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University Of Oklahoma Gets Head Start In Race Discussion

University of Oklahoma students pose in solidarity with University of Missouri protesters on November 12, 2015.
Jacob McCleland
/
KGOU
University of Oklahoma students pose in solidarity with University of Missouri protesters on November 12, 2015.

Protests at the University of Missouri, Yale, and other college campuses are forcing universities into uncomfortable discussions about race and diversity. In March, two University of Oklahoma fraternity members were videotaped singing a racist chant on a charter bus. Over the past eight months, the atmosphere has changed on OU's campus.

About 60 University of Oklahoma students, dressed in black, line up for a photo.

In the first picture, their fists are up. They smile in the second. For the third shot, they keep straight faces.

The group, mostly African-American, took the picture on Thursday night to spread on social media to support student protestors at the University of Missouri.

Protests at the University of Missouri and other college campuses are forcing universities into uncomfortable discussions about race and diversity. The University of Oklahoma got a head start earlier this year. It was in March when two fraternity members were videotaped singing a racist chant.

Naome Kadira, the president of the black student activist group Unheard, said Mizzou’s administration wasn’t as immediately receptive as OU’s.

“We kind of want to give that support and lift our voices all as one,” Kadira said.

In March, OU president David Boren immediately condemned the video and kicked the fraternity out. The two students were suspended. Kadira said punishment wasn’t her group’s goal.

“We were looking at the bigger picture of making this a learning lesson of waking people up and having them realize that racism does exist,” Kadira said. “It’s here. It’s alive. And it’s allowed.”

Since the video, the university started a five-hour diversity training course for freshmen and transfers. They hired former state senator Jabar Shumate as Vice President for the University Community --- as the university’s first chief diversity officer. Shumate faced racism at OU in the 90s when he ran for student body government.

“I remember there was a set of insensitive people who put in the Greek houses in Greek community, ‘Would you want this person living in your Greek house? Vote the other ticket.' Now, this was almost 20 years ago,” Shumate said.

Shumate said about 3,100 students have gone through the training which he said pulls them out of their comfort zone to engage in difficult conversations about race.

“Now here is what is important. Does that mean we’ll never have an incident again? No. What it means is that the way that we respond to those incidents will undoubtedly be better,” Shumate said. “We stopped being reactionary as much as proactive to how we make this campus more diverse and more inclusive.”

This year, the administration included minority groups to plan homecoming and other student activities. And Shumate says the university wants to hire more minority faculty members. Only two percent of full time faculty are black.

Chelsea Davis is a member of Unheard. She thinks the University of Oklahoma has taken some positive first steps. But more needs to be done -- like mandatory diversity training for staff.

“But it goes beyond sitting in a classroom for five hours and being taught the rights and wrongs. It’s a culture that has to change,” Davis said. “It’s the way people are thinking. And that goes back to how they are raised, the way they are brought up. It’s going to take some time. I haven’t seen a significant change on campus.”

Davis said at least now, there’s communication between black students and administration. There are programs almost every week to talk about race, even though they tend to attract the same group of students.

Criminology major Shaq Harris said before the SAE scandal, students knew racism existed on campus but nobody really talked about it. They swept it under the rug.

“I just feel like everyone is just so open to talk about it now since that has happened,” Harris said. “It’s kind of bad that it happened and people were hurt, but it’s kind of good that it happened. It’s like we’ve grown so much because of it."

The former Sigma Alpha Epsilon house is in for a change too. An organization that focuses on diversity will soon move into the former fraternity house.

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Jacob McCleland spent nine years as a reporter and host at public radio station KRCU in Cape Girardeau, Mo. His stories have appeared on NPR’s Morning Edition and All Things Considered, Here & Now, Harvest Public Media and PRI’s The World. Jacob has reported on floods, disappearing languages, crop duster pilots, anvil shooters, Manuel Noriega, mule jumps and more.
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