The Trip To Auburn
Preparing For The Journey
I’d be lying if I didn’t confess my anxieties about the trip down to Auburn last night. For quite some time, I’d been mentally preparing for the panel discussion about the blackface incident which occurred five years ago. An Auburn Autumn is based on the event. I awoke Tuesday morning with a migraine headache, no doubt brought on by the stress surrounding event.
Several people had offered to posse up and roll down to Auburn with me, including two of my frat brothers. One is 6’-4” and tips the scale at 250. The other is stout and weighs in at about 240. One of my co-workers also volunteered to ride down. He’s a mountain of a man who’s 300 pounds easy. He’s quick and agile and a bit gangster if asked to be.
It seems that various people were concerned for my safety, one of my readers even sent an e-mail that read, “Don’t go to Auburn. It’s a set up!” I, on the other hand, didn’t feel the need to take backup. It’s a college campus and the event was billed to be attended by students, faculty and administrators. Having interacted on college campuses, I was under the impression that these types of events are very civil and people are usually free-thinking-civil minded individuals.
The Pre-Event Meeting
And of course, my assumptions were made valid when I was greeted, before the event, with the utmost Southern hospitality. I enjoyed a wonderful dinner with a few faculty, and students while we discussed the book and the incident. Paul Kittle, director of Greek life asked a very interesting question at dinner. “If we took away the Black face[in the actual pictures], and the fraternity members had just been wearing Omega Psi Phi shirts, would it have been viewed as a racist incident?” Probably one of the best questions I’ve been asked about the incident. My answer was that I think it still would have been seen as racially motivated, but perhaps on a smaller scale. I think my frat brothers would have looked at the pictures and said, ‘Look at those white boys wearing our shirts.’
In The Lions' Den
I walked into the ball room where the event was being held. Much to my surprise, there was a slide show of the images from the 2001 party being projected onto a gigantic screen. During the entire discussion, the pictures kept flashing over and over and over. It was, I think, a testament of how head-on the group was willing to discuss the incident. Nearly 200 people attended the event, a great majority of them were black. It’s also interesting that there were two sides of the room and it was quite obvious that almost all of the whites sat on one side of the room with some blacks interspersed within. On the other side of room there were almost no whites sitting with blacks.
The event organizer asked 15 people to take part in the panel and only three showed up; myself, Mr. Paul Kittle and Dr. Kam. Kittle has been at Auburn 18 months and Dr. Kam was at Auburn when the incident occurred. Both men answered all questions thrown their way and weren’t afraid to express their candid opinions.
Taking Shots
The biggest criticism I got was the picture on the cover of the book. A student asked a very passionate question about why the Auburn colors were on the cover and why there was a noose on the cover and how could I, as a person who attended and HBCU, write a book about the incident.
Dr. Overtoun Jenda from the Office of Diversity and Multicultural Affairs sat in the back of the room and expressed his desire not to have any comments during the evening, but when Kittle asked Jenda to answer a question, Jenda made a brief statement about polices and practices that Auburn has implemented. Jenda shook my hand and introduced himself then stated that when the incident happened, he and other faculty traveled around the state telling high school students that Auburn was a good school and the pictures were not representative of Auburn. Jenda then turned to me and said that he had not read the book, but he was concerned when he saw the cover because he doesn't think high school students an decipher between fact and fiction. He then urged the students in the audience to go out and recruit more black students.
Another student expressed the same concerns about what he perceived to be the negative image on the cover and said that he thought the cover image was revenue driven. We talked briefly about what else could have been on the cover to create a provocative image. Neither of us came up with a better idea.
Turning The Tables
As I sat in the room, I couldn’t help but notice an eerie feeling of de ja vu. I could hear the tension in the students’ voices as they watched the images loop on the giant screen. A good number of the students wanted to know what would happen if the incident happened again. Kittle seemed to be taking the brunt of most of those questions and one or two students took Kittle to task saying that the university should take a harder stance on racially offensive acts.
Kittle rallied back with a very interesting observation. It seems that Kittle collects the party fliers of all the fraternities and sororities on campus. “I wish I would have brought those fliers and displayed them on the slide show, tonight,” Kittle said. He referenced the fliers by noting that some of them contained images of scantily clad women and that the images seen in the fliers might be considered offensive to some people.
This raises a good question because Kittle also noted that the images he saw in the offensive pictures were images that he’d seen at step shows and other events around campus. I’d mentioned earlier that the pictures from the Halloween parties were poses and gestures that could be seen on the Web site of my fraternity. They were poses and gestures that you could see me doing when I was in college. They were poses and gestures you can see black folks doing on MTV-BET. They imitated what they see us often doing.
