Face-off at Emory

Members of a student group at Emory University were expected to meet with university President William Chace April 19 as CL went to press to demand the revocation of a fraternity chapter’s charter following the discovery of a photo in last year’s yearbook of a white frat boy in blackface.?

Amos Jones, organizer of Students for a Unified Emory, rejected mediation plans presented last week by the administration because they fall short of disbanding the Emory chapter of Kappa Alpha altogether. Jones has said that he would be open to the idea of suspending the fraternity from campus for four years.?

Jones objected to Dean of Students Darnita Killian’s proposal that his group’s concerns be included with a raft of complaints against KA that involve the fraternity’s display of a Confederate battle flag. Emory’s alumni organization voted to evict the fraternity from its on-campus house after a February 1999 hazing incident that involved subjecting pledges to frigid water in an outdoor swimming pool. In December, when the eviction was ordered, members hoisted the flag over their front door.?

“Kappa Alpha is a catalyst for racial hostility,” says Jones. “Their culture is one of intolerance and really of bigotry.” But he doesn’t want the blackface incident mixed with the other offenses. To do so, he says, would relieve Emory of dealing with it as a serious racial infraction in and of itself.?

Jones discovered the photo when a new student moved onto his hall in March. Puzzled about why a student would be moving into the dorm at mid-semester, Jones reasoned that the student must be a displaced KA. He looked for the student’s picture among those of KAs in the yearbook and didn’t find it, discovering instead the controversial photo.