Johns Hopkins fraternity suspended after racially themed Halloween party

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(Ron Cassie/Examiner)
Members of the Black Student Union at Johns Hopkins University led a protest Monday just off the campus in Baltimore to speak out against the local Sigma Chi chapter as well as the perception of racial hostility on campus. Sigma Chi held a “Halloween in the ’Hood” party Saturday night. The center poster includes a photograph of an effigy hung in a noose at the party, comparing it to a photo of a real lynching.

Members of the Black Student Union and supporters rallied on North Charles Street in front of the campus, speaking out against the local Sigma Chi chapter and perceived racial hostility on campus. Hopkins is investigating the party and said the national Sigma Chi fraternity has imposed a 45-day suspension of the chapter’s activities and will conduct its own investigation.

The uproar began shortly after the “Halloween in the ’Hood” party was advertised on the Web site Facebook.com. The invitation encouraged racial-stereotyping costumes, included references to the late attorney Johnnie Cochran and O.J. Simpson, and prefaced descriptions of Baltimore as “a ghetto,” “the hood” and “the HIV pit” with a four-letter epithet.

The invitation was attributed to Justin H. Park, who is listed as a Sigma Chi Class of 2008 member on the fraternity’s Web site.

Johns Hopkins said in a written statement that the Greek life coordinator had told the chapter president last week that he found the advertisement racist and offensive, and directed the fraternity to withdraw the advertising immediately, but it reappeared without the coordinator’s knowledge, in an altered but still offensive form.

Two men who answered the door at the fraternity house Monday said they had no comment.

Efforts to reach Park or other fraternity members by phone were unsuccessful.

Two members of the Black Student Union, Louis Young, 21, and Phil Roberts, 20, said they were disappointed by the administration and some classmates’ response to the protest as well.

“People have been walking by saying we are a disgrace to the university,” said Roberts, 20, a junior international relations major.

A small group of black students went to the party and said white students were dressed as pimps, prostitutes — and slaves. Outside the front door of the house in the 200 block of East 33rd Street was a plastic skeleton dressed as a pirate, hanging from a rope noose.

“And then as you walked up to the house, you heard fake gunshots — as if there is a gun fight in this neighborhood every night,” said freshman Blake Edwards, 18. “The noose is extremely offensive and makes a mockery of the minority students that go to school here. Several of the girls I went with left in tears.

“The entire city of Baltimore should be offended by this.”