Dr. Kam was very passionate about having dialogue surrounding the incident. He expressed heartfelt opinions about what should happen next and his opinions where candid and unrehearsed. He also told a funny story about when the pictures leaked out in 2001. Kam, upon seeing the pictures, ran to a house of the fraternity that he was advising at the time, and woke up the frat members and made them look at the pictures on the Internet and said, “None of you had better not be in a single one of these pictures!”
Missed Opportunities
How else can I say this? None of the members of the offending fraternities made any comments. I would venture to say that none of them were in the room, but I can’t say that with 100 percent certainty. If they were in the room, they didn’t tell us what’s different at the frat house. They didn’t tell us what their current Halloween parties are like. They didn’t tell us how it changed the lives of their former members. They didn’t tell us how Auburn should move on. They didn’t tell us if they were offended because the photos were still being displayed. They didn’t tell us that they could care less what black folks or the Auburn community thinks about their activities. They didn’t tell us it was none of our business what they did to prevent another scandal. They didn’t tell us that they were not a racist organization and resented the implication. They didn’t tell us anything, so we are left only with assumptions. When I attended the press conference on Auburn's campus in 2001, none of the offending frat members were present although they were asked to come.
I was disappointed that so much of the discussion focused on fraternities and not the entire Auburn community. It seems that the black athlete is the sacred cow on big college campuses. I wish someone would have talked about the power of college athletes. And why, for the most part, they remained silent during the scandal. I wish we could have discussed what would have happened if the players had boycotted the Iron Bowl if the situation was not resolved. But that’s stretching it…a lot.
The Fiasco of My Frat Brothers
Two of my frat brothers from Auburn attended the event. One was a student and the other the campus advisor. The campus advisor expressed his concern that he wished we would have had some dialogue before the event. I’ve given my contact information to a good number of my frat brothers at Auburn and I didn’t receive any urgings or requests to meet before the forum. But we both agreed what’s done is done and we began a dialogue about his concerns, mainly that he wished I would have consulted with my frat brothers who were on campus at the time of the incident--a question I’ve discussed at great length with my frat brothers. The advisor said that he’d come to the discussion to refute anything that might have been said by myself or anyone else that may have been inaccurate. He gave me his contact info and I offered to make myself available at any time if there’s ever a need.
My young frat brother who attended was my hero. He was the restoration of my faith that I do indeed have young frat brothers who are independent thinkers and who aren’t afraid to go against the grain and defy the wishes of a majority group. He told me that he attended to determine if I would vacillate on my philosophies about what I said in my private correspondence with my frat brothers and what I said in a public forum. I tried to instill in him that for future endeavors as an African American male, whenever someone gives him a microphone, a venue and an audience, he should seize that opportunity to say anything that he feels is relevant and important.
I would have preferred my frat brothers, enrolled at Auburn, come to the event, take part in the discussion and lambaste me publicly than to not show up at all. It’s rare when an average person is given an opportunity to speak their mind with an open mic, in the public spotlight. And now that opportunity has passed.
But I have a great respect for my frat brothers who showed up, and I ppreciate their willingness to listen.
The Solution
Ah yes, the meat of the matter. I’ve had 100 miles and 12 hours to think about this. I was encouraged and also disheartened at the conclusion of the evening. I asked one of the panelists if we’ll ever be at a place when we expel students for racially offensive acts. There was a long answer. The short answer was no.
There were two statements that rattled me. The first was, “This is an institution of learning. Not an intuition of oppression…” That statement was almost word for word what Auburn’s president said during the press conference I attended in 2001.
The other statement was “This is a family matter and we’ll take care of this in house.”
In a cosmic coincidence, that’s exactly what one the characters in the book said when trying to calm the waters of the scandal.
In essence, it was revealed, during the discussion, that if this incident happens again, the offending students will not be expelled. Let me write that again just in case someone skimmed past that last sentence. IF THIS INCIDENT HAPPENS AGAIN A STUDENT WILL NOT BE EXPELLED.
That being said, I think the door is left wide open for the incident to reoccur at Auburn. Because, after all, if someone wants to do it again , they already know what the punishment will be. What I keep thinking about is that this happened three times at Auburn. Once in 1999 and then twice in 2001.
The decision not to expel is an unfortunate double edged sword. If I’m the president at Auburn and this scandal hits while I’m in office, I don’t think that I can pull the trigger and expel students who do this. I would want to. But I think that I’d be under so much pressure from alumni, boosters and lawyers that I would be fearful of committing political suicide. Maybe I wake up one day and say it doesn’t matter what they do to me. So I make the decision to kick offending students out of school. I think there would be resources in place to have my decision reversed.
