OU President David Boren showed no mercy toward the members of Sigma Alpha Epsilon who were involved in singing a racist chant on a bus when he spoke at press conference at 11 a.m. Monday.
The university will not help the members involved leave campus, Boren said. The members of the fraternity have been forced to remove all belongings from their house by midnight Tuesday.
“We don’t provide student services for bigots,” Boren said at the press conference. He went on to say that he wants those involved in the incident gone from the university.
“I don’t have much sympathy for them,” Boren said.
At the peaceful demonstration held by minority advocacy group Unheard Monday morning, Boren said there is no way “legally” to remove the students from campus. But at the press conference, he said he might have found a way to get them kicked out.
Boren plans on addressing these diversity issues by meeting with every Greek and Pan-Hellenic organization on campus, he said.
A little bit after the conference began, African American studies senior Marquis Ard approached the stage to the left of where Boren stood and raised his fist into the air, which resulted in photographers swarming him to take photos. He did this out of his “unapologetic” love for his blackness, and university is not handling the situation with the correct mindset, he said.
“There were some parts where it just seemed like empty rhetoric,” he said.
Ard also wants to see “structural” change with how OU is handling the incident, he said.
“They need to give students of color… reparations… resources for us to thrive in this university,” he said. “(Black bodies) are not thriving now.”
Boren ended the press conference by saying that he hopes this incident will serve as a lesson for the university. The university is currently investigating and looking for the individuals involved in the video, Boren said.
