University Of Wisconsin Suspends SAE
 

I'm surprised their charter didn't get pulled. This behavior is deplorable.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/tasneemnash...xVY#.foly5LAX3

http://gawker.com/university-of-wisc...kin-1777655159

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nati...icle-1.2644044

I'm not that familiar with what diversity training is but I'm wondering whether that will have any impact on a toxic culture within an organization. Is attending forums and talks (what I'm assuming this training is) really going to change the hearts and minds of these young men?

Is there a better way to make sure that things like this don't happen in Greek Life in the future?

Those are things I'm wondering.

Students sometimes perform tasks for instant gratification without knowing and understanding consequences. Their minds focus on the task itself: does it "bring laughs or relief from boredom", not "do other people plan on expanding what is being said or done into a national debate".

It's called a process of growing up. Growing up used to be done more privately before the instant social mediazation of the world.

I can't even begin to comprehend this right now. On what planet did these members think that this would be OK? Even if they were confused about acceptable use of certain words, then their confusion should have been set straight the first time the complainant told them that the N-word was not OK.

Worse yet, they show a complete lack of respect for the complainant as a brother and a human being by continuing the offensive behavior even after he asked them to stop.

Even worse than that, their excuse for that is "Well, the gay guy doesn't complain when we use gay slurs, so it's all good."

This situation makes me feel sad.

Interestingly, the SAE chapter at the University of Washington was investigated for a similar problem just last year.

http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-...-frat-members/

There is an increased awareness at Wisconsin right now of incidents like this. Wisconsin is not a diverse state or campus, and we are struggling with many problems like this one. It is a campus-wide issue.

Sadly, one of this chapter's brothers died over the weekend. I don't know what happened, but by all accounts he was beloved by the chapter, the Greek System, his teachers, and all who knew him. While the chapter may have a lot of work to do, and I'm not condoning any poor behavior, it's a sad time for them and our campus.

The story here is that these men had every opportunity to simply be decent human beings to their brothers. For so long as our memberships are made up primarily of men who come from non-diverse backgrounds, we're going to continue to have these issues. The benefits of being compelled to diversity training are questionable.

But the fact is, you can't educate kids in 6 months of pledging to change their 18 years of prior upbringing--and in SAE's case, they've even banned pledging, so you pretty much find these kids as you recruit them and you have no opportunity to weed out the bad apples.

All of that said, here's a case where they had a member who apparently exhausted every internal remedy at his disposal and was still left with a pretty hostile environment. That's some epic douchebaggery.

I'm not really surprised the charter wasn't pulled. There are probably millions of dollars invested in that chapter facility, alumni have their names on the notes, the national organization is going to protect those alumni. The Oklahoma SAE house being closed was much easier because apparently, the school owned the property, which is now the office of Diversity and Inclusion.

Maybe we should all do a better job of screening for douchebags during recruitment and pledging.

While I wish I could agree, that is a very hard thing to get done.

What should and must be done, is expell them asap. Contact the National H Q to make them aware of the situation and ask for guidance if the chapter feels they cannot handle internally and needs help! It is better to get rid of a few bad apples rather than lose the whole Chapter. That benefits no one.

Kevin, doesn't SAE have an expedited Initiation? I seem to recall they initiate their members within a few weeks of becoming new members, or maybe it's another fraternity I'm thinking of.

As far as I know, you're correct. SAE doesn't have any pledging process. These guys are full members within a very short period of time after signing their bid cards. Expecting that you can weed out all of the bad apples prior to that point is not realistic, and as those within this lane know well, expelling initiated members is no simple task (at least in my fraternity, I'm assuming SAE also probably has a fairly extensive, undergrad driven process for expulsion of members).

As long as we have kids coming from non-diverse backgrounds and we are given little to no opportunity to weeding them out, we're going to have kids which say and do stupid things. It's how our chapters respond which makes all of the difference. In Wisconsin's case, from this side of the story (I guarantee you there's at least one other side to this thing, probably several sides) that the member exhausted internal remedies and felt he needed to go to the school for help. That he didn't know of or choose to utilize internal SAE options going above the chapter level (e.g., going to nationals or alumni advisers [or that he did that and got no help] would be additionally troubling.

This is where alumni involvement plays a key role. If this chapter has advisers who are plugged in, who undergrad members can all bring these sorts of issues to if leadership isn't managing things, then unless those alumni are also terrible people (I assume they are not), then this never becomes a national headline.

