Over the last few days, it’s been painful to watch my university make national headlines for the racist behavior of one of its fraternities. I’m a graduate student in journalism and a woman of color, and while studying at Syracuse University, I’ve been lucky to meet some of the most progressive and thought-provoking people. This isn’t the campus that I know. This isn’t the school that I chose to attend.

If you haven’t read the headlines, here’s a quick summary: Last Wednesday, a professional engineering fraternity known as Theta Tau was suspended for filming a video in which a member, in a room full of several other members, pretended to ejaculate on another fraternity member while professing his hatred for black, Hispanic, and Jewish people.

The language they used is too vulgar and disgusting to print here, and the six-minute video, which was first published on a secret Facebook group and later released by The Daily Orange, Syracuse’s independent student newspaper, has since found its way to just about every major news outlet. [A second video later surfaced of the Theta Tau members miming a sexual assault of a disabled person.]

In response to the offensive videos, protests erupted on campus with many students calling for the university to take action. On Friday morning, the fraternity released a statement saying the video was meant to be a “satirical sketch” roasting a Republican member of the group.

I first heard about the incident through an email I received from the school chancellor. I hadn’t seen the actual video yet, but I felt a sense of dread. To be completely honest, I wasn’t sure I even wanted to see it. But ultimately, I decided it was important to see the faces of every single person in the video—faces of fellow students who are saying they hate people like me. It’s already hard enough being a person of color at a predominantly white institution and trying to navigate college life. Why shame us? Why use our skin color to belittle us?

When I watched the video, I felt many things—sadness, disgust, anger—but I’m sorry to say that surprise wasn’t one of them. Many students of color, like myself, are already aware of just how pervasive racism is in white Greek organizations. I remember vividly when University of Oklahoma fraternity members were captured in a cell phone video singing a racist chant while on a bus to a fraternity event in 2015. Then in 2016, members of a University of Missouri fraternity yelled the n-word and other obscenities at a group of black students on campus. These were public actions caught on tape—it made me wonder how much worse these people behave in private.

It’s one thing to see this stuff on the news; it’s another thing when it’s about your own peers that you walk the halls with.

I want nothing more than to be able to feel safe and welcome on campus. But these bursts of hate on college campuses seem to show that racism is still a pervasive force among young people—hiding in the shadows, even at the most progressive schools. I’m lucky to have not experienced racism first hand during my college tenure, but now I know that these attitudes still exist. I just haven’t always “seen” it.

I now find myself constantly wondering if the same peers that smile at me and greet me in the hallways are shaming me behind closed doors. I don’t want this to be my college experience—or the experience of any other student of color at a predominantly white campus. As students, we have to keep calling this ugliness out and demand change from our universities, or it will keep happening.

PHOTO: Courtesy of Subject

Camille Nzengung.

As of Monday, the university has expelled the Theta Tau fraternity from campus, and 18 members have been suspended from school. The university also announced that it will require implicit racial bias and inclusivity training for all Greek and student organization members, as well as advisors.

In a statement, Syracuse Chancellor, Kent Syverud, said the school will conduct “a top to bottom review of all of our Greek life policies, activities and culture, to be commenced this week and completed in time for us to revise all our practices for the start of the fall semester,” which includes “mandatory training for all students, new and continuing, about the values, culture and expectations of our community.”

I don’t think this is enough: I believe that all of the fraternity members involved in the video should also be expelled from the school, because hate should have no place on our campus. Period. As a school we need to set the precedent now that this won’t be tolerated in the future.

What’s going on at my school echoes bigger issues of racism and homophobia we are facing as a nation. If we can’t justly handle some of these issues at the university level, what will happen once we step out in the real world?

Camille Nzengung is a graduate student studying journalism at Syracuse University in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications.

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