UPDATED: July 16, 2018 at 9:34 p.m.

Syracuse University students involved in the creation of the controversial Theta Tau videos received suspensions of up to two years, a free speech organization announced Friday.

Karen Felter, a partner at a Syracuse-based law firm representing students connected to Theta Tau who are anonymously suing SU, said 15 students are facing suspensions. The suspensions come about a month after a judicial hearing for the students began in SU’s College of Law. Eighteen students were initially charged with Code of Student Conduct violations, but at least two students accepted university-sponsored punishments before the hearing began. 

After news reports of the sanctions emerged Friday morning, Robert Hradsky, SU’s dean of students, confirmed in a campus-wide email that the students were notified of the outcome of the hearing and their punishments. Hradsky said he could not comment on the specifics of the sanctions because of federal privacy laws.  

“I recognize this has been a challenging time for our campus community,” Hradsky said in the email, sent just before 1:30 p.m. “We treated this investigation and student conduct process fairly and expeditiously. It is now time for our community to focus on the important work of advancing a more inclusive campus community.”

SU expelled the Theta Tau fraternity in April after it confirmed the Greek organization was involved in the circulation of online videos showing members engaging in behaviors that Chancellor Kent Syverud in an email called, “extremely racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic, sexist, and hostile to people with disabilities.” SU’s Theta Tau chapter said the videos depicted a “satirical sketch.”

According to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a free speech organization that has criticized the university’s judicial process, students involved with the videos violated SU policies prohibiting “harassment,” which is defined by the university as expression “beyond the bounds of protected speech, directed at a specific individual(s), easily construed as ‘fighting words,’ or likely to cause an immediate breach of the peace.”

Students were also found guilty of violating a university policy prohibiting “destructive behavior,” according to FIRE. The three-member board adjudicating the hearing said the skit threatened the mental health, physical health and safety of people who sought out and viewed the videos of the event, per FIRE. The Daily Orange published recordings of the videos soon after the fraternity was initially suspended in April.

The board said the suspensions, which were handed down on Tuesday, will give the SU community time to heal, according to FIRE. Students can appeal the suspensions.

According to the free speech organization, suspended students must complete diversity and inclusion-related tasks before returning to campus. Those tasks include:

• Reading three books on “inclusion”
• Writing a 12-page reflection paper on what it means to be a member of a diverse community
• Performing 160 hours of community service

SU’s response to the videos and its judicial conduct process has been criticized by FIRE and community members involved in the hearing.

Ari Cohn, director of FIRE’s Individual Rights Defense Program, said in a May letter to Syverud that the organization was “deeply concerned” by the disciplinary charges against the students. Cohn said the charges threatened freedom of expression at SU.

Five SU students connected to Theta Tau anonymously sued the university in April, claiming SU rushed to label them as “criminals” in an attempt to “malign the students personally” to salvage its reputation, according to court records.

Gregory Germain, an SU College of Law professor who advised three of the students charged with policy violations, said in May he believed the university conduct process was unfair. Germain said at the time he believed SU failed to view the videos as satirical skits and expressed concern with the accelerated judicial process.

In a Friday email, Germain said he understood the students used offensive language and themes in the skit, and that the publication of the videos, which were intended to depict a private event, caused anger and embarrassment. But he said he doesn’t believe academic penalties should be imposed because nobody was harassed or threatened.

“The result (of the hearing) was the students were convicted of harassment and threatening people’s mental health for performing a roast that offended no one in the room because they all knew it was a joke,” Germain said in the email. “Unless corrected, that determination will result in a scarlet letter on their official academic records, making it very difficult for the students to transfer to another school to continue their educations, or to obtain the benefits that they are paying dearly for.”

Protests erupted on the SU campus after the university initially suspended the fraternity in April. In response to the videos, SU officials promised to conduct a review of SU Greek life, revise its first year forum and create an Office of Inclusive Excellence in the College of Engineering and Computer Science, among other things.

This post has been updated with additional reporting. 

CORRECTION: In a previous version of this post, the number of students suspended by Syracuse University was misstated due to conflicting information. The Daily Orange regrets this error.

Published on June 8, 2018 at 11:50 am

Contact Jordan: jmulle01@syr.edu | @jordanmuller18