UMD Opens Investigation Over Frat Brother's Racist, Misogynist Email
After an email containing racist and misogynist language sent to a campus fraternity by one of its members surfaced this week, the University of Maryland announced that it was opening an investigation into the case. The email's author dissuades his fraternity brothers from inviting women of color to a party and not to concern themselves with issues of consent.
Here is a (presumably edited) version of the email, published by The Huffington Post:
Regardless of the rush shirt let's get rachet as f*** during rush week. My d**k will be sucked and f***ed in compound basement whether you guys like it or not. Don't invite any n****r gals or curry monsters or slanted eye chinks, unless they're hot. Ziggy you're [sic] girl can come she's cool. Remember my n***as, erect, assert, and insert, and above all else, f*** consent ... d**ks untouched.
The email was sent in January 2014. It's not clear why it has come to light now.
The Kappa Sigma Fraternity issued a statement on Thursday confirming that the email's author had been a member of the fraternity's University of Maryland chapter at the time the email was sent. The fraternity also announced that the individual was "immediately suspended, pending an investigation."
"The individual subsequently submitted a letter of resignation from Kappa Sigma," the statement reads. "The undergraduate chapter at the University of Maryland is also presently engaging in proceedings to formally expel the individual from Kappa Sigma."
The school learned of the email just two days after video emerged of a racist Oklahoma University frat singing a racist song.
The Baltimore Sun reports that some students wrote messages in chalk in front of the university library, including one about "racist frats" and another asking university President Wallace Loh, "What are you going to do about it?"
"I will of course ensure due process and protect the free speech guaranteed by our Constitution," Loh wrote on Twitter. "Protecting speech, however, does not mean agreeing with it. And quite honestly, I am struggling with justifying this email as free speech."
"The utter disregard for decency, the racist invective, the mindless disparaging of sexual consent, has left me angry and profoundly saddened," he continued. "Where does free speech and hate speech collide? What should prevail? What justification can we have that tacitly condones this kind of hate?"
[Photo credit: Shutterstock]