Sigma Alpha Epsilon’s problems aren’t limited to the University of Oklahoma. And they stretch back decades.
Two months before the Civil War began, Noble Leslie DeVotie was boarding a steamship when he slipped, fell into the waters of Mobile Bay and drowned.
DeVotie was one of the founders of Sigma Alpha Epsilon, the only national fraternity founded in the antebellum South. A chaplain at Alabama’s Fort Morgan at the time of his death, he became the fraternity’s — and some argue, the country’s — first Civil War casualty. Nearly 75 other SAE members would die before the war’s end, the vast majority of them fighting for the Confederate South. When the survivors returned home, many found their universities burned to the ground and the 15 chapters of the fraternity in ruins.
There’s nothing quaint about the nicknames SAE has these days — on many campuses people say the initials stand for “Sexual Assault Expected” or “Same Assholes Everywhere.” The fraternity is also known as the one in which members are most likely to die. And now many would call it the most racist. A video that surfaced online Sunday showed members of the University of Oklahoma chapter singing a song that has managed to both embarrass the fraternity and echo its segregationist roots.
The video of the song ignited a national furor this week, and both the university and SAE’s headquarters moved quickly to punish the chapter and distance themselves from what they hope will be seen as an isolated incident. But rather than depicting an anomaly, the video may be a rare tangible piece of evidence of a much larger and persistent problem among America’s predominantly white fraternities.
Despite the fact that its members agree to memorize and follow a creed known as The True Gentleman, SAE has frequently been accused of racist and discriminatory behavior over the years. Now the largest fraternity in the country, SAE seems to have played a disproportionate role in some of the most offensive incidents in recent decades — and yet remains a house in good standing at more than 200 campuses.
In 1992, the Texas A&M University chapter hosted a “Jungle Fever” themed party which, according to an online exhibit created by the university’s Cushing Library, featured “black face, grass skirts and ‘slave hunts.'” In 2000, SAE members at Oglethorpe University were among men from four fraternities who threw bottles at black athletes and yelled racial slurs during a cross-country meet. In 2002, a member of the Syracuse University chapter of SAE wore black face out to local bars.
Because the performance at Oklahoma was filmed — and because it so quickly spread across social media, thanks in part to aggressive efforts by the Oklahoma student activist group Unheard OU — both the university and SAE’s national headquarters issued swift responses. The national organization closed the chapter within hours of the video appearing online.
On Monday, SAE released a statement stressing that “Sigma Alpha Epsilon is not a racist, sexist or bigoted fraternity,” and that it provides its members with anti-discrimination education and training.
The university is currently attempting to identify specific students in the video, and administrators are considering expulsion as a potential punishment. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, however, stated that while SAE leadership can punish the students as they see fit, Oklahoma’s hands may be tied by the First Amendment. While the investigation continues, the incident has also prompted intense soul-searching on the campus, which was ordered to desegregate nearly 70 years ago in a historic Supreme Court case that was a precursor to Brown v. Board of Education.
Benjamin Reese, president of the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education and the vice president of institutional equity at Duke University, said he is also not in favor of simply banning all chapters belonging to a specific fraternity. While the incident at Oklahoma is especially painful, Reese said, he still believes that fraternities can be educated and their policies changed to foster more inclusion.
Here are some other stories about the sometimes troublesome behavior — and power — of fraternities.