I can’t answer your question, TVcaster, other than to note that to my knowledge, Erik Striker has not been expelled or asked to withdraw from OU as a result of broadcasting a snapchat of himself ranting “F*ck you bitches” to the fraternity men in question.
This is very unlikely considering some SAE alums have admitted this song and chant were known and passed down .
There’s also the fact SAE’s founders and subsequent history is tied up with the southern legacy of slavery and being in favor of “Lost Cause” Confederate sympathies:
http://gawker.com/sae-is-secretly-trying-to-wipe-away-its-confederate-his-1691325929
While some chapters has been making some effort at obscuring that past, the internet tends to have a long memory.
If I found myself in an organization where they’re a critical mass…especially in leadership positions and I was a prospective pledge, I would opt to join another organization or if I was already in…leave.
The inference by the quote in Post # 1169 is that the current judiciary seems to be responding to political and social pressures when interpreting the Constitution, which is exactly what it was not intended to do. The Judiciary was designed to be independent of both the Executive and the Congress, i.e., the people.
Therefore, in terms of your quote above, the relevant questions are varying views by whom and how to implement those varying views?
As for the Founding Fathers, the Federalist Papers and the letters of the Founders are clear on this issue. They expressly wanted the Judiciary to be beholden to the Constitution as written, not beholden to the political winds of the day. This is the reason why Federal judges were given lifetime appoints, to insulate them from the inherent pandering of running for office when judging constitutionality. In short, insulate them from mob rule, popular hysteria, and tyrannical executives.
Federalism is the foundation for fundamental changes to the Constitution, not judicial or social machinations to appease political groups. Thus, the proper way to institute such constitutional variations to the rights in the First Amendment is to go through the amendment process and have the state legislatures vote, as represented by the citizenry of the states. What is incorrect, and the Founding Fathers warned of this, is to have the executive or the Judiciary essentially rewrite the amendments with exceptions without the direct say of the people. Thus, it is the varying views of the people of the entire country that are controlling, not the results of one case here or there in one state. And implementation of consitutional change is by state legislatures.
Overall, it is an abdication of one’s civil duty to accept change to fundamental constitutional rights by punting and saying let the courts decide. No, it is the people who decides such changes, not the Judiciary or the Executive.
The Founders discussed this at length and were concerned about a runaway judiciary, i.e., authoritarian group control, much like they were concerned about a authoritarian executive. This is why they gave the Congress, the direct representatives of the people, the powers 1) to impeach and to oust the executive and 2) to determine type of legal areas and cases, which can be reviewed by the lower courts and to determine the appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court. These two powers were put in place as an absolute check by the people for situations such as this, i.e., the Judiciary and political groups essentially amending the Constitution without the express say of the people.
If the country (the populous) wants exceptions to the Right of Free Speech afforded the First Amendment for concepts such as hate speech for the thin-skinned or X speech for idiots or Y speech for some protected class then properly amend the Constitution, as the Founders intended, so the people have the say that is rightly only theirs to have.
However, though, I suspect given the constitutional education standards of today most students and adults are too ignorant of their own rights and especially ignorant of the expectations the Founders had for them to know when to exercise these rights.
I also suspect that politicians (Boren), and government (in general) live off the ignorance of people and would never bring such a matter to a proper constitutional vote via the amendment process because they certainly know they would lose, and they institute by judicial and administrative decree instead. Basically, if the people implicitly drop the exercise of their own constitutional rights and duties, then they deserve the downfall in freedoms the Founders warned would occur.
Early in this thread I noted I had heard about the song and its lyrics 35 years ago, in connection with an SAE chapter that had admitted a black pledge. Someone NOT in SAE told me about the chant, in the context of something like, “I guess they can’t sing this song anymore.” So here I am an old woman who has never been an SAE, and even I have heard about the chant. Which leads me to believe that it is plausible that the chant was never formally taught to the men, but they heard about it and some of them sang it and some of them didn’t.
