into my distaste for frat culture.
Villago Delenda Est
@Violet: They don’t count because they were founded 8 months after Lee surrendered at Appomattox.
However, we’ll give them some bonus points for being part of the first wave of Confederate revisionism.
Walker
@Tree With Water:
Not really. For all the crap we give the south, in my experience they are actually much less racist that rural midwest or any sort of “born-again Southerners” (e.g. Confederate flag wavers in Union territory). I am from an old Carolinian family, and the racism I see here in upstate NY is far more brutal and hateful than what I saw growing up (which was substantial).
Except for Mississippi. Lord help you in Mississippi.
aimai
@MomSense: Wow. So, so, so, beautifully written.
Violet
@Villago Delenda Est: Yeah, in my experience the KAs were by far the more “southern” fraternity–in terms of playing up the southern heritage. The SAEs were the entitled dicks. If there were male students driving expensive cars, they’d likely be SAEs.
RSA
@MomSense:
Thanks for that.
MomSense
@lamh36:
I noticed that and now we all know why. Appalling.
Pogonip
@Villago Delenda Est: How many pages is that manifest up to?
lamh36
@Mike J:
Jezebel had a bit more info from Think Progress about other chapters of the frat:
Frat at University of Oklahoma Permanently Closed After Racist Chant
lamh36
Imagine if you were this guy…imagine what they said behind his back…SMDH.
And now he’s unemployed…damn
Supporters rally around black chef who spent 15 years working at Oklahoma University’s SAE house and is now UNEMPLOYED because racist chant shut down the fraternity
PaulW
I definitely recall my freshman year at University of Florida, moving into a dorm, and getting rushed by SAE the minute I walked into the room.
I had no idea who they were, or why they singled me out to join their frat. They weren’t there for my roommate, who was a random assignee like me who gambled on rooming with whomever. I don’t recall them patrolling the hallway for anybody else. They were there for me and they were eager to have me swing by the frat for “welcome to school” parties that week.
I absolutely refused. In part because I was terrified over why I was getting singled out. I was pretty much another honors student same as the rest of that honors dorm. But also because I had gone through enough BS suffering taunts and insults and a ton of scar-inducing bullying in middle school/high school that I was not about to volunteer for the hazing BS frats put you through.
While on the one hand I lost out on socializing – at UF, the frats and their parties are the center of everything – I at least got out of college with my mind, body and soul completely intact. Watching that video, watching those entitled a-holes gleefully singing about hanging blacks rather than let them join their frat, I am GRATEFUL TO GOD I did not turn out like those bastards. Because if I had joined SAE back in 1988 and they were singing that kind of crap (and the evidence is that this has been going on for DECADES), I’d either had to have turned off my humanity in order to tolerate that shit… or else I’d have punched the crap out of every goddamn singer and gotten sued and arrested.
I am still of the opinion that fraternities are too powerful on-campus and need to be dismantled, shut down, turned into toothless little nothings. The in-bred elitism of those clubs make the Free Masons from Alan Moore’s From Hell look like Boy Scouts.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Walker:
It’s pretty hard to look at the municipal system set up in Ferguson and claim that it’s worse in the north. It’s not just what people say out loud, it’s also the systems in place.
JPL
@lamh36: According to the Oklahoma news, they are doing a fund raiser for him. Hopefully, that helps.
PurpleGirl
Between this and all the other shit going on, how on earth did John Roberts decide racism is over?
Delusional and wishful thinking.
Pogonip
@lamh36: I would think he could at least get unemployment, since he lost his job through no fault of his own. I hope that and the fundraiser will tide him over till he gets another job. I have a feeling that as an innocent victim of this mess he’ll be offered new work pretty soon. Let’s hope so.
sharculese
“a 2000 incident at Oglethorpe University where frat brothers from SAE and three other Greek houses reportedly harassed and “screamed racial epithets” at visiting black athletes.”
I’ve know Oglethorpe SAEs. I’m not even a liiiiitle bit surprised.
