Video footage of a student making racist gestures, seemingly imitating a monkey, toward a Black woman who was part of a scheduled pro-Palestinian protest at the University of Mississippi, colloquially known as Ole Miss, went viral last week, and on Sunday a fraternity announced that it had removed one member from its chapter at the school over the incident.
The Phi Delta Theta General Headquarters said in a statement that it was aware of the widely shared Ole Miss video and that “the racist actions in the video were those of an individual and are antithetical to the values of Phi Delta Theta and the Mississippi Alpha chapter. The responsible individual was removed from membership on Friday, May 3.”
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]The individual was not named, and the school has also announced a student conduct investigation into one unnamed student.
The university chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) identified the student making the monkey gestures as James “JP” Staples from the Phi Delta Theta fraternity in an Instagram post on Saturday that called for the expulsion of Staples as well as two other students—Connor Moore and Rouse Davis Boyce, both from the Kappa Alpha Order fraternity—that it said were “the primary perpetrators of racist remarks and actions that constitute derogatory and offensive behavior.”
In recent weeks, pro-Palestinian protests have spread across U.S. campuses, met with arrests and counterprotests. At Ole Miss, about 30 pro-Palestinian protesters took part in what Gov. Tate Reeves described as a “scheduled” protest, while hundreds of onlookers and counterprotesters taunted them and sang the Star-Spangled Banner to drown out the protesters’ chants.
One protester, identified by the Mississippi Free Press as graduate student Jaylin Smith, was singled out for abuse by counterprotesters, who mocked her weight and lobbed racial abuse at her.
Videos of the confrontation at Ole Miss drew reactions from lawmakers who have been vocal in their opposition to pro-Palestinian protests breaking out across American campuses. Republican Rep. Mike Collins appeared to praise the counterprotesters in a post on X that described the viral video as “Ole Miss taking care of business.” Meanwhile, Reeves, also a Republican, shared a separate video of the protesters and counterprotesters on campus, saying that it “warms my heart.”
But backlash toward the apparent racism on display also followed. The Ole Miss Associated Student Body—the university’s student government—said in a statement that at the protest, “unacceptable remarks were made that departed from our cherished values.”
Jacob Batte, the university’s director of news and media relations, similarly told ABC News that “statements were made at the demonstration on our campus Thursday that were offensive and inappropriate,” though he said that they “cannot comment specifically about that video.”
Chancellor Glenn Boyce wrote in an email to students and staff on Thursday evening that there were no arrests and no reported injuries from the demonstration, which “dispersed without incident.” However, Boyce wrote in a separate email to students on Friday night that “university leaders are aware that some statements made were offensive, hurtful, and unacceptable, including actions that conveyed hostility and racist overtones.”
“While student privacy laws prohibit us from commenting on any specific student, we have opened one student conduct investigation. We are working to determine whether more cases are warranted,” he said.
Phi Delta Theta and Ole Miss did not respond immediately to TIME’s requests for comment.
Boyce referenced Ole Miss’ fraught past—specifically, a history of racism that the school is still grappling with—in his note to university members, saying that “it is important to acknowledge our challenging history, and incidents like this can set us back.”
“It is one reason why we do not take this lightly,” he said, “and cannot let the unacceptable behavior of a few speak for our institution or define us.”
