Social media and various areas around the campus of Duke University have been quite active of late as students have spoken out about an alleged racist incident last Sunday.
A commenter on the anonymous social media outlet Yik Yak reported that a black female student was the target of a racist song sung by “drunken white male students” — the chant similar to that seen on a video by the University of Oklahoma’s Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity.
The Duke administration is investigating.
“We care very much when any of our students express concerns with safety or any aspect of their Duke experience,” [Vice President for Student Affairs Larry] Moneta wrote. “We’ll certainly reach out and offer any and all support we can to help address these concerns.”
No evidence has emerged to suggest that Duke’s SAE chapter was responsible for singing the chant during the incident at Duke.
In a statement, Duke’s SAE chapter — North Carolina Nu — condemned the incident at the University of Oklahoma as well as the incident at Duke.
Black student leaders at Duke contended that this series of events have highlighted racial tensions at Duke and around the country, regardless of which particular individuals or groups are responsible.
“The occurrence of such incidents makes it difficult to operate under any assumption of post-raciality,” [Black Students Alliance Vice President Henry] Washington wrote. “We don’t make these things up.”
Washington also said that “History and precedent have shown us that instances of utter racial catastrophe happen here at Duke more often than we might like to imagine.”
The Duke People of Color Caucus issued a statement via Tumblr, omitting the term “alleged” when noting the incident: “On Sunday, March 22, 2015, around 2:30 AM, a group of white male students targeted and taunted a young black female student with the racist Sigma Alpha Epsilon chant.”
It concludes, in part:
As a community of marginalized peoples and allies, we will no longer ask the administration and the larger Duke community for a seat at the table with them. We are committed to doing the work to maintain a community in which all of our siblings in the struggle are seen as their whole selves and feel protected, affirmed, and loved. Indeed, we are compelled by the radical possibilities of love in a world that tries to convince us through an array of mechanisms of violence and silence that we are condemned as people who cannot be loved, who cannot love, who cannot matter, and who cannot breathe. In the face of our incredulous “peers,” more time is spent continually justifying our anger, hurt, and pain than caring and loving ourselves. We will no longer practice declaring humanity that is self-evident. We have exhausted all “respectable” avenues, and they have not served us.
Read the full Chronicle article and Duke PoC statement.
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IMAGE: Duke University Archives/Flickr
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