UT, OU Take Different Approaches to Racist Speech

Students rally against racism, outside the Fiji house in February.

photo by Jana Birchum

On Feb. 7, University of Texas frat Phi Gamma Delta, more commonly known as Fiji house, hosted a theme party where guests wore ponchos, sombreros, construction outfits, and border patrol costumes despite the official theme of the party being, according to Texas Fiji president Andrew Campbell, "a Western or Old West theme."

Many students and faculty were upset about the party and, though skeptical, hoped that the administration would take bold action against Fiji. At the time, Marilyn Russell, coordinator of sorority and fraternity life in the Office of the Dean of Students, told the Chronicle, "To be skeptical is premature because nothing has come of this exact case right now." (See "Frat Party Fallout," Feb. 20.)

However, a week later, the official UT-Austin Twitter account tweeted, "While the behavior doesn't mirror UT core values, it's within students' right to freedom of speech at a private off-campus event." UT Senior Associate Vice President for Student Affairs and Dean of Students Soncia Reagins-Lilly told The Daily Texan that because the party didn't violate any university rules (primarily because it was an off-campus event), the frat faces no penalty, though UT is working with Fiji to increase the frat's "cultural sensitivity."

Christian Umbria Smith of UT's chapter of the League of United Latin American Citizens (Longhorn LULAC) said that the response was "somewhat expected. And it's not so much that we don't have any faith in their ability to tackle student issues. I mean, President Powers has stood with us when it came to affirmative action policy, among other things." Still, he says, the response has, yet again, been just "words, but no actual actions." Yes, Smith says, it's good that the administration has made supportive statements, but they need to take concrete actions as well.

UT-Austin is no stranger to dealing with issues of racial insensitivity on campus, and the university is far from alone when it comes to these issues. The problem of racism in fraternities has recently gone viral, after a 10-second video of University of Oklahoma Sigma Alpha Epsilon (SAE) members chanting racist slurs and making reference to lynching was leaked to the OU student paper.

For UT-Austin student Cat Tran, both the Fiji incident and the OU SAE video draw "attention to the legacy of racism that penetrates institutions, especially in the South, and how exclusion of minorities has historically been the norm, not the exception."

In contrast to UT's reaction (or lack thereof) to Fiji, OU's response to SAE was swift and powerful. The video leaked on Sunday, March 8, and by the next day, OU President David Boren had ordered the fraternity to be removed from OU and expelled two of the students seen leading the chant in the video. The video's publication also caused promising high school offensive tackle Jean Delance to reconsider his previous commitment to OU, and led to a protest by the school's current football team.

Smith said that he and many others considered OU's reaction to be encouraging and "very respectable." "It was good, but it was also disheartening to see that we didn't have that same level of vigor when it came to how the administration of the campus responded. Granted, there are differences," Smith said.

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UT, OU Take Different Approaches to Racist Speech