University Of Oklahoma Expels Two Students Over Racist Video

University Of Oklahoma Expels Two Students Over Racist Video

OKLAHOMA CITY, March 10 (Reuters) - The University of Oklahoma has expelled two students linked to a video showing members of a fraternity singing a song filled with racial epithets, the school's president said on Tuesday.

The two students were "identified as playing a leadership role in the singing of a racist chant" connected to a Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity event, President David Boren said in a statement posted on Twitter.

"There is zero tolerance for this kind of threatening racist behavior at the University of Oklahoma," he wrote.

The university will continue to investigate all of the students engaged in the singing of the chant, he said. Once their identities are confirmed, they will be subject to disciplinary action as well, he said.

The university on Monday closed the fraternity after a video surfaced showing students singing the song. Members were ordered to move out of the fraternity's house and the school labeled the actions of those involved "disgraceful."

The 10-second video, posted online on Sunday, was shot on a bus chartered for a date night by the fraternity.

Students were seen and heard chanting in unison, using offensive language referring to blacks and vowing never to admit them to the fraternity.

Sigma Alpha Epsilon members were given until midnight on Tuesday to remove their belongings and vacate their fraternity house.

A sorority that may have been involved in the date night, the Tri Delta group, said it was cooperating with the university's investigation. Its house on campus has not faced any sanctions.

Boren added that he was proud of the response to the incident by students, faculty, staff and alumni and said he hoped those involved would realize "it is wrong to use words to hurt, threaten, and exclude other people."

The controversy played out on social media with an online fundraising campaign launched for a black cook who lost his job because of the closure of the house.

Another video made the rounds purportedly showing the fraternity's white house mother using a racial slur.

William Bruce James II, one of the few black members of the Oklahoma fraternity who attended the university from 2001 to 2005, said the SAE chapter there has undergone a cultural change from the time he was a student.

"The guys in that video are not my brothers," he told CNN. He said he never heard an inkling of the offending song when he was a student.

(Additional reporting by Suzannah Gonzales in Chicago; Writing by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Ellen Wulfhorst, Bill Trott and Susan Heavey)

Read the entire expulsion letter sent to the two students, which the university provided to The Huffington Post:

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