Members of one of the largest fraternity groups in the U.S. were condemned on Monday by the the University of Oklahoma president, David Boren, after students were caught hurling racist epithets towards black Americans in a video published online.

Boren, a former US senator who also served as the state’s governor, called the students’ behavior sickening, and said Sigma Alpha Epsilon (SAE) would not be welcome on the University of Oklahoma campus again.

“This is not who we are,” said Boren in a Monday press conference. “Those students will be out of that house by midnight tomorrow night, the house will be closed, and as far as I’m concerned it won’t be back – at least not as long as I’m president of the university.”

The university is conducting an investigation into the incident and could expel students involved. It has revoked the chapter’s permission to operate on campus.

“Would I be happy if they left the university, and were no longer our students? Yes, I’d be happy,” said Boren. “We don’t have room for racism and bigots at this university.”

SAE representatives said the footage, apparently featuring Oklahoma students chanting about lynching and using racist epithets against black people, left it embarrassed and disgusted.

“We apologize for the unacceptable and racist behaviour of the individuals in the video, and we are disgusted that any member would act in such a way,” the SAE leadership said in a statement.

“We have more than 15,000 collegiate members across the nation, and this incident should not reflect on other brothers because this type of hateful action is not what Sigma Alpha Epsilon stands for.”

The 10-second video was first posted online on Sunday by an OU black student group, Unheard, and first reported by the Oklahoma Daily, a student newspaper. It showed people on a bus chanting in unison and using offensive language in reference to African Americans, vowing to never admit any into the fraternity. The chant also made light of lynchings.

“This video contains language that is offensive, disrespectful, and unacceptable,” Unheard said in a statement posted with the video. “Even after 50 years after the events that occurred in Selma, Alabama, we still have a reason to march. We as a people have indeed come a long way, but yet still have so far to go.”

Unheard, which describes itself as an alliance of black students from OU focusing on a lack of representation and support on campus, said it would held a demonstration on campus on Monday morning. Boren later said a diverse “cross section” of the university attended the rally.

The SAE leadership determined that members of its Kappa chapter at the University of Oklahoma were involved in the events shown in the video.

“I was not only shocked and disappointed but disgusted by the outright display of racism displayed in the video,” Brad Cohen, the fraternity’s national president, said in the organisation’s statement, noting that “SAE is a diverse organisation, and we have zero tolerance for racism.”

On Twitter, Cohen added that the students involved in the video would be “dealt with.”

The national SAE leadership said it hoped to be able to re-establish the Oklahoma Kappa chapter “at some point in the future.”

Originally published by The Guardian