Early Saturday morning, a fight broke out between three black students from Alabama A&M University and members of the Delta Chi fraternity. I, like most of the student body, learned of this incident through an email sent by President Witt around 8:15 a.m. that same day.
In addition to informing the student body of the incident, the email also stated that “racially offensive language” was involved, which leads one to believe that this language was the catalyst for the whole episode. I want to emphasize, though, that the Judicial Affairs and UAPD investigations aren’t over, and that I am simply speculating as to the cause of the fight.
On Twitter, most everyone seemed more concerned with the email Dr. Witt sent than the actual incident itself. The general consensus was that the emails sent regarding race-related incidents on campus don’t accomplish anything, and that physical steps need to be taken to address the issue.
Here’s where I have to disagree.
First, the email contained far more details than any other we’ve received. We know what happened, whom it involved and what’s being done about it. Everyone is up in arms about how the administration is all talk, but it seems to me those people must have skipped past the part that read, “While UAPD continues to investigate the situation, the Delta Chi house has been issued a SNAM and all activities are suspended until Judicial Affairs has completed a hearing of the incident.”
If you’ll recall the incident in February, when a young man shouted an epithet from a fraternity doorstep, all that email said was, “On Friday evening, a member of the UA student body used a racial slur to refer to another UA student. The words that were used are offensive to our community, and are especially upsetting to African Americans.”
That email was unacceptable.
Saturday’s message, I think, was a strong one because of the information it gave. Let’s not forget this all happened on a Saturday morning – what exactly did y’all expect him to do? Put on his superhero tights, fly to campus and use his racial tolerance superpower?
There comes a certain point where we, as a student body and as a community, must hold each other accountable for our actions. The administration can send a thousand emails, institute mandatory diversity courses for freshmen or even force every on-campus resident to live with someone of a different race, but the fact of the matter is that until our peers speak up and speak out against this type of behavior and this type of inferior mindset, we can’t reasonably expect anything to change.
The Operation: Not Isolated group has done a tremendous job of not only raising awareness through a completely grassroots campaign, but continuing through by holding a well-attended conversation about race and diversity on campus. Theirs is the example we should look to and follow, because it’s a group of our peers.
In the past I have argued that the student body should not have a parent/child relationship with the administration. Usually, this mostly refers to the SGA and other high-profile student groups on campus. In this instance, though, the same applies to the student body as a whole. We cannot sit on our hands and wait for a finger-wagging admin to fix it. This isn’t high school – we have to solve these problems ourselves.
John Davis is the chief copy editor of The Crimson White. His column runs Mondays.
