Syracuse Theta Tau brothers explain crude skits: 'We thought it was OK' (police video)

SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- Crammed into a small table with his parents and a cop, Aaron Baxter quietly apologized.

Videos were going viral across the internet showing him swearing an "oath" to have hate in his heart for blacks, Latinos and Jews.

Baxter asked that his parents, who had rushed to Syracuse from out of state, not be shown the videos that had rocked the Syracuse University campus this spring and made headlines nationwide.

The freshman fraternity pledge tried to explain himself. With his head hanging, he paused and wiped his eyes.

"I've hurt so many people," he told the detective. "It's not me. That's not me. I was raised up better than that. I'm so sorry for the harm I've caused. You see how the campus is reacting. I've hurt a lot of people. I've hurt my friends. I've hurt my family, friends back home. And people I don't even know. I'm sorry."

The Theta Tau pledge told a detective how he and 15 fellow new members of the professional engineering fraternity sketched out a last-minute "roast" of their older brothers in March. A month later they were in the national news after the offensive videos leaked.

Caught up in a mob mentality, the brothers had performed, laughed or stood by without protesting as race, Judaism and sexual orientation became fodder for jokes in crude ways.

Some brothers savagely lampooned their own religions and races. They then watched in horror as a poorly planned, juvenile fraternity stunt blew up into a symbol of hate that reverberated beyond their campus.

The taped interview is one of 17 recorded interrogations from the campus police investigation obtained by syracuse.com. It is the first time any of the Theta Tau brothers can be heard in their own words acknowledging and apologizing for the turmoil they caused.

The recordings, which are mostly between five and 10 minutes long, reveal:

• The pledges were given little instruction or time to plan for the skit: This was to be their "one chance" to make fun of their older brothers. They got less than an hour to write, rehearse and assign parts.
• Many noted this year's roast was especially amateurish and haphazardly thrown together. Some said they were surprised at the offensive turn the roast took.
• Some brothers felt the chancellor misled the public by not explaining the videos were a parody. By not providing that context, they said, he inflamed tensions on campus and incriminated all the Theta Tau members.
• Two university police officers told brothers in different interviews their biggest mistake was posting the videos online.
• The students were remorseful and said the language they used is never OK.

The poorly thought-out attempt at comedy resulted in a huge backlash.

The 16 pledges, plus the vice president and the brother who posted the videos online, were all eventually suspended from SU, just weeks before the spring semester ended.

Twelve of the students have filed lawsuits seeking to overturn their punishments, or to recover $1 million in damages per student for defamation and breach of contract. The suits are still pending, but at least two students have been allowed to return to classes through a judge's order.

The students named in this story declined to be interviewed or did not respond to requests for interviews. Karen Felter, an attorney representing Theta Tau and several brothers, said the students wanted to avoid any additional publicity.

She said the Department of Public Safety interviews showed the students meant no harm by the roast, and that the university mishandled the investigation.

SU would not make anyone available for an interview. A spokeswoman said the university would not comment on the case.

"We stand by the actions we took to protect the well-being of the campus community and to maintain a respectful, inclusive and safe learning environment," said Dara Royer, chief marketing and communications officer.

The roast videos have been viewed nearly 1 million times on YouTube since they were posted in April. SU permanently banned Theta Tau from campus and began an overhaul of the fraternity system. The ordeal sparked a conversation about racism and marginalized groups at SU. Protesters formed a group to put pressure on the administration.

Through all of this, none of the pledges spoke publicly. Now, recorded interviews reveal how the fraternity brothers reacted in the days after they found themselves embroiled in controversy.

'I hoped that would be the end of it'

Baxter, the freshman with the starring role and disappointed parents, tried to explain why in the name of parody he used slurs and acted out vile, sexual scenes at the expense of the disabled.

He told an officer the racist, anti-Semitic oath skit was intended to poke fun at an older brother who was a Donald Trump supporter. The skit was meant to depict an over-the-top stereotype of a bigoted conservative. It didn't reflect the views of the freshman, who himself is Jewish, nor the views of the brothers who were parodied, he said.

Baxter and another pledge played central roles in the skits.

In one skit, Baxter portrayed the first "recruit" of the Trump supporter's Tri Kappa - KKK - fraternity. Later, Baxter can be heard yelling at two other brothers, telling the "f*ckin' k*kes to get in the f*ckin' showers."

