Muncie Times, Muncie, Delaware County, 6 December 2001 — Page 5

The Muncie Times, December 6, 2001. page 5

NEWS BRIEFS

harmony in the wake of terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. “Fm disheartened, particularly after what we’ve gone through,” said Evelyn Crayton, president of the Auburn Black Caucus, the campus’s group of black administrators, faculty and staff, told NNPA News Service. “It’s set us back.” Auburn University interim President William F. Walker, characterizing the actions of the fraternity members as “shocking and outrageous,” was expected to decide the appropriate punishment for the students. The two fraternities involved in the Auburn Halloween party, Delta Sigma Phi and Beta Theta Pi, have been suspended from the campus. Delta Sigma Phi, the first fraternity in the nation to include Jews in its membership, has expelled two of its members and suspended four, while Beta Theta Pi has “indefinitely” suspended 13, university officials say. The University of Mississippi is facing a similar uproar, after photos surfaced showing a white frat member in blackface, on his knees picking cotton with a gun pointed at his head by another white member. The black SGA president at Auburn, Brandon Riddick-Seals, in a letter to The Plainsman, Auburn’s campus newspaper, said the fraternities’ actions represent “blatant ignorance” and “public displays of racial insensitivity.” Crayton said the two Auburn University Halloween parties where members of Delta Sigma Phi and Beta Theta Pi dressed up in blackface and the Tshirts of a black fraternity, were organized less than 60 days after the terrorist “It’s kind of hard to feel patriotic” while dealing with such an incident, said

Crayton. The semblance of national unity after Sept. 11 “adds even more shame to the situation,” said William Sauser, associate dean of Auburn’s Business and Engineering school and one of the school’s white faculty members enraged by the incidents. The Halloween celebrations took place a month before the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Montgomery, Alabamabased organizations that monitors domestic hate crimes, was going to deliver an update on terrorism in Alabama. The SPEC moved quickly to replaced the planned workshop with one on racial sensitivity. The pictures of white fraternity students in blackface have circulated the globe via the Internet, sparking renewed debates of racism on America’s college campuses and on the ugly history of derogatory images of African Americans. The pictures can be viewed on www.tolerance.org, the SPLC’s site. At Auburn, two white students dressed in baseball caps and in T-shirts displaying the Greek letters of the Omega Psi Phi, one of the nation’s historically black fraternities. Others dressed up as Klan members. One student wore a rope around his neck, pretending to be a lynching victim, with the Confederate flag proudly displayed in the background. One of the pictured “Klansmen” is holding the end of the rope. At Ole Miss—the university that was forcibly desegregated by James Meredith in 1962—one picture shows a student in blackface on the ground, pretending to pick cotton with a gun pointed at his head by a fellow student portraying a police officer. All of the national offices of the fraternities involved with the parties on both campuses have denounced their members’ activities. Omega Psi Phi national

President Lloyd Jordan called for calm among its members. He said that his fraternity is “appalled that today, in the year 2001, that such behavior still exists in America, particularly at an institution of higher learning.” The Auburn campus newspaper’s Internet message board, www.plainsman.com, filled with comments from students attempting to understand the controversy, particularly since it involved a Halloween party where students normally sport outlandish costumes. “When I see white boys at a fraternity party dressing up like the stereotype.. .1 see it as them mocking the stereotype,” said one poster who signed his correspondence, “Good.” The post continues: “That’s why I am not up in arms about it..J can see the humor in dressing up like a ‘thug’ for Halloween, just the same way I could see the humor in a couple of black guys dressing up as ‘honkeys.’” “They weren’t mocking intelligent, great black men such as Martin Luther King, Jr., or any of the famous Omegas listed on their web site. “They’re mocking people who, for whatever reason, decide to align themselves with a stereotype, and some of those people do happen to be Omegas. That’s why I don’t see the actions as being racist.” Black frat refuses to be provoked by racist actions Two white fraternities at Auburn University in Alabama now know what it means to come up against the fantastic brothers of Omega Psi Phi fraternity. The latter are gentlemen who know how to fight back with dignity. According to tolerance.org on the Internet, members of the two white fraternities, Beta Theta Pi and Sigma Phi, at a Halloween party

were photographed wearing blackface and Ku Klux Klan robes. Some members even went so far as to simulate the lynching of a member in blackface who was wearing a T-shirt bearing the FUBU. (The FUBU line of clothing was created by African Americans and marketed ‘TOR US BY US.”) Other members in blackface were dressed in shirts bearing the Greek letters of Omega Psi Phi, Auburn’s oldest black fraternity. Members of the black fraternity were outraged, but held their cool. According to one Auburn brother, they took the pictures of the event to the news media, to get the college to act, and it did. Both chapters have been suspended, pending an investigation by the university. The Omega Psi Phi members also went to the Beta house and took the frat shirts with their Greek symbols on them. They also demanded that the party pictures be removed from the website, and they were. Then they communicated with their grand basileus and Fred Gray Jr., the state’s attorney. The Southern Poverty Law Center is also investigating. “We’re absolutely disgusted by what we’ve seen,” said Jon Hockman, national executive director of Delta Sigma Phi. “The pictures completely contradict what we have always stood for. Clearly, action will be taken.” The other fraternity under investigation, Beta Theta Pi, is one of the nation’s oldest and largest, with more than 165,000 members. Steve Becker, its national adminsitrative secretary, said that number includes “numerous” African American members at chapters other than Auburn’s. We take these things very seriously,” Becker said. “This is not in line with our principles and values.”

Omega Psi Phi, the black fraternity, has among its members Bill Cosby, Langston Hughes, Douglas Wilder, Jesse Jackson and Michael Jordan. Black college battle continuing financial woes Historically Black Colleges and Universities have once again come into their own with enrollment at an all-time high and new plans for construction of the drawing board. But much more is needed. Universities such as Morgan State in Baltimore are desperately trying to keep up with the rising figures. Morgan has students shuffling chairs. It also has classrooms in every available space because of the space crunch. Even the many new buildings now on the drawing board and those recently completed will not give Morgan all the facilities it needs to accommodate its many programs. But this trend was predicted by many public college presidents who saw the enrollment beginning to rise again in the early 90s. It was all part of the cycle. In the early days up through the 1940s, only a few students went away to white colleges, because of prejudice. In the 60s, white colleges opened their doors and many blacks followed. But that generation found a great deal of prejudice on white campuses during the civil rights era, so many refused to subject their children to this. They turned again to black colleges. These children were able to put the race issue behind them. At the same time, they received a good education and had such a good time many of their children are now attending HBCUs—thus the enrollment crunch. With so many graduates of black colleges now in state legislatures, it behooves them to make sure these institutions get a fair share