Unexpected Events at Auburn

[SilverTurtle]

The following was posted on the fraternal news listserv. I don't want to add fuel to the fire, but thought the judge's decision was surprising. I also knew a lot of people might be interested. You can all draw your own conclusions:

Associated Press November 21, 2001
Judge orders suspended Auburn fraternity members reinstated
OPELIKA, Ala.

-- A judge ordered Auburn University to reinstate 10 white students who were suspended for wearing blackface and racially offensive costumes at a Halloween party. Lee County Circuit Court Judge Robert Harper's decision at a Wednesday hearing came after the Delta Zeta chapter of Beta Theta Pi fraternity sued Auburn University, several university administrators and the national office of Beta Theta Pi.

Harper, however, did not grant a request for a temporary restraining order barring the university from pursuing further disciplinary action, including possibly expelling the students. The lawsuit, which seeks $300 million in compensatory and punitive damages, names Auburn interim president William Walker, the Auburn University Board of Trustees, Auburn's director of student affairs Wes Williams, and Beta Theta Pi General Fraternity.

University attorney Lee Armstrong declined to comment on the lawsuit or the judge's order. Walker suspended 15 members of the traditionally white Beta Theta Pi and Delta Sigma Phi fraternities after pictures of fraternity members at their separate Halloween parties were posted on the Internet. The pictures showed members wearing blackface and dressed as Ku Klux Klan members and in other offensive costumes. The university and the national offices of the fraternities closed the Auburn chapters last week.

The lawsuit claims that Auburn officials and the national office of the fraternity violated the students' constitutional and civil rights, including freedom of speech, freedom of association and privacy guaranteed by the First and Fourteenth Amendments. The suit also claims that university officials defamed the students and portrayed them in a false light by identifying them as racists.

The Beta Theta Pi chapter also claims university officials had ulterior motives for suspending the students and kicking the chapter off campus. They said university officials used the incident to defend their failure to meet court-required minority recruitment. Beta Theta Pi fraternity members say that since the incident, they have received death threats and threats of having their fraternity house burned down. The Betas also claim the university's standards on student conduct, primarily dealing with racial issues, is unconstitutionally vague and cannot be enforced.

(c) 2001 The Associated Press.

[LexiKD]

I guess the first amendment says nothing about bad taste. It will be interesting...maybe some more details will come out of the cases?

But $300 million, that seems really crazy!

[33girl]

Court required minority recruitment...does that mean talking to students to try to get them to come, accepting the students to the university or actual retention? That one seems as elastic as a rubber band, if someone could define that I'd be interested as to what it really means (in humanspeak not administratorspeak).

The judge did the only thing he could do - everyone in America has the right to be a complete racist idiot. I think the only way he could have done otherwise is if there was evidence that the idiots in question attempted to physically harm someone.

[DukeBlue]

It's true...they have every right to be ignorant, obnoxious morons with the collective IQ of a sea cucumber, and I have every right to call them ignorant, obnoxious f*ckheads and hope they never, ever breed. Welcome to America.