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Sigma Alpha Epsilon, one of America’s largest college fraternities, closed its chapter at the University of Oklahoma late Sunday after a video posted hours earlier appeared to show fraternity members singing a racist chant. The university administration said it was investigating.
The video shows a group of young white people in formal wear riding a bus and singing a chant laden with antiblack slurs and at least one reference to lynching. A grinning young man wearing a tuxedo and standing in the aisle of the bus pumps his fist in the air as he chants, while a young woman seated nearby claps.
The chant vows that African-Americans will “never” be allowed to join the campus chapter. The video was first reported by The Oklahoma Daily, a student newspaper, that said it learned about it from an anonymous tip sent by email on Sunday.
Brad Cohen, the fraternity’s national president, said in a statement that after viewing the video, the organization’s board had decided “with no mental reservation whatsoever that this chapter needed to be closed immediately.”
“I was not only shocked and disappointed but disgusted by the outright display of racism displayed in the video,” Mr. Cohen said. “S.A.E. is a diverse organization, and we have zero tolerance for racism or any bad behavior.”
In a series of messages posted to Twitter on Sunday evening, Mr. Cohen said that he was “disgusted” by the behavior of the University of Oklahoma chapter and its members would be “dealt with.”
In a statement, the fraternity’s national organization said it was “hopeful” that it could someday re-establish a chapter at the University of Oklahoma “with a group of men who exemplify our beliefs and who serve as leaders on campus and in the community.”
The university president, David Boren, said in an emailed statement that the administration was also investigating the video.
“If OU students are involved, this behavior will not be tolerated and will be addressed very quickly,” said Mr Boren. “This behavior is reprehensible and contrary to all of our values.”
In a message on Twitter, the Oklahoma chapter of the NAACP called for “a proper investigation” into the video and said it hoped “justice is served.”
The nine-second video was uploaded to YouTube on Sunday by a student group, the Unheard Movement, that first identified the people in it as members of Sigma Alpha Epsilon, although the group did not indicate how it obtained the video or when it was filmed.
“This video contains language that is offensive, disrespectful, and unacceptable,” the group said in a statement posted alongside the video. “Even after 50 years after the events that occurred in Selma, Alabama we still have a reason to march. We as a people have indeed come a long way, but yet still have so far to go.”
The group said it would hold a demonstration on campus on Monday morning, and encouraged students to attend dressed in black.
Sigma Alpha Epsilon is one of the country’s largest fraternities, with more than 15,000 members enrolled in chapters at over 2,000 universities. This is not the first time a local chapter has been punished. In February, Yale banned it from conducting on-campus activities until August 2016 as punishment for violating the university’s sexual misconduct policy at an initiation ceremony last year and then trying to impede the resulting investigation. In 2014, the University of Connecticut banned the fraternity for five years over hazing allegations.
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