So the song has been around for decades, maybe longer. Kind of makes you wonder how committed the SAE national has been to getting rid of it. Sure, they’re investigating NOW, after the video, after all this publicity, but the chant has been around for decades.
And before Pizzagirl chimes in with the Sergeant Schultz defense, saying that the national is completely powerless, doesn’t and can’t know what is going on at local chapters and couldn’t do anything if they did know, I’ll point out that they could have done last year what they just did last-- throw these racist-chant-singing chapters out. They could have investigated the other racist-chant-singing chapters, the ones they’re investigating now, last year. They didn’t act because chapters were singing racist chants. They only acted when chapters were singing racist chants and it was on YouTube.
I suppose SAE national could install recording equipment in every room and every shower of the house, every rented bus and every off-campus house or apartment occupied by an SAE.
Right. CF, you don’t get it because you don’t WANT to get it. How, precisely, do you expect the national chapter in Evanston, IL to know what some of their brothers are doing in Norman, Oklahoma every minute of the day? They don’t hear about it until or unless there’s trouble.
“I’m wondering, though, under what circumstances this song-- which was taught to the two students by other students who knew it-- got sung, such that Mr. Oblivious never was taught it and never heard it. Apparently it got sung from time to time with gusto, because the guys singing on the bus (and it wasn’t just the two leaders singing) knew it well.”
CF, as has been explained numerous times, there will be “sub-cliques” within any house of an appreciable size. I’m quite sure that if I surveyed my sorority sisters, there were things they were taught or remember that I don’t, or that went in one ear and out the other, and vice versa. It suits your agenda to believe that they all move in uniform lockstep at all times.
They kept this chant a secret from all the other members of their frat by singing it in front of their dates? Nobody shushed anyone. They weren’t trying to keep the secret. A fifth of the membership is singing a traditional racist song of the fraternity (traditional in the sense that it’s a tradition over the decades, not in the sense that it’s a tradition endorsed by the national) and no other members knew about the song? Yeah, sure.
When the older members taught the younger members the racist song each year, how did they know which ones to teach it to? How come they never made a mistake and picked one of the many members Bay and Pizzagirl assure me exist, who would have been shocked and blown the whistle? Wow, they were lucky.
I haven’t heard anyone yet deny they’ve heard the song. I’ve heard it.
Correction, I’ve heard about it from someone not an SAE who told me the lyrics. I’ve never heard an SAE sing it.
I don’t think you understand. I didn’t say “kept it a grand secret.” These songs don’t have anywhere near the importance as you think they do. Some guys might hear a song and remember it for whatever reason. Others might hear the song once or twice and just not pay a lot of attention. There aren’t quizzes and finals on this stuff.
I knew a lot about where my sorority was founded, the names of the founders, etc. because that’s the kind of historical detail I found interesting and paid attention to. I guarantee if you talked to the 29 other members of my pledge class, I’m the only one who remembered that kind of thing. Others just aren’t interested - in one ear and out the other. I’m not claiming that the rest of SAE never ever heard the song - it’s just that you don’t really understand that they are not all-of-a-kind-in-unison people.
"So the song has been around for decades, maybe longer. Kind of makes you wonder how committed the SAE national has been to getting rid of it. "
I want you to actually think for a moment. You are part of SAE national. Let’s make you a good guy, fully comfortable and embracing of diversity, and you structure your programming and materials accordingly. Your goal is to facilitate the chapters developing these young men in a sense of brotherhood, all in the good sense. You’re ok with crazy college hijinks, but you’re not ok with disrespectful stuff.
What are you suggesting they do? Put in the pledge book, “Hey, guys - here’s a song that’s been around. Don’t ever sing it and if we hear you sing it, you’re in trouble deep”? They’re going to NOT CALL ATTENTION TO IT. Duh. They’re going to focus on the positive aspects of their programming.
Besides, whether it’s historical or not – good lord, this isn’t Rodgers and Hammerstein, it’s not as though any pledge who wanted to be an a-hole couldn’t make up a song on his very own if he wanted to sing something offensive. You keep acting as though these songs were Sacred Parts of Ritual.
