Just more than 10 years after the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity at the University of Oklahoma was kicked off campus owing to a video depicting members singing a racist chant on a bus, the fraternity was rejected this week in its second bid to return to campus.
On Monday, the executive council of OU’s Interfraternity Council voted against SAE’s request to reestablish a chapter on the campus it was given days to vacate in 2015 after the video went viral.
“The IFC Executive Council voted against admission of SAE to the University of Oklahoma’s Interfraternity Council,” IFC President Graham Waggoner said in a statement Thursday.
According to an April 8 statement from OU media specialist Jacob Guthrie, the vote marked the second consideration of SAE expansion in the past six months.
“Sigma Alpha Epsilon submitted one formal request for expansion in October 2024,” Guthrie said. “That request was reviewed by the IFC Executive Council and did not receive the majority vote required to move forward in the process. A subsequent request for a meeting with the IFC Executive Council, made earlier this year, was declined by the council as it fell outside the established guidelines for how expansion requests are formally considered.”
Both Waggoner and the OU spokesperson provided a link to the IFC expansion guidelines in their emails.
SAE national CEO Steve Mitchell released a statement on Monday’s vote.
“We see this as an opportunity to reflect and seek constructive paths for the future,” Mitchell said. “We are dedicated to learning from our past, actively listening to those affected, and collaborating to make amends, reconcile and promote a fresh start.”
The two expansion requests come as the fraternity professes a desire for “reconciliation” with OU. Mitchell said in a different statement April 9 that the organization believes reestablishing a chapter at OU will help in the “healing process.”
“After we closed the Oklahoma Kappa Chapter at the University of Oklahoma 10 years ago, Sigma Alpha Epsilon has applied to the Interfraternity Council to return to campus,” Mitchell said. “The Oklahoma Kappa Chapter, originally founded in 1909, has nearly 3,000 alumni who had a positive fraternal experience, with decades of positive contributions to the campus and the greater Norman community. We believe that a return to campus is a necessary step in the healing process for all stakeholders. The individuals responsible for our closure 10 years ago have been held accountable, as well as have apologized for their actions. We are looking forward to working with the IFC and university to identify a path forward to return to OU in the near future where we can shape the next 3,000+ true gentlemen.”
Mitchell expressed a similar idea in an 18-page document NonDoc obtained depicting SAE’s “expansion proposal” for returning to OU’s campus. (The document is embedded below.)
“On behalf of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity, I write to express our desire and intent to reestablish our Oklahoma Kappa Chapter at the University of Oklahoma, which was previously shared with (OU) President (Joe) Harroz in May of 2021,” Mitchell wrote in a letter to the OU Interfraternity Council. “We are eager to return to campus and have the necessary support structure to be successful, including the interest and commitment of several local alumni who will play a pivotal role.”
Although the proposal did not mention the March 2015 incident directly, it acknowledged the need for “healing” in plans for how to return to campus. Those plans include establishing an OU/SAE workgroup that “would be responsible for providing feedback on the restorative process and communications plan, ensuring alignment at all levels of OU/SAE.”
Additionally, the document specifies three “key points and considerations”:
- “Mitigate/navigate on-campus sensitivities;”
- “Hit head-on — The Perfect Apology;” and
- “Priority is healing for OU/SAE.”
The OU SAE chapter was kicked off campus almost immediately after a video began circulating depicting members of the fraternity on a bus chanting racist slurs. Then-President David Boren condemned the incident, saying “Real Sooners are not racist.”
The incident sparked national outrage and kicked off a campus-wide reckoning over racial tensions and Greek life, with numerous protests taking place over the months and years following. Two of the students involved were expelled from OU and issued apologies after meeting with Black leaders.
“Effective immediately, all ties and affiliations between this university and the local SAE chapter are hereby severed,” Boren wrote on Twitter at the time. “I direct that the house be closed and that members will remove their personal belongings from the house by midnight tomorrow.”
Owing to an unusual financial arrangement decades ago, the OU Board of Regents owns the former SAE house at 730 College Ave. That allowed Boren’s administration to evict the fraternity from the property, and at the time Boren suggested tearing it down. Instead, the Office of University Community was established in the building until its unwinding three years later. It then housed the Accessibility and Disability Resource Center, but that moved to another campus location sometime within the last year. For some SAE and OU alumni, the future of the property remains as relevant of a question as potential readmission of a chapter in Norman.
While Boren acted swiftly in 2015, SAE’s national office later admitted the students likely learned the chant at a national conference for the fraternity. Boren told the New York Times he was not sure the chant was “strictly local,” but he told NPR the chant was “formalized” at OU.
“We vow that we will be an example to the entire country of how to deal with this issue,” Boren said in a statement. “There must be zero tolerance for racism everywhere in our nation.”
More than a decade later, SAE’s expansion plan document includes extensive discussion of a “restorative process plan” and “issues to consider.” The list of issues to consider appears to contain an acknowledgement that SAE’s return to campus might not be popular.
“Positive public relations are excellent, but ‘negative peace’needs to be considered,” the document states. “What is the best way to communicate to those on the fringes who are angry at SAE and those angry at OU?”
Read the SAE Expansion Proposal document
