I don’t know if you have been following the story about the young men in the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity at the University of Oklahoma. Two videos surfaced the weekend before last in which two white men were gleefully leading a bus full of formal-clad college students in a song that said that their fraternity would never accept a black person, using racist language. The University of Oklahoma swiftly closed down the fraternity house and expelled the two students who were seen in the video leading the song.

I’ve been thinking and reading a lot about this situation, about what made that song fun for those students, about how the university responded, about the racism that is built into traditions, especially in exclusive bodies, and about what could and should happen next. I want to talk specifically here about how the university responded because I think it is relevant to our work here at our school.

The university president took swift action—he expelled the two leaders of the song. That step may look to those watching around the nation like the right and only thing to do—to give the boys the most significant punishment that the university can levy. For many people, seeing white men receive a serious consequence for their racist behavior is a welcome change from centuries of white-on-black aggression being ignored, if not celebrated. It may have been the right thing to do.

But I am left with a question about what that action does for those young men and the rest of the people who were singing along on the bus. Given that 85% of the US Supreme Court justices since 1910, 76% of all US senators, and 85% of Fortune 500 executives were fraternity men, we can assume that these expelled young men as well as the others on the bus are the people most likely in our society to hold positions of power. Once expelled, they are out of the university’s reach. What if the university had decided to engage the two men (and all of the young men and women who were on the bus) in weekly seminars in which they are in dialogue with each other and African American students and university employees about their song, their traditions, and what kind of people they are hoping to become in the world? In one article that I read, an African American professor from a historically Black college in the south suggested that the young men sing their song to and engage in discussion with the African American cook who worked at the fraternity house, serving meals for the last decade to fraternity members. What if the university had seen the students’ actions as opportunity to authentically teach them about humanity, about racism, about the legacy of slavery? Would it mean that at least one cohort of white fraternity men go out into the world as more racially conscious and educated, more tolerant, more self-aware citizens? Would that have been a more responsible, albeit trickier, consequence?

We have a habit in our country of trying to banish badness. We incarcerate people at the highest rate of any country in the world. We throw people away. In schools, where young people are learning how to be thoughtful and skilled people, what if our approach to students’ hurtful behavior is nearly always one of opportunity to educate, especially with students whose words hurt others? In the context of racism, this is difficult. Most of us have no idea how to talk about race and racism. When we respond to children with punishment but no teaching we reinforce the message that “we don’t talk about race” in our community, which makes it something shameful and secret and leaves students of color alone to deal with racism and white students completely unequipped to be allies.

We face this dilemma often at school. When considering consequences to a child’s hurtful actions, we ask ourselves the questions, What will teachers think of this consequence? What will parents think? How will students perceive what happens to this (offending) student? What’s the right thing for the student? What’s the right thing for the student considering the other students’ needs for safety? How much bandwidth do we have to authentically teach this student related to her or his offense? It’s very difficult to balance the answers to these questions. We don’t want to be perceived as too permissive or too draconian. We don’t want anyone to perceive that a consequence any less than the most severe one means that we don’t care about racism. I know it may sound like I’m advocating for white students to be let off the hook.  The irony of this, given the high suspension and expulsion rate for black and brown kids, is not lost on me.  I want to be clear that I think all students should receive an opportunity to learn and grow when they’ve made a mistake.  In the Bay Area, we have come to realize the power of restorative justice. How was justice restored, or not, at the University of Oklahoma? How do we hold ourselves, as educators, accountable to seeing restorative justice not as a band-aid solution for certain kids, but as a tool for developing socially conscious children and youth from all racial backgrounds? I’m challenging myself and all of us not to be satisfied that white students were held accountable for their racist actions, but rather to always think objectively about which consequences will create the trifecta of learning, accountability and reparations — regardless of race.

I want to make the argument that we err as much as we possibly can on the side of seeing hurtful language as an opportunity to teach. As the wise professor that I referenced above points out, in college, kids are just learning how to think independently. They arrive there parroting what they have heard from their family, their teachers, and their peers. At our level, it’s even more true—kids are repeating things that they have heard others around them say. It’s our job to figure out the right, age-appropriate way to help them see the true consequences of their words or actions, to understand as best they can the historical context, and to help them identify respectful ways to communicate with others. It’s no small feat—this is one of the reasons that we spend so much effort building relational trust across difference, so that we can lean on each other especially around charged or complex tasks.

It’s an honor to work with educators who are committed to developing and using the skills and capacity and will to work toward social justice one day and one student at a time.

Related Data and Sources

– Fraternity men make up 85 percent of U.S. Supreme Court justices since 1910, 63 percent of all U.S. presidential cabinet members since 1900, and, historically, 76 percent of U.S. Senators, 85 percent of Fortune 500 executives, and 71 percent of the men in “Who’s Who in America.. “18 US Presidents Were in Fraternities,” Maria Konnikova, The Atlantic, February 21, 2014

– “Rather than marching and shouting, what if President Boren invited the young men on that bus who sang their hateful song to sit and watch the video with the black staff members of the SAE house who fixed their meals and cleaned their rooms? Just played it over and again or even ask them to sing the song live. What if after their live performance President Boren finally allowed Walter, the man who cooked their meals for the last 15 years to ask the young men one simple question: “is this what you really think of me?” See most racists, like homophobes hold to their views in isolation” and “When they enter our classrooms, many of them have never formed an independent thought of their own. The tapes that play in their heads that inevitably shape their interactions are created by parents, teacher, churches, and yes, our culture. Their lives are a culmination of enrichment courses, parental demands and angst, and standardized tests designed to get them into the college. They are so programmed when they hit our doors that it takes almost 4 years for them to really start figuring out what kind of ice cream they really like.” www.patheos.com, Maria Dixon Hall, March 10, 2015 “A Teachable Moment-How OU Failed Transformation 101”

– “The US has the world’s highest incarceration rate.” Tyjen Tsai and Paola Scommegna, Population Reference Bureau