To some, it's a normal Friday, but to the students of Syracuse Univerisity, it is two days after a video surfaced of the brothers in the engineering fraternity Theta Tau yelling racist, sexist, and antisemitic things at an initiation event.
Our campus has not been the same since then.
If you have not watched the video, consider yourself lucky. It is six minutes of words that will make you feel physically ill. I don't recommend you watch it, just read up on the incident a bit and come back. Ok, all good? Great. Let's continue.
In my opinion, every member of Theta Tau shares the blame and there clearly is more than enough to go around. Even if their faces weren't seen or voices weren't heard in the video, they are still responsible for not speaking out against what was a pledge meant to insult and degrade people groups that are seen as the 'other'.
While all of this is horrible, there's something that truly and deeply chills me to my core: they all laughed.
All of the horrible things those brothers said were laughed at as though they were mere jokes and were brushed off, not thought about again. And somehow, they thought it was okay to post a video depicting that on Facebook. As I watched the video, I was on the verge of tears and felt like I wanted to vomit because they were laughing like goons at truly despicable things.
The official release from Theta Tau to the campus community justified the laughter as such: "We would like to believe that the new members seen in the video laughing at the horrible things being said were not laughing in concurrence with these beliefs but in fact the opposite—that racism, sexism, and homophobia are so wrong that they are laughable."
Are you kidding me?
That is the most transparent response I have ever read. But it tells me something. The wording they 'would like to believe' means it's not true. They weren't laughing at the opposite. What you would like to believe and what the actual truth is are two extremely different things.
As much as they 'would like to believe' that those boys were not laughing at the words in the pledge and the skit in malice, the probable truth is they were.
As a part of any organization, but especially Greek life, you need to understand that everything you say and do is a reflection of your organization. The boys of Theta Tau did not understand this. Currently, they are suspended on SU's campus which is a good first step, but more needs to be done to change the culture surrounding fraternities on my campus.
And I understand they are supposed to foster a feeling of brotherhood and community. I just don't understand why this type of hate speech and derogatory behavior is a necessary factor in that.
