Student leaders at Washington University in Missouri are demanding stronger disciplinary action against two white Greek organizations whose chapters were suspended last week after a rowdy group of pledges wrecked a campus dining hall and blurted racial slurs as Black employees watched in shock.
The white students spit at each other, stood on tables, threw eggs and casually used the N-word during the March 21 incident at one of the nation’s foremost private research universities.
More than a week after the chaos, both Kappa Sigma fraternity and Alpha Phi sorority were suspended, and a student conduct investigation was launched into the incident at the Bear’s Den, while a decision is pending whether further action will be taken, according to a statement from Dean of Students Rob Wild.
The Washington University Police Department started looking into the incident on March 22. Later, on March 26, they handed the case over to the Office of Student Conduct, which led to the suspension of both chapters on March 27.
On the night of the incident, the rambunctious crowd burst into the dining room and began running around throwing raw eggs, splattering the floor, furniture and glass doors, while a number of individuals began spitting at each other and climbing on top of the dining tables, according to David Cook, president of the local food workers union, which represents the workers at the dining hall.
“There need to be repercussions to show that this will not be tolerated,” Cook told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, adding that there were approximately 10 to 20 workers present at the dining hall when the egging incident occurred.
“These are good quality people,” he said. “These are hard-working people. They care about the students.”
Wild, the dean of students, told the independent campus newspaper Student Life that the Office of Student Affairs has maintained regular communication with the Dining Services staff, and were working to get to the bottom of the alleged incident.
Meanwhile, the university’s Association of Black Students has called on administration officials to make an example of those who were involved, saying Black workers were directly targeted in violation of student discrimination policies, and should thus be expelled and their Greek associations barred from campus.
However, some witnesses claimed the white students threw the eggs only at each other and not at the dining hall workers, and that the racial slurs were not directly aimed at the workers either, although some of the Black employees said they still felt frightened as the situation appeared to spiral out of control.
One Black student who witnessed the commotion spoke to station KSDK in St. Louis about the harrowing scene, but asked not to be identified after she said she heard white students use racial slurs when they sieged the dining hall.
The racial implications of the incident left some students deeply disturbed as the facility employs a large number of Black workers, making it appear as if they were being singled out while being left with a disgusting mess to clean up.
“They start going on tables and dancing and like jumping and screaming,” the witness told the outlet. “The volume is kind of getting louder and we hear stumbling and people coming in from both doors and we’re like, oh hell no. They’re like, clear the area! Clear the area! They’re screaming, kind of like belligerent.”
The student said she ran out the building to avoid being confronted and give things a minute to cool off, but when she returned moments later, the melee had escalated.
“Eggs splattered all over the floor, they spit on the door that we opened,” she said, adding that she spoke with one of the Black workers who heard racial slurs being thrown around during the free-for-all.
Some of the workers were reportedly reluctant to come forward out of fear of retribution, the witness said.
“There’s a level of hesitancy to speak about it because they’re in a vulnerable state of they have jobs to maintain,” she said.
At least one dining services worker who was working the night of the incident told Student Life that none of the white students harassed her directly.
“They were more erratic with each other,” said Hollee Brooks. “[It was] just drunk behavior, adolescent drunk behavior.”
Brooks, however, did acknowledge that she heard one student use the N-word, but she clarified that she didn’t believe it was directed at her or her co-workers, although she couldn’t tell if the person who said it was part of the group causing trouble because she couldn’t see them.
Another witness said the white students were “loud and obnoxious” as they ran roughshod through the dining room.
“They were wrestling with one another, I was told students were spitting in one another’s faces,” said Gilbert Grigsby, who was supervising the dining services area when the crowd rushed in. “As I was walking back and forth, a young man and a young lady came in and I heard them say ‘we’re going to do this right here” after they’d come in from throwing eggs outside.
“When I went outside to look, I saw that they had egged the front door,” Grigsby said.
Notably, Grigsby emphasized that he did not hear any racial slurs during the chaos.
“I was right there to make sure nobody got into our spaces,” Grigsby said. “I did not hear that.”
One female student reported being pummeled with raw eggs, and said she was forced to go home and clean up.
Someone reported hearing a person in the crowd scream, “Let’s prank the cashiers!”
Rumors on social media suggested that the incident was connected to a scavenger hunt that new fraternity members were required to do as part of their annual initiation activities.
The Black student association called attention to the incident in an April 2 post to Instagram, calling the actions a potential hate crime and demanding the Office of Student Conduct to “hold all individuals accountable to the fullest extent.”
In a statement, Washington University said, “We would take any allegations of disruptive or harassing behavior very seriously. We’re committed to creating a campus environment where all feel welcome and respected and where every member of our community is treated fairly with due process.”
Missouri state Rep. LaKeySha Bosley said the incident emphasized the urgent need for diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, highlighting the impact on minority workers who feel demoralized by having to serve racist populations.
“This is a very real result that we’re seeing right now of why DEI is so important in educating our scholars and the staff in having policies put in place that promote diversity, equity and inclusion,” she told KSDK. “It’s demoralizing to have to serve someone and serve a population that you know will make your life harder, make your job harder. That’s not in their job description to clean up eggs and spit.”
The university has a policy in place that requires fraternities and sororities to report their “new member education plans.”
“The new member process is very traditional for sororities and fraternities,” Wild told Student Life. “Sometimes things happen that are not on the list that’s submitted to us, and if those are violations, we’ll address them with the groups.”
Taylor Robinson, a junior studying anthropology who also serves as president of the Black student association, called the incident unacceptable after meeting with university officials last week.
“Myself and other students, we talked to the dining workers,” Robinson told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “They serve us food, they ask us how we are and we care about what happened to them. We could not believe that it was true.”
Robinson said he was aiming to keep pressure on university officials to take appropriate actions to punish the students following several other instances of anti-Black racial violence on campus that have not been adequately addressed.
“The university needs to take action when things like this occur on campus,” Robinson said. “If they could do it to dining workers, who says they wouldn’t do it to a Black student?”
Washington University officials have so far remained close to the vest about the focus of the investigation, as Julie Hail Flory, the university’s vice chancellor for marketing and communications, would not reveal the university’s account of the incident, and whether there was evidence of hate.
She did say that the administration typically works directly with the students involved to get to the bottom of what happened and address any issues.
Washington University partners with food service company Sodexo, which employs the dining hall workers.
Data from the Washington University registrar shows that 7.5 percent of the student body is Black, while 37.7 percent is white.
