It is hard to imagine an unhealthier addition to a university campus, in 2021, than a fraternity that “looks to Robert E. Lee for spiritual guidance.”
Yet, that could happen at Indiana State University.
The Kappa Alpha Order fraternity confirmed that it is actively recruiting student members on the ISU campus. If successful, the effort would mark Kappa Alpha’s return to the university after the local chapter was suspended in 2017 by its national office. The chapter got suspended for failing to meet fraternity expectations regarding academics, membership, finance and education.
An agreement for Kappa Alpha’s return was confirmed at the time of the suspension, an officer for the national organization said earlier this week. Since then, fraternity representatives have discussed the reestablishment of an ISU chapter with the university’s administration, according to a Kappa Alpha statement, and recruitment of new members is ongoing.
That prospect has drawn strong opposition from the ISU Faculty Senate. The educators hold legitimate concerns about the history behind Kappa Alpha, which regards Lee as its “spiritual founder.” Lee holds such status with Kappa Alpha — which formed months after the Civil War ended — because of his “religious convictions, exemplary ideals, values, strong leadership, courtesy, respect for others and gentlemanly conduct,” according to the order’s official website.
Lee, of course, commanded the Confederate States Army during the Civil War, fighting against the United States’ Union Army. The Confederacy’s stated goal was to perpetuate the enslavement of Black people in the Southern states, which had seceded from the Union. As a result, a total of 624,511 people were killed through four bloody years of war.
No amount of elevating Lee’s personal virtues can offset his role in America’s darkest era.
ISU’s Faculty Senate passed a resolution by a 29-2 margin last month and cited Lee’s past as both a slave owner and general of the Confederate rebellion against the United States. The resolution also said Lee “allowed and inflicted cruelty on African-Americans even beyond that practiced by other supporters of the brutal institution of slavery.”
Those actions “stand in direct contradiction of ISU’s values of diversity and inclusion,” the faculty resolution stated, adding that Lee “should not be exalted on our campus.”
Kappa Alpha’s national office said the Faculty Senate “mischaracterized” the fraternity’s historical relationship to Lee. The connection, the fraternity said, is limited to Lee’s days as president of Washington College, where former Confederate soldiers formed Kappa Alpha in December 1865. Kappa Alpha also insisted its ISU chapter had a diverse membership and offered to meet with anyone on campus with concerns.
As a public university, ISU both acknowledged the Faculty Senate’s opposition to Kappa Alpha’s reestablishment on campus, based on its connection to Lee, and that the fraternity has “a historical connection to segregation and racism.” ISU also emphasized it will adhere to constitutional protections of freedom of speech and association. ISU cannot stop a campus chapter from organizing.
Kappa Alpha’s official website does not mention Lee’s responsibility for the prolonged war to preserve slavery in the South. Perhaps the fraternity can choose to overlook that glaringly significant element of his life, but history cannot.
Before Kappa Alpha reestablishes an ISU chapter, it should — of its own accord — disassociate with Lee. Last year, a Kappa Alpha chapter at Southwestern University called on the national fraternity to denounce Lee, but got suspended by the national afterward for — according to the national office — not following official protocol, the education news site Inside Higher Ed reported.
Cynics may label a call for Kappa Alpha to cut ties with its Confederate icon as more evidence of a “cancel culture.” Malarkey. For far too long, the history of the Confederacy and slavery has been whitewashed and minimized, letting subtle but real discrimination of Black Americans linger through engrained Jim Crow traditions and denials of their civil rights.
From the lawn of the Vigo County Courthouse, statues of Union soldiers and sailors overlook downtown Terre Haute. Those men would undoubtedly be astonished to know that a nearby college fraternity considers its source of spiritual guidance to be the leader of rebel forces who fought against them and this nation.
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