A short live-stream commentary (TJ Walker) analyzing a racist 9-second video by members of the SAE fraternity at the University of Oklahoma. Walker describes the video’s content, praises the national SAE chapter for rapidly revoking the Oklahoma chapter’s charter, and draws crisis-communications lessons about the limits of spin and the need for swift repudiation.
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A nine second video of members of the SAE fraternity at the University of Oklahoma that serviced yesterday has resulted in that organization receiving the death penalty. If you want to see the video, it's linked below. This is an analysis of how the national chapter handled this crisis. So yesterday, a video surfaced of saees in Oklahoma chanting, there will never be insert n word here in our fraternity. It was chanted. It was captured on video. Folks, there's no ambiguity here. There's no real way of spinning this. And that's why, as odious of an event that this was, I do have to congratulate the national chapter of SAEs for handling this crisis perfectly. Now, it happened over the weekend and most national organizations like this can run at a snail's pace. You're dealing with a lot of volunteer board members. Coordinate. No, they did not dither and dawdle for days, weeks, months. They acted very quickly. Someone in that organization realized, wow, if we don't distance ourselves from this, it could destroy every single chapter we have across the country. So within a matter of hours, the national organization utterly repudiated the Oklahoma chapter. They shut the chapter down, revoked their charter, essentially put that fraternity out of business. And then they repudiated the actions of the fraternity in strongest moral terms. And so they revoked the charter without any hesitation whatsoever. And they find the activities disgusting. Now, this was smart because if they hadn't done this, the pressure would have mounted day after day. It would have gotten so intense and you would have had a situation where the national chapter would be spending all of its time defending something that's utterly indefensible. Now, here's one of the axioms of crisis communications that doesn't get talked about as much, but there are times when there's simply no spin to get yourself out of a jam. There's no way of repositioning something, of packaging something to make it palatable to the American people or the people of any media audience. So the national chapter did exactly the right thing. They got out in front of the mob because there was going to be an angry mob about this. And they said, we repudiate you. We find you racist and despicable. They now, nobody can attack the national chapter. Well, you can attack the national chapter, but then it becomes a generic attack on all fraternities. And that's a debate we could have on another day. But for right now, I'm most interested in how this crisis evolved and how the national organization handled it. I do give them solid marks. Now, the bigger issue here, for a lot of people is where do you get off singing in a jovial way, absolutely deplorable racist sentiments using the worst racial slurs imaginable? There's no way of spinning this. It wasn't a black rapper doing this. It was unmitigated, absolute vile racism to its core. Here's the thing. You're on a bus full of people. I'm not saying there's ever a good time to do this, but if you're with two people in a dorm room, yeah, not advocating it, but there's a little more privacy. But if you're on a whole busload of people, presumably there were dates. It only takes one person to think you're being an idiot to capture it on video, upload it and you toast. For that matter, it could even be someone who doesn't disagree with you, but they capture it on video. Just thinking, well, this is sharing the fun of the evening, not even realizing how other people would perceive it. Folks, you simply cannot say anything involving vile racial slurs these days. And even a quasi public arena. And on a bus full of people is a quasi public arena. I'm TJ Walker. Post your comments. Thanks for watching.
