When OU senior Kobie Ellis was sent a video depicting a white OU student using blackface and a racial slur on Friday, his reaction was a simple one:
A genuine lack of surprise.
“Nobody was really surprised,” Ellis said. “It was just like, again? Really?”
After the racist video, which depicted OU students Olivia Urban and Francie Ford, circulated on Twitter last Friday, black students like Ellis felt a striking lack of shock at the outright racism. Ford was expelled from OU’s Tri Delta sorority the next day. Both women have now withdrawn from OU.
Nearly four years after OU shut down its chapter of Sigma Alpha Epsilon after members were recorded singing a racist chant, this new instance of racism on campus has left OU students of color with the same feeling — not enough has changed.
“If you go on the South Oval and ask someone in the black community, LGBTQ community, Latino community, Asian community, Native community — all of them are going to say they don’t feel welcome everywhere on campus,” Ellis said. “They’re going to say they don’t feel comfortable everywhere on campus. And this whole situation? They’re not surprised. It’s a systemic thing.”
Hours after the video began to circulate on Friday, OU President James Gallogly released a joint statement with interim Associate Vice President for University Community Jane Irungu. The statement quoted Martin Luther King Jr., made mention of students' freedom of expression and said the students in the video had offered to apologize. The statement condemned the video but did not explicitly say it was racist.
Gallogly gave a press conference on Martin Luther King Jr. Day addressing the situation and said it “may have been oversight” to not originally refer to the video as racist.
OU Black Student Association President Taylor Wilson said Gallogly’s original statement Friday was “very disappointing.”
“It really wasn’t enough. It wasn’t direct enough in condemning the action,” Wilson said. “I mean, it was an act of racism, and you need to say that. It was a racist act. (Gallogly) kind of insinuated that an apology is sufficient, which it never is — more needs to be done.”
Gallogly said at the press conference the university would work to make diversity training more impactful and review OU’s code of conduct.
In several interviews, former OU President David Boren has pointed to the university’s response to the SAE incident in 2015 as one of the moments from his presidency he is most proud of. In the wake of the incident, OU created the office of University Community and instituted mandatory diversity training for incoming freshmen.
But after nearly four years, the blackface video is one of many instances of racism involving OU students. In 2017, a picture circulated of a white OU student dressed as Pocahontas. Last semester, a member of Beta Theta Pi was expelled from his fraternity for using racist rhetoric on Campus Corner. Wilson said it’s clear that not nearly enough has been done at OU to stem the tide of systemic racism.
“There’s diversity training during Camp Crimson, which isn’t that serious, and if you don’t go to that one, you have take a five-hour course,” Wilson said. “It's not very effective, and research has shown diversity training has the opposite effect of what it’s supposed to do. And the Office of University Community gives students a space to express issues, but much more needs to be done.”
The Black Student Association, in response to the blackface video, sent OU a list of demands that Wilson said is similar to the requests made by OU Unheard following SAE. The list included a zero-tolerance policy for racism, an increase in multicultural faculty and staff and additional financial aid for African-American programs.
Ellis said in his time at OU, he’s witnessed first-hand the lack of movement on the issue of racism on campus.
“As far as what OU’s done since SAE, it hasn’t been enough,” Ellis said. “OU Unheard gave OU a report card a year after SAE, and OU failed across the board. That hasn’t changed since I’ve been at OU — I’m a senior now, and it still feels that way.”
The report card Ellis referred to was released by OU Unheard on the one-year anniversary of the SAE incident and examined OU’s infrastructure and support systems for black students. OU failed to score above a C in any of the fields.
Professor Emeritus George Henderson shared Ellis’ lack of surprise regarding the video, as well as his disappointment. Henderson, a friend of Martin Luther King Jr. and a member of the first black family to own property in Norman, said it’s the responsibility of OU administrators to effect change, but that there were no foolproof ways to prevent incidents like this at a university.
“It’s sheer folly to expect the students to be the ones driving the change in this situation,” Henderson said. “Bottom up in situations like this never works very well, especially when the responsibility and ability to make change comes from the top down.”
Henderson said students should make clear to the administration what they wanted to see change and commended Gallogly on meeting with student leaders, including Wilson. However, Henderson cautioned OU students seeking harsher penalties for Urban and Ford and said the situation presented a teachable moment.
For Wilson and Ellis, expulsion of those involved in the video would have been the necessary step to stop the spinning wheel of racism at OU, which Ellis said involves a brief period of outrage, followed by few consequences and the event being forgotten about.
“These sorts of things flare up and then sort of taper off,” Ellis said. “It feels like hopelessness — minorities all know we’re going to be marginalized. It is what it is. We know greek life is going to exist, and we know they’re going to do what they do. We try to do something about it, but if the administration won’t do something about it, then what can we do?”
Wilson has met with Gallogly and said she can only hope the administration is being receptive to the needs of minority communities.
“From here on out, it’s up to the university to set a precedent for how they will respond and what consequences they will enforce,” Wilson said.
Ellis said he didn’t want the students to have the opportunity to withdraw and instead preferred the university use the opportunity to show this behavior is not to be tolerated.
“We don’t want them to leave on their own terms. We want them expelled,” Ellis said. “It’s a zero-tolerance policy on this campus.”
Gallogly said the university didn’t have the recourse to expel the students due to the fact the incident took place off campus.
Henderson said the incident gives students an opportunity to practice the love Martin Luther King Jr. spoke about.
“It’s a test. It’s always a test. Nonviolence and reconciliation — the basic concepts of love and acceptance,” Henderson said. “These are our moments of truth. It’s easy to talk about implementing Martin Luther King Jr.’s commitment to reconciliation. It’s difficult to practice it.”
Though Ellis hopes for change on campus, he admits his hopes are not high that this event will effect change in the long run.
“We try to change things. We make our voices heard,” Ellis said. “There’s been proper outrage. We’ve been out here — if OU doesn’t do anything, then we can’t do anything.”
