By: Jarrod Horton
Staff Writer
Two students at the University of Oklahoma withdrew themselves from school after a video surface of them smearing their face with black paint and saying nigger. The video was shared last week on Martin Luther King Jr. holiday by Twitter user Gabrielle Lesley. Another Twitter user identified the two students as Olivia Urban and Francis Ford. The two could be seen with blackface and saying “I am a nigger.”
The university president James L. Gallogy said the students will not be returning to campus. “This type of behavior is not welcome here and is condemned in the strongest terms by me and by our University,” Gallogy said. “They decided to withdraw on their own under the circumstances,” he continued. One of the students was a member of Tri Delta sorority and the university’s chapter also released the statement. The sorority said that the student was “no longer a member” of their chapter.
This isn’t the first time racist behavior has surfaced on the OU campus. In 2015, Sigma Alpha Epsilon Fraternity was shown on video singing a racist song that included the lyrics “There will never be a n****r in SAE.” Following that incident, university officials stripped SAE of it’s fraternity house. Despite the ramifications of both incidents, OU’s Black Student Union president Taylor Wilson said an “effective standard procedure” hasn’t been implemented at the school regarding racism. He told Huffpost in an email that “Because situations like these are reoccurring, there are many improvements that university officials need to make. It starts with the administration. Without support, including a substantial amount of faculty and staff, as a student of color at a [predominantly white institution], it is not uncommon for us to feel helpless,” he said.