Nearly a year ago, a University of Maryland student identified as a member of Kappa Sigma Fraternity sent an email to six people, bragging about all the women he wanted to have sex with during rush week, the Baltimore Sun reports.
The writer allegedly noted which races he didn’t want invited and used racial and ethnic slurs to refer to the women of those races, the report notes. He also used an expletive to dismiss the idea of sexual consent.
Now the individual is under investigation by the school’s office of civil rights and sexual misconduct after a social media backlash. The incident came quickly on the heels of an implosion this week at the University of Oklahoma over a fraternity’s racist chant video, which probably inspired someone to dig up the year-old email.
“We are in contact with the University chapter of Kappa Sigma and they have taken swift and decisive action in this matter,” University of Maryland President Wallace Loh said in a statement. “At their request, the university has committed to provide educational training on diversity and respect for the entire fraternity.”
The incident inspired Loh to launch into an impromptu discussion with students on Twitter about racism, sexual assault and free speech.
“Where does free speech and hate speech collide?” he asked, according to the Sun. “What should prevail? What justification can we have that tacitly condones this kind of hate?”
Read more at the Baltimore Sun.