WASHINGTON // The University of Oklahoma has banned a major fraternity from its campus over a YouTube video that showed some of its members singing a racist chant.
The video came to light over on Sunday, just as Americans were marking the 50th anniversary of the Selma, Alabama civil rights marches.
The chant – sung to the tune of a nursery rhyme – used the racially charged N-word and refers to lynching in affirming that blacks shall never be members of Sigma Alpha Epsilon, one of the biggest fraternity networks in the United States.
The fraternity’s national headquarters suspended its University of Oklahoma chapter and apologised for the “unacceptable” incident.
But officials at the university in the city of Norman went further, shutting down the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity house and ordering its members to immediately go find other places to live.
“As far as I’m concerned, the house will not be back, not as long as I’m president,” university president David Boren said.
It also launched an investigation into who among the 30,000 students who attend the university participated in the video.
Mr Boren conceded, however, that the campus’s Sigma Alpha Epsilon chapter has not been forthcoming with details.
Sigma Alpha Epsilon’s national headquarters in Illinois apologised for “the unacceptable and racist behaviour of the individuals in the video”.
“This type of racist behaviour will not be tolerated and is not consistent with the values and morals of our fraternity,” it said.
The video went viral on social media after it was posted on YouTube on Sunday by Unheard Movement, an African American student group at the university.
Nine seconds long, it was apparently shot in a bus, with young men in tuxedos punching the air with their fists and a blonde woman hoisting a glass of wine.
It is unknown when the video was taken.
Oklahoma City television station Koco reported that some Sigma Alpha Epsilon members left the fraternity house overnight on Sunday under police protection.
Vandals meanwhile turned spray paint onto the brick building. On the side, graffiti saying “tear it down” was seen.
Several hundred students turned out early on Monday for a protest, attended by Mr Boren and members of the university’s American football team.
Online, a crowdfunding appeal went out on Indiegogo for Sigma Alpha Epsilon’s longtime chef at the University of Oklahoma, who is African American.
“He is about to lose his job because of a bus full of racist kids,” said Blake Burkhart, a graduate of the university.
With 15,000 members, Sigma Alpha Epsilon is one of the biggest fraternity networks in the US, with more than 200 chapters on campuses nationwide.
Its history goes back to the mid-19th century when it was founded in the Deep South, before the Civil War, when slavery was commonplace.
In recent years it has come under scrutiny over alcohol-fueled initiation ceremonies, which it banned in 2014 under the glare of negative publicity.
News of the University of Oklahoma video came as president Barack Obama reminded Americans how the dark shadow of racism still hangs over the nation.
“We know the march is not yet over, the race is not yet won,” he said on Saturday by the Selma bridge where African Americans and police clashed in 1965.
Oklahoma as a state has a dark history of racism, adopting segregation within weeks of statehood in 1907 – and not repealing race laws before 1965.
Some contend it still has a long way to go.
“We need to face the fact that racial and religious bigotry continues to be every bit as much a part of this state as its nationally recognised football team,” one white resident of Oklahoma, Lyle Hamilton, said on Facebook.
* Agence France-Presse