So, what’s the solution? It’s simple complexity. School administrators don’t have the power to handle this issue. Their hands are tied. It’s an inherent fact of large institutions. There are simply too many variables that won’t come together to solve the equation.
THE POWER TO ADDRESS THIS LIES WITHIN THE MINDS OF STUDENTS.
Kittle slipped in one of the most profound statements of the evening. He said, “You as the student body have the ability to make them not want to be here anymore.”
And Kittle was not talking about death threats and harassments, but he meant using your voice and creative wisdom to bring so much attention to the incident that an offending individual realizes it’s in his or her best interest to enroll else where.
I’m reminded of an incident at Rutgers university when a young black woman protested a racial incident on campus by running onto the basketball court and sitting at half court before the game started. Suddenly more students joined her and in a matter of seconds people watched on television as students protested by stopping the game and sitting on the basketball court.
What happens when a student sits at the fifty-yard line in Jordan-Hare Stadium before the Iron-Bowl? What happens when students raise money to take out a full page ad in the newspaper asking for a student to leave because he or she has done something racially offensive? What happens when a student stands outside of the classroom of an offending student with a sign the reads, ‘Please Withdraw’? What happens when a fraternity EXPELS one of its own members for an offensive act?
What happens is that it creates a culture. It creates a culture where peers understand that certain things will not be tolerated on a campus or in a community. And this is not indigenous to racial acts, but also acts of sexism, hate or bigotry. The real power to handle these issues lies in the minds of students.
The Real Brave Soul
Someone called me the man of the hour when I arrived. But the real man of the hour was a woman. A strong black woman by the name of Kiara Pesante. Kiara cared enough about her student body and her Auburn community to risk social standing(a valuable commodity in college) and fly in the face of danger to organize this event. When people told her to mind her own business, she made it her business. When people told her to leave old wounds alone, Kiara got some Witch Hazel, cotton balls and band-aids. When people asked her to stop, she pressed forward with the fortitude of an ancestor who knows that pain and struggle is the predecessor of change. She was the true heroin at the helm. There are great things in store for her future.
I’d be lying if I didn’t confess my anxieties about the trip down to Auburn last night. For quite some time, I’d been mentally preparing for the panel discussion about the blackface incident which occurred five years ago. An Auburn Autumn is based on the event. I awoke Tuesday morning with a migraine headache, no doubt brought on by the stress surrounding event.
Several people had offered to posse up and roll down to Auburn with me, including two of my frat brothers. One is 6’-4” and tips the scale at 250. The other is stout and weighs in at about 240. One of my co-workers also volunteered to ride down. He’s a mountain of a man who’s 300 pounds easy. He’s quick and agile and a bit gangster if asked to be.
It seems that various people were concerned for my safety, one of my readers even sent an e-mail that read, “Don’t go to Auburn. It’s a set up!” I, on the other hand, didn’t feel the need to take backup. It’s a college campus and the event was billed to be attended by students, faculty and administrators. Having interacted on college campuses, I was under the impression that these types of events are very civil and people are usually free-thinking-civil minded individuals.
The Pre-Event Meeting
And of course, my assumptions were made valid when I was greeted, before the event, with the utmost Southern hospitality. I enjoyed a wonderful dinner with a few faculty, and students while we discussed the book and the incident. Paul Kittle, director of Greek life asked a very interesting question at dinner. “If we took away the Black face[in the actual pictures], and the fraternity members had just been wearing Omega Psi Phi shirts, would it have been viewed as a racist incident?” Probably one of the best questions I’ve been asked about the incident. My answer was that I think it still would have been seen as racially motivated, but perhaps on a smaller scale. I think my frat brothers would have looked at the pictures and said, ‘Look at those white boys wearing our shirts.’
In The Lions' Den
I walked into the ball room where the event was being held. Much to my surprise, there was a slide show of the images from the 2001 party being projected onto a gigantic screen. During the entire discussion, the pictures kept flashing over and over and over. It was, I think, a testament of how head-on the group was willing to discuss the incident. Nearly 200 people attended the event, a great majority of them were black. It’s also interesting that there were two sides of the room and it was quite obvious that almost all of the whites sat on one side of the room with some blacks interspersed within. On the other side of room there were almost no whites sitting with blacks.