In another skit, he "roasts" a brother, who is portrayed as apparently so controlled by his girlfriend that he is confined to a wheelchair. In the skit, it's supposed to be a joke that he doesn't notice when another brother, in the words of the parody narrator, "light rapes" him.

"This is awful," an older brother, who was not present for the performance, said in an interview with campus police. "It was pretty bad seeing it the first time. We don't support that language."

Several members of the fraternity interviewed by campus police said the roast got out of hand.

One pledge, who is pictured in the video but does not have a speaking role, said he was ashamed to be a part of it.

"If I was not affiliated, I would be upset," he said. "Looking back on it, I am upset that we thought it was OK because it was supposed to just be for the brothers."

Among those who took issue with the performance was the brother parodied as the Tri Kappa recruit.

The older brother told campus police the portrayal was unfair. He said he didn't participate in a lot of Theta Tau events because he is active with ROTC, the military training program. His absence at the frat earned him the nickname "Ghost."

"I was kind of shocked at how they portrayed me, and I asked them about that afterwards," he said. "Obviously they took it a little too far. Some of us expressed that to them. They appeared to be sorry about it. I hoped that would be the end of it."

'We wrote it like 30 minutes before'

The videos of the pledges' police interviews show they knew what they did was at best a bad joke that spiraled out of control.

So how did this happen?

According to the brothers, each year, new members of the fraternity perform sketches in the style of a Comedy Central roast. This year, the brothers put their skits together less than an hour before the performance. The result was a script that was more like an outline, with little practice and wide latitude to improvise.

Older brothers didn't screen the skits. Brothers were in and out of the house, and one of the older students who was prominently parodied left to go to the grocery store during the roast.

"We wrote it like 30 minutes before," one pledge told an officer. "That's why we made it a little more harsh, like for shock factor, because we didn't have time to write any jokes."

The pledge, a student of color, seemed to accept that the evening was meant for him and his brothers to abandon their beliefs and convictions in favor of a few laughs. As a teen in New York City, the pledge had participated in a protest against a police killing of an unarmed black man. He said on this night, he mostly was afraid the older brothers wouldn't think he and his pledge class were funny.

He's one of many students in the room who stood by, laughed or chimed in as their own cultural identities were ridiculed.

"We were pledges and they were brothers and weren't allowed to disrespect them, but they allowed us to disrespect them this one time," said the pledge, who played the part of a dog having sex with its owner. "We were just told, write a skit roasting the brothers. This is your one opportunity you get to do this to us, so use it well. We actually thought the skit was garbage and nobody was going to laugh."

It's clear from the videos of the skits that many brothers laughed, but some older brothers in their police interviews said they tuned out or left early when they realized how "gross" the jokes were.

One older brother said that as he watched the parody, he didn't realize anyone was recording. He said he viewed parts of the roast for the first time only after it went viral. He added that he had no idea his name was mentioned in a skit until The Daily Orange student newspaper emailed him.

The vice president, Tyler Vartabedian, said he wished he'd intervened and stopped the roast when it began to get out of hand.

Nowhere in the brothers' statements to police, public videos of the skits or paperwork filed in lawsuits is one mention made of a brother trying to intervene and put an end to the roast.

Instead videos of the skits were posted to a Theta Tau Facebook group under the name David Yankowy. Yankowy was a brother of the fraternity. The videos remained on the private page for a month without controversy until someone leaked them.

"What you see is students being a part of the norm," said SU professor Biko Gray. Gray teaches classes on religion and race, and attended protests after the roast videos leaked. He doesn't know the students personally and wasn't involved in the investigation.

"That video has at least 200 years of history behind it, a set of practices that normalize violence against people who are not white, straight, Christian, male."

That's part of the explanation for why students can be seen making fun of their own religions or races, Gray said. It's why no one intervened. And it's why many SU students have called on the administration to do more in the aftermath of the scandal, Gray said.

"This isn't joking," he said, noting the country's history of black face, minstrelsy and other forms of comedy done at the expense of others. "There are people who are living and dying behind the kind of rhetoric that they are using and abusing in that video."

One brother, who said he is Jewish, told campus police he thought the skits were "ridiculous" and not funny. Yet he didn't report it, complain to fraternity leadership or take any kind of action.