SiubhanDuinne
@Violet:
KA was founded four and a half years after Virginia seceded. Eight months after the end of the Civil War. It’s not comparable.
cmorenc
@chopper:
Decades ago, when I was a (non-frat) junior at UNC, I was with a friend who was an SAE member, and we briefly stopped by the SAE house for some forgotten thing he needed to take care of there before we went wherever we were planning on going – and while I was waiting, overheard this little gem of conversation between frat guy #1 (who was trying to hook up a visiting friend from his hometown with a date) and frat guy #2 (whose sorority-member girlfriend was strategically placed to maybe help out).
frat-guy #1: “I have a good friend Bill whose coming up to visit next weekend – would it be possible for Ann (frat-guy#2’s gf) to help find him a date?
frat-guy #2: “Well, what’s Bill like?”
frat-guy #1: “He’s good-enough looking to be presentable, and he’s A REALLY NICE GUY”.
frat-guy #2: “The world’s full of “really nice guys” who are assholes. Ann’s going to want to know more solid details about him than that he’s “ok looking” and a “real nice guy” before she might be willing to help out here.
Walker
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Missouri is not a southern state. It was a border state that did not side with the Confederacy and sent 4x as many troops to the Union side than it did to the Confederacy.
rea
@Violet:
The date tells the story. Lee surrendered April 9, 1865, and in October of that year took the job as president of Washington College–many of the students there would have been veterans of his army. Two months later, the fraternity is founded, dedicated to the Lee cult of personality.
Kappa Alpha of course is not to be confused with Alpha Kappa . . .
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Walker:
Missouri was a slave state until after the Civil War. Remember that whole compromise named after them?
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missouri_Compromise
New York banned slavery in 1799.
Nutella
Solipsism. Nobody’s ever acted racist towards him, so obviously it does not exist.
seaboogie
@Sifu Snafu: A robust and vigorous dialogue – ain’t it grand? And poetic justice just the cherry on the sundae.
Tree With Water
@Walker: I briefly knew a guy (black) who played for Bear Bryant, and afterwards played one season with the St. Louis Cardinals (I ask him what Dan Deirdorf was like, and he said “crusty”). Anyway, he spoke well of his time at the school. Come to think of it, he must have been among the very first of ‘Bama’s black recruits, to have been teammates with Deirdorf near the end of the crusty one’s Hall of Fame career. ‘Bama’s alumni certainly drew the correct conclusions after Bryant and John McKay of USC conspired to illustrate the benefits of integrated teams on the gridiron, in a nationally televised game that saw the Trojans stomp the bejeezus out of an all honky Crimson Tide.
Betty Cracker
@PaulW: It sounds like you and I were at UF at the same time, but I had a different experience WRT Greek dominance of the social scene. The frats and their parties were part of it, but there was a whole world of non-Greek stuff going on too, thank bloody god.
boatboy_srq
@Walker: The people can often be less overtly racist. But Southern gentility covers a lot (example: “that’s nice” is as easily translated GFY as it is that that thing/event is a pleasant/attractive). And for every polite person there’s some a##hole willing to do whatever it takes to get Those People out of his neighborhood/school/workplace. A white friend and his black (now ex-) wife had a musical act they took on tour: they lost count of the places where they walked in the front door, got on stage – and had to be escorted out the back before the audience went after them. Another (Trinidadian) friend, traveling with a Filipino buddy (both straight BTW), were not served by a waitress in not-so-downstate VA who referred to them in earshot as “some ni-CLANG and his f####t friend”. The North has the virtue of being too time-challenged to trouble with the pleasantries, so the effect is more in-your-face obvious; the South learned at least one dialect of dogwhistle long before Atwater wrote his dictionary for it.
Paul in KY
@MomSense: I can’t believe they ever had a black SAE person there. He must have been quite a catch.
Paul in KY
@Violet: You could throw Sigma Chi & Delta Tau Delta into that bailiwick, as well.
Paul in KY
@PurpleGirl: I go more with ‘lying thru his teeth’