University of Oklahoma football players, head coach Bob Stoops, and athletic director Joe Castiglione were among a crowd that gathered on campus Monday to protest against racist chants from members of the university’s Sigma Alpha Epsilon (SAE) fraternity. The chants, which declared that “there will never be a n***** in SAE” and referenced lynching — “you can hang ’em from a tree but they’ll never sign with me,” the students chanted — were caught on a video that surfaced over the weekend.
In what the team said was a “captain’s decision,” players, along with Stoops and other coaches, also linked arms in a protest during a scheduled spring practice time Monday afternoon:
#notonOUrcampus pic.twitter.com/ipMwJbvHKF
— Oklahoma Football (@OU_Football) March 9, 2015
According to the Tulsa World, the players entered practice dressed in black, stood silently on the field for a few minutes, huddled at midfield and then left the practice session. Overall, more than 100 athletes joined an on-campus demonstration, including members of the basketball team and men’s basketball coach Lon Kruger.
“It’s sad the ignorance that can still be there with some people. It’s just appalling. I was here to be with my guys. We all work with beautiful young men and women of all races,” Stoops told the Tulsa World.
Current and former Oklahoma football players took to Twitter to share their thoughts on the video.
Crazy cause after the games they welcome us through their doors with open arms..
— Obeezy (Oh-Bee-Zee) (@OgboOkoronkwo) March 9, 2015
Oklahoma President David Boren also joined in Monday’s protest. Boren has already cut the university’s ties with the SAE chapter, closing it and giving its members until Tuesday to vacate the campus fraternity house. “We are also going to look at any individual perpetrators, particularly those that we think took a lead in this kind of activity,” Boren said.
But players like linebacker Eric Striker, who posted a profanity-laced video on Snapchat then a second video later, called for even more action against the fraternity members.
“I know the fraternity is completely done, but I wanna know about the dudes in that fraternity,” Striker told The Oklahoman. “The ones that live off campus and said that chant, they need to go.”
The demonstrations are yet another example of athletes taking a stand against racism: prominent NBA and NFL players donned “I Can’t Breathe” t-shirts to protest police killings of black men in 2014, and players across the NBA led protests during last year’s playoffs after audio recordings revealed racist language from former Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling.
Aside from the protests, the video’s emergence cost Oklahoma’s football team a future player on Monday, when four-star offensive lineman Jean Delance decommitted from the Sooners. Delance posted a statement on Twitter saying that he was decommitting for “personal reasons,” and Bob Przybylo of SoonerIllustrated.com reported that Delance was “clearly disturbed” by the video.
“Very uneducated people. I wouldn’t want my son or child to go there or to anywhere like that. It was just very disturbing to me I didn’t like it,” Delance’s father told the CBS affiliate in Dallas.