When Syracuse University’s student newspaper published videos in April that showed members of an engineering fraternity doing and saying racist and sexist things, the campus was thrown into turmoil. The videos showed some Theta Tau brothers’ taking part in vile skits, prompting student activists to demand change quickly.
The New York university acted fast. Within days, the fraternity chapter was banned from the campus. And now, two months later, administrators have found 15 students responsible for harassment. Last week it suspended them for up to two years.
But the penalties have brought their own challenges. Five fraternity members are now suing the university, asserting that the videos were private and taken out of context. And the Foundation for Individual Rights In Education, a free-speech advocacy group known as FIRE, has strongly supported the students. Debate over the value of campus free speech has ensued.
Ari Cohn, director of the Individual Rights Defense Program at FIRE, said the discipline was a “flagrant violation” of Syracuse’s promise of freedom of expression for students. It was “particularly egregious,” he said, for the university to ignore the context of the videos as satire in a private setting.
“This was completely private expression,” said Cohn. “This was intended to be seen and heard only by people in the fraternity, none of whom were particularly upset by it … to hold the fraternity members responsible for private expression amongst themselves that happened to be learned of later by an outside party … is just unfathomable.”
Cohn said the suspensions were a drastic, “kitchen-sink-type approach” for Syracuse to avoid embarrassment over comments in the videos.
In a letter to students, faculty, and staff last week, Robert Hradsky, dean of students, said: “We treated this investigation and student-conduct process fairly and expeditiously. It is now time for our community to focus on the important work of advancing a more inclusive campus community.”
Syracuse’s disciplinary action is reminiscent of the University of Oklahoma’s decision in 2015 to expel two fraternity members after they were caught on video leading a racist chant.
But there’s an important distinction between the two campuses: Oklahoma is public, while Syracuse is private. “Private institutions are not directly bound by the First Amendment,” said Cathy Cocks, president of the Association for Student Conduct Administrators, adding that she could not comment on the Syracuse case specifically. But, she continued, “most institutions embrace the concept of freedom of expression.” Student-conduct processes, she said, exist to deal with alleged harassment, threats, disruption, and so forth.
FIRE calls the students’ suspensions a ‘miscarriage of justice.’
While acknowledging Syracuse is private, Cohn said it had betrayed students’ rights to freedom of expression. In response to the university’s decision to punish the fraternity members, FIRE has written a letter to Syracuse and plans to publicize what Cohn called a “miscarriage of justice.”
“What they are bound by are the promises they make to students to induce students to enroll at the school, and one of those promises that Syracuse is pretty ready to tout when it serves them is freedom of expression,” he said. “I mean, their communication school has ‘freedom of expression’ and First Amendment principles emblazoned on the side of the building in gigantic letters. And if this is what passes for free speech at Syracuse, they might as well just rip those letters right off the wall.”