Now, nearly 160 years after its founding at the University of Alabama, another song—this one chanted by members of the frat’s University of Oklahoma chapter and containing racial slurs and lynching references—harkens back to the bad old times in the land of cotton and puts a new spotlight on the group’s activities over the years.
SAE officials insist the chant is neither a sanctioned song nor is it taught to fraternity members.
If there are any other chapters that use the song, “we need to address that with those chapters and stop it immediately to stamp out this type of behavior,” said Sigma Alpha Epsilon spokesman Brandon Weghorst.
The lyrics “are so hateful and spiteful that it’s embarrassing to think that Sigma Alpha Epsilon members would even know the chant or how it goes, if they’ve heard it.”
The fraternity was also investigating reports of other SAE incidents that may have been tainted with racism, Weghorst said.
SAE began on the Tuscaloosa campus on March 9, 1856, a few months after Noble Leslie DeVotie outlined his vision to a close circle of friends during a stroll along the banks of the Black Warrior River.
