The two students, who have not officially been identified, were
connected to a Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity event. The video,
posted on Sunday, prompted the university to shut down the
fraternity's house on campus and force members to vacate it by
midnight on Tuesday.
"There is zero tolerance for this kind of threatening racist
behavior at the University of Oklahoma," President David Boren said
in a post on social media website Twitter.
The 10-second video was shot on a bus chartered for a date night by
the fraternity. Students were seen and heard chanting in unison,
using offensive language referring to blacks and vowing never to
admit them to the fraternity.
The Dallas Morning News identified the two students as Levi Pettit,
20, and Parker Rice, 19. Pettit's parents and Rice issued apologies
on Tuesday.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2015/Mar/11/images/ads/current/sunloan_bch_021315.png) "It was wrong and reckless," Rice told the paper in a written
statement. "For me, this is a devastating lesson, and I am seeking
guidance on how I can learn from this."
The university said more people could face punishment, depending on
the outcome of its probe.
A sorority that may have been involved in the date night, the Tri
Delta group, said it was cooperating with the investigation. Its
house on campus has not faced any sanctions.
The controversy played out on social media, with an online
fundraising campaign launched for a black cook who lost his job
because of the closure.
Another video purportedly showed the fraternity's white house mother
using a racial slur.
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William Bruce James II, one of the Oklahoma fraternity's few black
members, said the SAE chapter there had undergone a cultural change
since he was a student there, from 2001 to 2005.
"The guys in that video are not my brothers," he told CNN. He said
he never got an inkling of the offending song when he was a student.
Civil rights leaders applauded the university's prompt and decisive
action.
"Racism is alive and well in America and we need ongoing, continuing
dialogue to address these concerns," Garland Pruitt, president of
the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People, told reporters.
(Additional reporting by Suzannah Gonzales in Chicago and Lisa Maria
Garza in Dallas; Writing by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Ellen
Wulfhorst, Bill Trott, Susan Heavey, Matthew Lewis and Clarence
Fernandez)
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