Why are we seeing this again? Wasn't last year enough?

[DeltAlum]

Didn't anyone learn anything last year?

STILLWATER, Okla. -- Some expressed remorse and others quietly
vented anger during a candlelight vigil that was organized after
racially insensitive photos taken during a fraternity party were
publicized.

"We're lighting a candle in the darkness of ignorance," OSU President
James Halligan said at Tuesday's event, which drew hundreds of
participants.

"This vigil reminds us of how devastating these things can be to the
community." Halligan called for the vigil after the revelation of an
off-campus costume party at which three Alpha Gamma Rho fraternity
members simulated a Ku Klux Klan lynching.

Internet photos from the party posted on a Web site depicted one
fraternity member dressed in a Klan outfit pretending to hang a
member who was painted in "black face" and wearing a prisoner's
uniform.

A third fraternity member held a bullwhip above the head of the
student in black face makeup, the photographs showed.

Before the ceremony began, 125 members of Alpha Gamma Rho walked out
onto the front of the lawn where the vigil was held. Members dressed
in suits and ties appeared somber and some hung their heads.

"An apology is merely words," said fraternity President Brad
Atkinson, pausing several times to choke back emotion. "We hope, in
the near future months and years to come, we can show how truly sorry
we are."

In 1987, Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity members wore costumes and
black face at an annual festival and later apologized to black
students at OSU.

The Alpha Gamma Rho students featured in the photos were suspended
from the fraternity, but remain enrolled at OSU.

The fraternity also has elected to not participate in this year's
homecoming activities and apologized to the school's black students
and faculty. But some students at the vigil said those gestures
aren't enough.

"We seem to be doing prayer vigils for everything these days," said
Kandace Bell, the university's National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People student chapter president. "We do want
results."

(c) 2002 The Associated Press.

Unbelievable!