Last Updated on February 17, 2022
A member of the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority at the University of Kansas was made to admit her “white privilege” and told that her “values” as shared on social media were unbecoming of a sorority sister. Her crime? Retweeting a post by conservative pundit Candice Owens.
Katherine Lauer, a student at the University of Kansas and a member of the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority, was put on “discretionary probation” and told to take a one week “social media posting holiday” and to perform a “personal reflection and cleanse” because of her retweet of a popular post from conservative pundit Candice Owens.
The retweet advanced Owens’ original post which read, “Black Lives Matter is an organization of white men, using the faces of dead Black people to raise millions of dollars toward electing White Democrats into positions of power.”
Black Lives Matter is an organization of white men, using the faces of dead black people, to raise millions of dollars toward electing white Democrats into positions of power.
It is the most flagrantly racist organization in America.
— Candace Owens (@RealCandaceO) September 23, 2020
The tweet was re-tweeted 54,400 times and liked 148,700 times.
Along with her probation, Lauer was told by her sorority superiors that she would have to have an “open dialogue” with Kappa Alpha Theta chief operating officer Allie Dew to get a “broader education of America today.”
Lauer was also instructed to monitor her social media posts between October 19 and October 26, 2020, to “assess their alignment with the Kappa Alpha Theta online social media contract” and whether her posts help or hurt her “personal brand,” the sorority, or women of another race.
The letter Lauer received informing her of the disciplinary action read, in part, that the decision is “not claiming you have broken a bylaw or rule, but that you have had conduct unbecoming of a member of Theta as the values you have been making public through social media and text communications went against Theta’s values and disrespected women of our chapter.”
Recently, several high-profile Progressives have talked about forming a “Truth & Reconciliation Commission” designed to “deprogram” Trump supporters. The notion chillingly harkens back to the re-education camps of post-war Vietnam where millions died at the hands of the Communist regime there.
When this nightmare is over, we need a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It would erase Trump’s lies, comfort those who have been harmed by his hatefulness, and name every official, politician, executive, and media mogul whose greed and cowardice enabled this catastrophe.
— Robert Reich (@RBReich) October 17, 2020
This past summer, another Kansas college, Kansas State University, executed a kneejerk reaction over a joke post on social media that came just short of expulsion for Jaden McNeil. There, too, supporters of Black Lives Matter were the ones taking offense and demanding action. The joke? McNeil had tweeted, “Congratulations to George Floyd on being drug free for an entire month.”