"I left that night like, that wasn't cool at all," he said, "but it's over and I'm never going to have to hear about this again."

'Syverud has put all our members at risk'

The president of the fraternity appeared blindsided by the controversy when the videos of the skits leaked.

Alexander Fox, a Le Moyne College student who was part of a program that allowed him to take classes at SU, was one of the first people police interviewed. He was not charged with any disciplinary infractions by Le Moyne, according to Felter, the lawyer representing the fraternity.

Fox told officers the university contacted him as the leader of Theta Tau at the same time the chancellor publicly announced the suspension of the fraternity.

As police asked him what he knew about videos that show pledges engaged in questionable behavior, he appeared dumbfounded.

"I'm sorry, but I have no idea what's going on," he said. "I don't know which video or anything about it. I just saw the email, probably like everyone else on campus."

In their lawsuits, students accuse SU of rushing the investigation and not providing needed context in announcements to the public.

One brother, in the audience for the roast, said Chancellor Kent Syverud endangered all members of the fraternity by not asking for their side of the story before announcing Theta Tau's suspension.

He and other brothers made an argument for why it's important the campus community understand the frat didn't have bad intentions: They say Syverud gave the campus community the false impression that the brothers were serious about the racist oath, that all Theta Tau pledges were forced to participate in a hateful ritual.

Syverud at various times described the roast videos as "disgusting," "hateful" and reflective of bigotry.

That had consequences for the brothers, they said, who reported resident assistants refusing to help and professors treating them differently in classes after the videos surfaced.

"This just goes to show that Chancellor Syverud has put all of our members at risk for psychological and physical harm," the student said. "I believe he should be held accountable."

Lawyers for the students have questioned why the brothers were charged with certain offenses, like using alcohol, when the investigation didn't support those charges. Officers early on in interviews told the students they hadn't found evidence of underage drinking, hazing or other criminal activity.

According to the lawsuits, some of the students did not know they were being recorded by the DPS. In about half the interviews, police tell students they are being videotaped. Some of the students, like the president, apparently didn't know why they were brought in and interrogated by police.

One brother showed up to the Department of Public Safety with the recorder on his cell phone switched on. Officers refused to conduct an interview until he agreed to turn the recorder off.

He and several brothers reported to police that they had been threatened online or had seen brothers' private information shared on social media. Officers in the interviews agreed there had been concerns about the brothers' safety and confirmed they had investigated threats. Officers offered escorts to and from class, a service the university makes available to any student who doesn't feel safe.

'Don't change'

While the chancellor blasted the students publicly, DPS officers in the recorded interviews treated the Theta Tau brothers with courtesy and empathy. At times, the officers appear sympathetic and forgiving.

They primarily asked whether anyone was injured or forced to participate and if there were drugs and alcohol at the event. The officers told the students, who often asked what would happen to them, that they had no idea what penalties the administration might hand down.

The officers told the students to go about their business, attend class, get through the end of the semester, and come back in the fall for a fresh start.

They emphasized that campus safety is there for everyone, including the brothers if they felt threatened.

"We want to protect all sides of this whole thing and we're just trying to get as much together as we can to kind of soften the blow with this," Detective Tracey Johnson said. "We obviously want to be vigilant because we have people protesting and making issues out of it."

One officer said he believes Theta Tau is the most diverse fraternity at SU. Two officers mentioned how working on a police force is somewhat like a fraternity.

"I know what it's like being in a brotherhood, too, being a police officer," Detective Michael Toia said.

Toward the end of Toia's interview with Baxter, the students' parents seated at the table, the detective described the whole ordeal as a "teaching moment."

"I can't emphasize to you enough that the mistakes that were made were A) it was recorded, OK? And B) it was posted on a 'private' website," Toia said. "The most fatal mistake you guys made was videorecording it."

Toia expressed sympathy to Baxter.

"It's not who you are and yet this has been exposed and portrayed as something differently," the officer said. "You continue to be who you are, OK? And don't change."

The student's father interjected, shaking his head side to side: "That said ... what you did was stupid. And thoughtless."

Read our continuing coverage of Theta Tau's expulsion

Public Affairs Reporter Julie McMahon covers courts, government and other issues affecting taxpayers. She can be reached anytime: Email | Twitter | 315-412-1992