Normally when glancing through pictures from a Halloween party, one would laugh at the people in the pictures and their costumes. However, secondary education major Rhamad Lewis did not feel what he saw in the pictures was a laughing matter.
“It’s 2001 (and) stuff like this shouldn’t even be happening,” said Lewis, a member of Southern University’s chapter of Omega Psi Phi. “Less than two months ago you had a bombing (with) all kinds of people dying…and these people playing a game like this.”
The pictures Lewis and many others saw recently were of members of two all-white fraternities at Auburn University in Alabama dressed in costumes that were labeled as “potentially offensive and racist” by university officials.
According to reports from The Montgomery (Ala.) Advertiser and http://www.tolerance.org, a Web project of the Southern Poverty Law Center, photographs from Delta Sigma Phi’s party showed fraternity members in blackface and Ku Klux Klan costumes. Some simulated the lynching of a member in blackface wearing a T-shirt with FUBU (a clothing line created by African-Americans marketed “For Us By Us”) scrawled across the front. Some in the photos wore Afro wigs, stocking caps, bulky jewelry and jerseys of Omega Psi Phi, a prominent black fraternity.
“It was in disrespect to everything that I am,” added Lewis.
“I felt they not only gave me the finger, but they gave it to my mother, my grandmother, my fraternity, and everything that I worked for and stand for in my life.”
The Auburn University chapter of Delta Sigma Phi, along with that university’s chapter of Beta Theta Pi, was suspended last Monday for “potentially offensive and racist conduct” at Halloween parties on Oct. 25 and 27.
The university withdrew its recognition of Beta Theta Pi and Delta Sigma Phi, pending a full investigation of apparent violations of the university’s harassment and discrimination policies. Both national fraternities are also investigating with closure of their Auburn chapters a possibility.
According to Wes Williams, Auburn’s vice president for student affairs, the university would aggressively pursue the investigation and that after thirty-seven years since the signing of the Civil Rights Act there is no acceptable explanation of students in KKK robes or blackface.
Evelyn Crayton, president of the Auburn Black Caucus, mentioned that the incidents were the last thing to expect at the university in light of the events of September 11th.
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FRATS GONE WILD!
November 8, 2001
Photo courtesy of www.tolerance.org
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