President David Boren of the University of Oklahoma is not fucking around. Boren announced that two students identified as playing a "leadership role" in the Sigma Alpha Epsilon racist video incident have been expelled from the university.
Boren made the announcement through a post to his Twitter account, reported by student newspaper, The Oklahoma Daily.
This move follows a harsh denouncement of the video by President Boren and his immediate dismantlement of Sigma Alpha Epsilon on the OU campus.
On Monday morning, members of OU football team respond to the racist video by entering their practice facility in silence, linked arm-in-arm as a show of solidarity.
Relatedly, the incident is starting to hit the University of Oklahoma where it's really going to hurt: on the football field.
Jean Delance, a top recruit, announced that he will no longer be attending and playing for OU following the video. Just imagine if all black athletes refused to play for racist fans, owners and institutions. Just about every major sports league would crumble to the ground and we might finally have found our solution to ending racism.
[Ed. Note: An earlier version of this article stated that the students had been suspended. They were expelled.]
Image via screengrab/NBC News.
Contact the author at kara.brown@jezebel.com .
DISCUSSION
I ask these questions extremely cautiously.
OU is expelling frat boys for racism (which I 100% agree with! Expel all the racists!) and a bunch of people are totally on board with this (as they should be).
However, when rape occurs in fraternities some people cry, "We don't know the whole story!", "She was drunk, so she's lying! ", and "It's just boys being boys!". It seems as though rape isn't taken as seriously as racism, from what I've been hearing/reading in the news. You don't hear about fraternities getting shut down for rape, just on suspension, or not allowed to host parties anymore.
Why is racism shutting down fraternities and not rape? Are they both not bad? Is one worse than the other? Why can't BOTH of these issues be tackled?