Martin, whose father and uncles had also been Kappa Alphas, advocated for it. Though it has since come down, it remained hanging during alumni weekend in 2015, in part because Mr. His proposal to remove the portrait, donated by an alumnus, proved more contentious. “I told them it was unacceptable and offensive to me and my family,” he recalled. Lee three, two, one, the South should have won.” Clark had faced little resistance to his insistence that the chapter jettison a chant that all pledges had learned - “one, two, three, Robert E. But he had not expected to hear from Taylor Martin, a white alumnus a few years his senior with whom he had clashed years earlier over displaying the portrait of Lee.Īfter pledging in the fall of 2014, Mr. Clark knew that moral support from alumni would help. Clark - one of three Black alumni in the chapter’s 137-year history - after Mr. Privately, some of its younger alumni had begun to call the fraternity’s depiction of Lee “indoctrination.” More Latinos had joined the chapter. The chapter, home to both liberals and conservatives, is officially “apolitical,” many members said.īut discomfort with Kappa Alpha’s reputation on race had been building in the chapter for some time. A few years earlier, when some members pushed to remove a portrait of Lee hanging in the fraternity house, the majority voted to leave it up. Kappa Alphas at Southwestern are “not known for doing the work of race relations,” said Ivan Maina, co-president of Ebony, a Black student group at Southwestern. Yet the dissent within Kappa Alpha, pieced together through interviews and by reviewing text exchanges and other documents, caught many familiar with the fraternity by surprise. The national ferment over race has reached many American institutions, including professional sports leagues, major corporations and Hollywood. He added, “It’s not a group you would typically expect to be the people on the front line of a protest.” MacGuire, an alumnus who voted for President Trump, lent his support to the statement after being approached by Mr. “My first reaction was, ‘I can’t believe they’ve gone and done this,’” said Pierce MacGuire, 29, referring to the chapter posting the statement. Kappa Alpha Order’s national organization then suspended the chapter, angering even some Black students on the Georgetown, Texas, campus who have not typically regarded Kappa Alphas as allies. The unusual breaking of ranks was initiated this summer by Noah Clark, a Southwestern alumnus who had, in 2017, become the first Black student to graduate as an active member of the college’s Kappa Alpha chapter. “KA nationally has a deeply troubling history that active chapters can no longer cry ignorance to,” they said in a statement drafted over often-tense Zoom meetings and GroupMe texts. Members of the Southwestern University chapter demanded that the fraternity drop its association with Lee and investigate the racial harms they say Kappa Alphas have inflicted. One campus demanded an apology after Kappa Alphas recited a chant lamenting the Union victory in the Civil War.īut the killing of George Floyd has for the first time started a racial reckoning within the fraternity’s own chapters. Black student groups have protested its antebellum-themed spring formals. Lee, the Confederate general, as a “spiritual founder” has rankled students and faculty members. Kappa Alpha, one of the nation’s largest and oldest college fraternities, is not unaccustomed to fending off charges of racism.
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