Racism on OU's campus is unfortunately nothing new, in 2015 members of Sigma Alpha Epsilon's chapter at OU posted a video using racial slurs that went viral.
This resulted in the expulsion of those students, the fraternity was kicked off of campus, and their house was turned into the Disability Resource Center on campus. The University also implemented extensive diversity training for all incoming freshmen and transfer students. You can see the video that instigated this here. Now, in 2019 the Thursday before Martin Luther King Day a member of Tri Delta posted a snapchat video of her in blackface, then says "I am a n*****" that has since gone viral.
You can access the video here.
The president met with many members of the OU Community on Sunday the 20th to try and right the wrongs of the women who recorded the blackface video on Thursday, which will hopefully lead to a zero-tolerance policy on racist hate speech, will lead to creating a more diverse staff at OU, as well as add more funding to help minority groups on campus.
Tri-Delta responded to this by kicking the girls involved in the video out of their sorority and issued a statement condoning the behavior, and the girls were asked to drop out of classes at the university. They withdrew.
On Tuesday the 22nd, the Black Student Association hosted an anti-racism rally at the Union.
The Black Student Association spoke first on how these types of acts need to stop, then a few faculty members chimed in to give their input, then there was an open mike opportunity that allowed students to make comments and share their testimonies. The university's former dean of international studies spoke during the open mike and publicly announced that President Gallogy should resign immediately. Chaos ensued. The entire room started screaming, faculty members had to remind the room of why they were there in the first place, and President Gallogly was shocked. He said that he had a speech that he was prepared for, but after all of the testimonies, including the dean's he was speechless for the first time in his career.
Then, on January 23th, less than a week after the blackface video surfaced, a BOLD man walked around OU's campus and historic campus corner in blackface and a shirt that read Anti PC. (Political Correctness) here's a link to those pictures. This man did this the day after a rally to end racism that OU's President, Jim Gallogly attended.
A march around OU's campus occurred on January 24th in response to this. Here is a video of students marching at the campus library.
The OU community has been completely shaken by these unacceptable RACIST events.
We need people to step up and defend our students, friends, faculty, and most importantly PEOPLE. We need the education to make sure these events stop, maybe we need to require courses on Racial and Ethnic Minority Groups, we might need yearly diversity training instead of once when students are freshmen, and we need more support from the President of OU to make these things happen. We need people to promote love and acceptance on campus. We need more action against these forms of hatred towards people in our community who are just trying to get through college and improve their lives.
