Here is the link to my storify: https://storify.com/cparas22/notjustsae
The hashtag I curated was #NotJustSAE. It was started by Zellie Thomas, when he met with members of the activist group #NJShutItDown at Monclair University to reflect on the 9 second video that showed members of Sigma Alpha Epsilon (SAE) at Oklahoma University chanting racist epithets. During this reflection, students recalled racist incidents on their own campuses and they all started to lead a Twitter conversation with the hashtag #NotJustSAE. Many people started using the hashtag, first just students recalling incidents they have witnessed. It moved on to being people of all color and age getting involved in the hashtag and posting their opinions. He wanted to show that this topic is relevant to many students and the racism and micro-aggressions are being swept under the rug. The goal of the hashtag was to work to weaken the post-racial period we are in and highlight these micro-aggressions and allow people to see how prevalent racism still is in our society, especially on college campuses. The hashtag mostly put the blame on Greek Life.
The way I organized my tweets of the hashtag was based on the topic of tweets themselves. The first tweet was the one that started the whole conversation. The ones who started the hashtag wanted the conversation to be about racist fraternities and sororities and overall racist experiences on college campuses. Next I showed tweets of pictures of college students dressed in racist costumes with racist remarks in the captions. Each response to the pictures say that it’s not just the SAE chapter at Oklahoma that is racist, many other colleges are the same. Then I included different examples of racist things that occurred at other colleges, such as the University of Maryland, University of Texas, and American University. They include how some Universities push these issues under the rug to hide them. I then showed tweets of people that post their own opinions and experiences relating to racism. Many use the hashtag in a different way, saying that it’s not just SAE, it’s America and that people need to stop blaming only Greek Life. These tweets use the hashtag to show that racism is prevalent in all aspects of life and Greek Life is not the cause. The next set of tweets use the hashtag to put the blame all on Greek Life. They say that college fraternities are where white men are encouraged to be racist and all of them need to be shut down. Many tweets also related to events relating to Ferguson and how they tie together issues of race. I then end with tweets that again support the idea that explain that the hashtag is correct in that racism is everywhere, but wrong in claiming that all of Greek Life is racist. The stories that people tweet about and the pictures that go viral show that racism is all around our society, and a lot of it happens on college campuses, but they cannot be the only ones to blame.
That is the main argument that has come out of this; the two different views of what the hashtag is all about. I saw that a lot of the tweets were by people of color, but many white people contributed as well. And I noticed that the opinions were greatly skewed and couldn’t be explained by their race. The argument is whether or not we can blame the racism that has plagued our society solely on college students and fraternities. This hashtag has allowed people to explain their opinion of what is happening at many colleges concerning racism and challenge each other. People are challenging universities that push issues like these under the rug. I think the hashtag achieved its goal of bringing attention to the issue of racism in our society but failed in its attempt to say that Greek life and colleges are to blame for most of it. The hashtag did provoke a huge discussion about racism and where people think the blame is. Some people think change lies in getting rid of Greek Life, and some believe that change can only come if society as a whole changes. I do not think this hashtag worked properly because its message got lost in the midst of millions of tweets. The argument is so controversial that I think no one will ever truly agree. There are two sides to this issue and the hashtag includes both. I do think it succeeded in bringing the issue of racism into the news even more. I don’t think it has succeeded in provoking change because most people are just complaining about the issue and are not actively doing anything to fix it. This twitter activism has mostly been a way to advertise how prevalent racism is in our society, without doing much to actually bring about change. In order to make a different, I think that people need to realize that the more they argue and are shocked over what is happening, the more time they are wasting where they could actually do something about it. Now that the hashtag has lost momentum and is only being used when another incident at a college campus occurred, I think that many people have already pushed the argument away.