Four stories that were trending or generated discussion online or on KGOU’s social media platforms during the past week.
Tuesday marked the anniversary of the widespread distribution of a video showing University of Oklahoma fraternity members singing a racist chant on a charter bus. OU reacted swiftly, shutting down the fraternity, expelling the two students primarily responsible, and adding a new university vice president to focus on diversity.
KGOU’s limited-run series Race Matters reflected on the 12 months since the Sigma Alpha Epsilon story made international headlines. Host Merelyn Bell talked with OU Price College of Business dean Daniel Pullin, who helped organize the town hall forum with OU Unheard, a student group dedicated to promoting change and addressing grievances among Black students at OU. The episode also featured conversations with Indigenize OU founder Ashley McCray, OU Unheard co-director Chelsea Davis, and Kathy Wong, the director of OU’s Southwest Center for Human Relations Studies who led the new mandatory diversity training for incoming freshmen.
The 18-month energy price slide has Oklahoma teetering on the brink of recession, according to figures from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. Several Oklahoma economists said those numbers, when compared with other numbers at the state level, reinforce that assessment.
But even though tens of thousands of workers in the energy sector have lost their jobs, there is some optimism on the employment front. The state’s jobless rate is still at about 4 percent, almost a full point below the national average, and 242,000 jobs were added across the country last month. Chad Wilkerson from the Oklahoma City branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City told The Oklahoman’s Paul Monies the current unemployment situation during the 1980s oil bust.
It’s been a little more than a week since the death of Chesapeake Energy co-founder Aubrey McClendon after the U.S. Department of Justice indicted him in a bid-rigging scheme to drive down the price of oil leases in northwest Oklahoma. Even though he hadn’t led the energy giant in nearly three years, his death renewed interest in Chesapeake’s organizational structure and business practices.
In a piece for the reporting project Inside Energy that aired on WBUR and NPR’s mid-day newsmagazine Here and Now, StateImpact Oklahoma’s energy and environment reporter Joe Wertz told reporter Dan Boyce Chesapeake was symbolic of the oil and gas boom in the last 10-15 years, specifically the aggressive proliferation of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling.
Tuesday, March 15 marks five years since the initial protests that eventually spiraled into the Syrian Civil War. Middle East analyst Joseph Bahout outlined Lebanon’s relationship to its neighbor and some of the country’s concerns on last week’s episode of KGOU’s World Views.
Bahout emphasized there’s a danger in oversimplifying the civil war as simply being sectarian, or a conflict between the Assad government and dissatisfied citizens. He also said it’s short-sighted to expect the issues to simply work themselves out.
That’s a look at four stories that audiences appreciated on KGOU’s social media and online platforms this week. We’re always interested in your comments, feel free to write to us at news@kgou.org.
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