If we as alumni want our chapters to be successful, we need to invest enough face-time with the chapter to where at a minimum, members know that if things get out of hand, they can contact you directly. I would think this would be especially true for SAE now since with their no longer having any sort of pledging or associate membership, they have no opportunity to weed out bad potential members until it's really too late.

SAE new members must be initiated within 96 hours of receiving their bids.

Wow, that is quick.

This particular issue with race has now surfaced at three SAE chapters - that I'm aware of - in two years, Oklahoma, Wisconsin and Washington. The Washington chapter remains active, but the matter was investigated.

I read a Buzzfeed article that detailed a similar issue at Oklahoma State in 1987 involving the SAE chapter there hosting a "Plantation Ball". The same article mentions another incident, in 1992, at Texas A&M, where the SAE chapter there hosted a "jungle party".

I wonder if SAE's national office has been pro-active in educating and raising awareness of the matter to their chapters. This is stuff that shouldn't be happening in the first place, but I wonder if new members, as well as active members, understand why they shouldn't be doing it, and what the consequences are if they do.

Buzzfeed article link: https://www.buzzfeed.com/tasneemnash...kr#.skvVZddPrv

1987? 1992? Really? No active member in college today (maybe someone with the nickname "Blue" excepted) was alive at the time, so just.. no..

I think if you look at college fraternal groups such as SAE, you're going to find a number of regrettable incidents in their past, present and future. Our members are, have and will be responsible for racial incidents, hazing incidents, sexual abuse incidents and no matter what policies universities adopt or what our national offices do or how much we alumni want to inject ourselves into these students' daily lives, the fact will not change that our active membership consists of men, mostly 18-22 years old, many from backgrounds of privilege, who make bad decisions. What distinguishes each of our groups is not that those things happen, but rather how our organizations strive to prevent those things from occurring and what we do in response when proactive measures fail (and they will).

I don't want to be too critical of SAE's general staff at this stage in the game. They recently went through a very messy separation with their former executive director in which he very publicly resigned his membership. If they are not a mess internally right now, I would be very surprised.

I also hesitate to comment as to whether this is an SAE problem or just a problem most fraternities probably have, which is only made more public today because of social media and the lesser tendency on the part of administrators to turn a blind eye towards this sort of thing.

When I was a pledge, one of my roommates - a fellow pledge - was Asian. I didn't know much about Chinese culture, but I knew enough to respect it. But it was also part of our house rules (no offensive jokes, etc.); I signed a document as part of a new tenant/resident of my fraternity house to not do that.

I know that 18 to 22 year old boys can be a bit unruly at times; we launched many water balloons from our upper deck, let me tell you, but we never crossed the line with racial slurs or jokes. We just didn't go there.

No fraternity is perfect. We've had 2 chapters close this year due to hazing allegations. But I just think the racial issue could be prevented - or, at the very least, addressed - from the top. It'd be unfortunate if it happened again.

Trump is polling damn near dead even with Clinton and you think we can program better and stop racial insensitivity coming from our membership dead in its tracks?

I don't know, but I think it can be addressed. Or. maybe it can't and more chapters are suspended.

And, by the way, part of the reason Trump is gaining in the polls is because Clinton is running a weak campaign. She still has to get passed Sanders.

Our organizations are reflections of the cultures from which we draw our membership and within those cultures, racism, the use of offensive racial terms and lack of any involvement whatsoever with anything outside of white, middle to upper class suburbia is still very common. As the cost of higher education gets more out of reach for those at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder, especially in "red" states like Wisconsin, the problem is going to get worse rather than better no matter how many organizations are suspended and no matter how many mandatory diversity workshops are mandated.

I honestly don't know what, if anything can be done. I don't see shutting chapters down as effective, or in many cases as something schools can legally do. A surging Trump candidacy fueled by basically overt racism and homophobia doesn't give me a lot of hope either. The best you can do as an alumnus volunteer is to be involved at the local chapter level as much as possible, set a good example, model good behavior and set the expectation that your members act as decent human beings. It's a good start, but it won't always work.

I agree a lot with what you're saying.

But I do think that leadership, whether it be at the national level or the individual chapter's EC, can address it - and, possibly enforce it. This goes for any fraternity. If at the start of the school year, you address to the new members during orientation/retreat and the active members at the first chapter meeting that 'we won't tolerate such behavior' or else we'll take action, then maybe that's a start. It worked for us to know what the house rules were upfront and the consequences if we broke them.

As for Trump, well...we're living in scary times.