Hate speech

Just weeks ago, a University of Oklahoma fraternity made headlines with a video of members chanting their intent to prevent black students from joining. Now it’s this university’s turn, with the emergence of a January 2014 email riddled with racist and sexist remarks from a former Kappa Sigma fraternity member. The message, signed “AJ Hurwitz,” told several recipients not to invite black, Indian or Asian women to rush parties and to disregard the principle of consent, all in disgusting and callous language.

We join the university community in condemning this email and the backward, discriminatory values it represents. No one at this university or elsewhere should have to live and learn with people who judge others based on their race and threaten them based on their sex.

The question now, as always, is how the university will respond to and learn from this incident. The bad news is that there will always be another outbreak of prejudice and disrespect. Changing the hearts and minds of racists and rapists might be impossible.

But the response to this email shows the goodness of most of the university community and a culture in which hurtful behavior will not be tolerated.

University President Wallace Loh was quick to reassure the community that the issue is being taken seriously.

The Office of Civil Rights and Sexual Misconduct is investigating the email, and officials have already spoken with “the individual involved,” according to a March 12 statement from Loh’s office. The next day, Loh held a Twitter chat with students, encouraging them to voice their beliefs and consider the intersection of “free speech and hate speech.”

Then on Tuesday, he released a longer statement with links to fraternities’ condemnations of the email and a call to “make this a teachable moment.”

The fraternities’ statements as well as Loh’s are practically obligatory in a case of this magnitude, and this editorial board certainly appreciates them, especially Loh’s efforts to explain the university’s approach to the issue.

That approach has been appropriate. Many might want the university to punish Kappa Sigma and its now-former member who wrote the email, but as a state institution, the university must respect the First Amendment, which can and has protected speech as awful as what we read in the email.

By comparison, the University of Oklahoma now faces a potential lawsuit because it expelled students and shut down a fraternity, arguably infringing on students’ freedom of speech. The expelled students have an “excellent chance” to win in court, according to The Washington Post. Loh is wise to “fight speech with more speech,” as his March 17 statement advocated, and focus the investigation on the “circumstances, intent, and … impact” of the email rather than just its words.

Granted, proving the email’s sender or recipients acted on the sentiments in the message will be difficult. But offensive speech is not criminal if it’s empty, and the sender could argue that the email was a joke or had no effects.

But as Loh said, “These incidents do not occur in a vacuum,” and if the students involved in the email have indeed committed acts of discrimination or sexual assault, they should be punished. We hope students who have observed any racist or sexist behavior will cooperate with the university to ensure justice is served.

For many, this scandal also raises questions about how to view Greek life and its relationship with rape culture and racism. While this editorial board has written about repugnant behavior by fraternity and sorority members, we also have friends and co-workers in Greek life, and we know fraternities and sororities make positive impacts on our community. So we must not judge all members of Greek life based on the actions of some.

That said, the pattern of fraternity and sorority scandals is disturbing, and we expect those organizations to police themselves. That means holding members accountable for their actions, not keeping a racist, sexist email secret for more than a year. Scandals seem very common now, but as with sexual assault, that could just be due to better reporting of misbehavior — and reporting is a good thing.

Members of Greek life must do their part by separating themselves from racists, sexists and rapists. A cultural shift toward accountability is needed to put hurtful messages like the Kappa Sigma email behind us for good.