Mizzou’s Former Student Body President Suggests All Greeks Are Racist After Latest Campus Incident

El Taco9 years ago

Yep, it’s about that time again. Mizzou’s been out of the negative news cycle for roughly a week now, so you knew things were about to pop off sooner or later. And so that’s what happened Tuesday night.

According to a statement from the Legion of Black Collegians, two black female students were verbally harassed by members of Mizzou’s Delta Upsilon fraternity. The statement says it started when someone allegedly said, “look at those ni…rs looking at us.” The situation escalated, police were called, and the statement says the fraternity members shouted obscenities that “…included, but were not limited to, ‘Mizzou PC, c..ts, b…..es, ni…rs’ with a plethora of other micro-aggressions.” DU has been placed on emergency suspension.

Yes, this is my school, and yes, I hate hearing about stuff like this happening. Makes me sick. Whoever hurled these insults should be punished to the fullest extent possible.

The incident has unsurprisingly fueled plenty of conversation on social media with people sharing their thoughts — some better than others — on Twitter and Facebook. One of those ideas stands out above some others though — this tweet from the former Mizzou student body president, Payton Head.

You’re right, Payton. Clearly every fraternity or sorority would condone such behavior, yes? Fraternities equal racism. Let’s shut the whole Greek system down. Or maybe, just maybe, these were just some shit students who said some shit things? No, can’t be it. Shut it down!

Payton doubled down on the whole “shut this whole thing down” mentality throughout the day:

Now, as I said earlier this month, I am all down for bulldozing Mizzou and starting from scratch. However, Payton’s a bit off base here. Not terribly surprising, since social media isn’t his strong point.

The KKK was not on campus during protests last year and the National Guard did not phone the student body president — unless his number is like one number off from the actual president. So close. He eventually took the Facebook post down and apologized for it.

Look, I understand Payton’s passion for what’s going on. He was the target of racial insults on campus last year when he was MSA president, and he wrote an inspiring piece about the incident then. He’s a smart guy with an interest to work for what’s best.

However, labeling the entire Greek system as racists following an incident like this is asinine. If a player on the football team is charged with rape, that doesn’t make the entire football team rapists. If a member of the university faculty is caught embezzling money, that doesn’t make the entire administration corrupt. Let’s treat the Greek system the same way. Shitty people will always be shitty people. They shouldn’t get the privilege (uh oh, I said privilege!) of bringing down the 99 percent of good people with them.

Racism doesn’t have a place in the Greek system, at Mizzou or anywhere else for that matter. One day we’ll figure out we’re all just people trying to make it in this world. One day..

Editor’s Note

Payton Head, Guardian Angel King of Social Justice, is a Member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity at Mizzou, and recently published an article in the Huffington Post in which he talked about his experiences as a queer black man. In it he mentions that multiple members of his own fraternity (though he declined to identify the fraternity by name in the article… weird) said to him that he doesn’t belong in the organization because he is gay. One even said that Payton was mentally ill because he is gay. 

So @headtheprez is out here calling for DU to be punished for a bigoted incident, but didn't hold his own fraternity AΦA to that standard. pic.twitter.com/tIsJJI3LZo

— Rob Fox III (@RobFoxThree) September 28, 2016

He never once called the chapter out for it, or demanded the school take action for the wildly bigoted, ass-backwards beliefs of his own chapter’s members. I, uh, brought that up to him…

https://twitter.com/robfoxthree/status/781254109311623168

https://twitter.com/robfoxthree/status/781256126914453506

So naturally he blocked me.

– Rob Fox

Image via Shutterstock