The event organizer asked 15 people to take part in the panel and only three showed up; myself, Mr. Paul Kittle and Dr. Kam. Kittle has been at Auburn 18 months and Dr. Kam was at Auburn when the incident occurred. Both men answered all questions thrown their way and weren’t afraid to express their candid opinions.
Taking Shots
The biggest criticism I got was the picture on the cover of the book. A student asked a very passionate question about why the Auburn colors were on the cover and why there was a noose on the cover and how could I, as a person who attended and HBCU, write a book about the incident.
Dr. Overtoun Jenda from the Office of Diversity and Multicultural Affairs sat in the back of the room and expressed his desire not to have any comments during the evening, but when Kittle asked Jenda to answer a question, Jenda made a brief statement about polices and practices that Auburn has implemented. Jenda shook my hand and introduced himself then stated that when the incident happened, he and other faculty traveled around the state telling high school students that Auburn was a good school and the pictures were not representative of Auburn. Jenda then turned to me and said that he had not read the book, but he was concerned when he saw the cover because he doesn't think high school students an decipher between fact and fiction. He then urged the students in the audience to go out and recruit more black students.
Another student expressed the same concerns about what he perceived to be the negative image on the cover and said that he thought the cover image was revenue driven. We talked briefly about what else could have been on the cover to create a provocative image. Neither of us came up with a better idea.
Turning The Tables
As I sat in the room, I couldn’t help but notice an eerie feeling of de ja vu. I could hear the tension in the students’ voices as they watched the images loop on the giant screen. A good number of the students wanted to know what would happen if the incident happened again. Kittle seemed to be taking the brunt of most of those questions and one or two students took Kittle to task saying that the university should take a harder stance on racially offensive acts.
Kittle rallied back with a very interesting observation. It seems that Kittle collects the party fliers of all the fraternities and sororities on campus. “I wish I would have brought those fliers and displayed them on the slide show, tonight,” Kittle said. He referenced the fliers by noting that some of them contained images of scantily clad women and that the images seen in the fliers might be considered offensive to some people.
This raises a good question because Kittle also noted that the images he saw in the offensive pictures were images that he’d seen at step shows and other events around campus. I’d mentioned earlier that the pictures from the Halloween parties were poses and gestures that could be seen on the Web site of my fraternity. They were poses and gestures that you could see me doing when I was in college. They were poses and gestures you can see black folks doing on MTV-BET. They imitated what they see us often doing.
Dr. Kam was very passionate about having dialogue surrounding the incident. He expressed heartfelt opinions about what should happen next and his opinions where candid and unrehearsed. He also told a funny story about when the pictures leaked out in 2001. Kam, upon seeing the pictures, ran to a house of the fraternity that he was advising at the time, and woke up the frat members and made them look at the pictures on the Internet and said, “None of you had better not be in a single one of these pictures!”
Missed Opportunities
How else can I say this? None of the members of the offending fraternities made any comments. I would venture to say that none of them were in the room, but I can’t say that with 100 percent certainty. If they were in the room, they didn’t tell us what’s different at the frat house. They didn’t tell us what their current Halloween parties are like. They didn’t tell us how it changed the lives of their former members. They didn’t tell us how Auburn should move on. They didn’t tell us if they were offended because the photos were still being displayed. They didn’t tell us that they could care less what black folks or the Auburn community thinks about their activities. They didn’t tell us it was none of our business what they did to prevent another scandal. They didn’t tell us that they were not a racist organization and resented the implication. They didn’t tell us anything, so we are left only with assumptions. When I attended the press conference on Auburn's campus in 2001, none of the offending frat members were present although they were asked to come.
I was disappointed that so much of the discussion focused on fraternities and not the entire Auburn community. It seems that the black athlete is the sacred cow on big college campuses. I wish someone would have talked about the power of college athletes. And why, for the most part, they remained silent during the scandal. I wish we could have discussed what would have happened if the players had boycotted the Iron Bowl if the situation was not resolved. But that’s stretching it…a lot.
The Fiasco of My Frat Brothers
Two of my frat brothers from Auburn attended the event. One was a student and the other the campus advisor. The campus advisor expressed his concern that he wished we would have had some dialogue before the event. I’ve given my contact information to a good number of my frat brothers at Auburn and I didn’t receive any urgings or requests to meet before the forum. But we both agreed what’s done is done and we began a dialogue about his concerns, mainly that he wished I would have consulted with my frat brothers who were on campus at the time of the incident--a question I’ve discussed at great length with my frat brothers. The advisor said that he’d come to the discussion to refute anything that might have been said by myself or anyone else that may have been inaccurate. He gave me his contact info and I offered to make myself available at any time if there’s ever a need.