“And before Pizzagirl chimes in with the Sergeant Schultz defense,”
Sgt Schultz was IN THE MIDST of the camp and was clueless about what was going on under his nose. Is SAE national on campus? Uh, no.
I really, really want you to think about how SAE national can monitor the behavior of, oh, I don’t know, 100 chapters scattered across the country 24/7.
CF, my sorority’s national headquarters are also in Evanston - literally 2 blocks away from where our house was, right off campus. They STILL didn’t know exactly what all 120 of us were doing, saying, thinking every minute of every day. Did you expect they’d come and hang around, go to formals?
This is not the first racist incident involving an SAE chapter that has been publicized, not the second, not the third. At what point does the national stop thinking the incidents are isolated and start looking for a pattern involving more than one chapter? That point is now, but it has taken a while.
A lot of Greek-letter organizations set very strict guidelines regarding conduct on occasions such as this. They are admonished to represent their society in the best possible way, and not to bring dishonor onto their brotherhood. I don’t know which scenario I find less plausible: that a freshman would lead a chant like that if he had been advised not to, or that anyone thought that - in the era of Instagram and Vine - it would not somehow, eventually, be made public. Collective punishment is not always just, but it is in this case. These students were presenting their fraternity’s public face, in a formal setting. Upperclassmen could have issued various instructions to recent initiates. Instead, these young brothers inferred that the time and place was suitable for performing their chant. It is not at all unreasonable to extrapolate that they drew that inference by observing upperclassmen behave similarly, or had even been challenged to behave this way. I have grave misgivings about the individual expulsions, but I don’t feel I know enough about the university’s charter or codes to make sweeping statements such as declaring it “clearly unconstitutional.” It doesn’t appear that the students chose to challenge it in the venue they were offered. I have served on the board of my own undergraduate (co-ed) fraternity; my husband served as its President, and also spent time on the national board. The national organization can always revoke a chapter’s membership, and SAE had every right to act promptly, given problems with many of its individual chapters. If OU owns the real estate, and leased it to SAE under the strict conditions that universities typically impose, it also had every right to evict the membership as soon as they lost their national affiliation. These are contractual relationships that do not have the same absolute constitutional rights as uncontracted individuals do. The brothers of SAE were responsible for upholding their obligations to their organization and their university. As soon as a drunken freshman’s racist recitation appeared on-line, the chapter proved itself in violation. I think Boren’s order of expulsion was overkill, nevertheless. Some sort of probation would seem to have been a more appropriate punishment.
I don’t see anyone here arguing against SAE national’s decision to close the chapter and suspend the men’s memberships, only that it doesn’t seem to be good enough for Cardinal Fang, who appears to think it should have been done sooner.
Press reports indicated that SAE national is providing an opportunity for each suspended man to be heard. http://abcnews.go.com/US/sigma-alpha-epsilon-hear-cases-suspended-oklahoma-member/story?id=29638997
I don’t think Boren could have put these kids on probation. The speech was protected. Basically, Boren had no legal basis to do anything at all to these kids. I am not sure why it is so hard for so many to understand.
I would like to hear from the lawyers on this forum on another topic though. I believe the national had full right to cancel the relationship with the local SAE as it is a private group. Once that was done, I also believe that Boren had full legal rights to kick all the kids to the curb, as they were basically on a sublet, even if they paid to the University. In other words, Boren got a leg in the collective punishment door because of what the national did.
Collective punsihment is disgraceful. Racism, really, is a form of collective punishment. Once again, it bothers me that a Dem politician would stoop so low.
By the way, the USSC voted 8-1 in favor of protecting obnoxious hate speech. The one dissent was from Scalia.
Figures.
I would rather have seen a kind of mediation/education experience for the participants, definitely including probation, possibly suspension. I would have liked to see them confront some AA students and AA staff of their house, and understand what their racist behavior really meant.