Frat Had Sung Racist Chant for Years

Board of trustees apologizes for 'horrible cancer'
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Mar 12, 2015 8:36 AM CDT
Frat Had Sung Racist Chant for Years
Darmita White holds a sign in Dallas to protest outside of the home of Parker Rice, a University of Oklahoma student caught on video in a racist fraternity chant, March 11, 2015.   (AP Photo/The Dallas Morning News, Nathan Hunsinger)

The racist chant that has gotten the University of Oklahoma's Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity bounced from campus is nothing new: The board of trustees for the exiled chapter released a statement last night acknowledging that "a horrible cancer entered into the OU chapter of SAE three to four years ago and was not immediately and totally stopped. It should have been." The statement goes on to ask forgiveness for the pain the "terrible chant" caused, CBS News reports. "We hope that this despicable situation will forever change an atmosphere that would even allow an incident like this to take place."

Also yesterday, the University of Texas at Austin revealed it is looking into rumors a similar song was used by SAE members there, though that chapter released a statement denying such a thing and saying the brothers at UT Austin were "appalled" by the "vindictive" song. And there's more fraternity trouble in Virginia, where Washington and Lee University yesterday suspended its chapter of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity for three years after a member hazed a pledge with a Taser, NBC News reports. Phi Kappa Psi was at the center of the controversial University of Virginia rape story in Rolling Stone; it has since been reinstated. (More fraternity stories.)

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