My young frat brother who attended was my hero. He was the restoration of my faith that I do indeed have young frat brothers who are independent thinkers and who aren’t afraid to go against the grain and defy the wishes of a majority group. He told me that he attended to determine if I would vacillate on my philosophies about what I said in my private correspondence with my frat brothers and what I said in a public forum. I tried to instill in him that for future endeavors as an African American male, whenever someone gives him a microphone, a venue and an audience, he should seize that opportunity to say anything that he feels is relevant and important.
I would have preferred my frat brothers, enrolled at Auburn, come to the event, take part in the discussion and lambaste me publicly than to not show up at all. It’s rare when an average person is given an opportunity to speak their mind with an open mic, in the public spotlight. And now that opportunity has passed.
But I have a great respect for my frat brothers who showed up, and I ppreciate their willingness to listen.
The Solution
Ah yes, the meat of the matter. I’ve had 100 miles and 12 hours to think about this. I was encouraged and also disheartened at the conclusion of the evening. I asked one of the panelists if we’ll ever be at a place when we expel students for racially offensive acts. There was a long answer. The short answer was no.
There were two statements that rattled me. The first was, “This is an institution of learning. Not an intuition of oppression…” That statement was almost word for word what Auburn’s president said during the press conference I attended in 2001.
The other statement was “This is a family matter and we’ll take care of this in house.”
In a cosmic coincidence, that’s exactly what one the characters in the book said when trying to calm the waters of the scandal.
In essence, it was revealed, during the discussion, that if this incident happens again, the offending students will not be expelled. Let me write that again just in case someone skimmed past that last sentence. IF THIS INCIDENT HAPPENS AGAIN A STUDENT WILL NOT BE EXPELLED.
That being said, I think the door is left wide open for the incident to reoccur at Auburn. Because, after all, if someone wants to do it again , they already know what the punishment will be. What I keep thinking about is that this happened three times at Auburn. Once in 1999 and then twice in 2001.
The decision not to expel is an unfortunate double edged sword. If I’m the president at Auburn and this scandal hits while I’m in office, I don’t think that I can pull the trigger and expel students who do this. I would want to. But I think that I’d be under so much pressure from alumni, boosters and lawyers that I would be fearful of committing political suicide. Maybe I wake up one day and say it doesn’t matter what they do to me. So I make the decision to kick offending students out of school. I think there would be resources in place to have my decision reversed.
So, what’s the solution? It’s simple complexity. School administrators don’t have the power to handle this issue. Their hands are tied. It’s an inherent fact of large institutions. There are simply too many variables that won’t come together to solve the equation.
THE POWER TO ADDRESS THIS LIES WITHIN THE MINDS OF STUDENTS.
Kittle slipped in one of the most profound statements of the evening. He said, “You as the student body have the ability to make them not want to be here anymore.”
And Kittle was not talking about death threats and harassments, but he meant using your voice and creative wisdom to bring so much attention to the incident that an offending individual realizes it’s in his or her best interest to enroll else where.
I’m reminded of an incident at Rutgers university when a young black woman protested a racial incident on campus by running onto the basketball court and sitting at half court before the game started. Suddenly more students joined her and in a matter of seconds people watched on television as students protested by stopping the game and sitting on the basketball court.
What happens when a student sits at the fifty-yard line in Jordan-Hare Stadium before the Iron-Bowl? What happens when students raise money to take out a full page ad in the newspaper asking for a student to leave because he or she has done something racially offensive? What happens when a student stands outside of the classroom of an offending student with a sign the reads, ‘Please Withdraw’? What happens when a fraternity EXPELS one of its own members for an offensive act?
What happens is that it creates a culture. It creates a culture where peers understand that certain things will not be tolerated on a campus or in a community. And this is not indigenous to racial acts, but also acts of sexism, hate or bigotry. The real power to handle these issues lies in the minds of students.
The Real Brave Soul
Someone called me the man of the hour when I arrived. But the real man of the hour was a woman. A strong black woman by the name of Kiara Pesante. Kiara cared enough about her student body and her Auburn community to risk social standing(a valuable commodity in college) and fly in the face of danger to organize this event. When people told her to mind her own business, she made it her business. When people told her to leave old wounds alone, Kiara got some Witch Hazel, cotton balls and band-aids. When people asked her to stop, she pressed forward with the fortitude of an ancestor who knows that pain and struggle is the predecessor of change. She was the true heroin at the helm. There are great things in store for her future.
posted by Brian at 12:31 PM
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