(U-WIRE) OXFORD, Miss.'Two members of the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity at the University of Mississippi are being expelled from the organization in connection with a racially insensitive photograph taken at this year's ATO Halloween party. The university and the ATO national organization will continue to investigate the actions of the entire chapter.
Meanwhile, fraternities at Auburn University and UW-Whitewater have been recently accused of facilitating acts deemed as racist.
The Mississippi photograph, discovered last week, depicted a fraternity member, dressed as a police officer, holding a gun to the head of another member dressed in blackface. The member in blackface was wearing a straw hat while kneeling on the ground picking cotton.
The picture was posted on the Party Pics' network Web site. The Web site posts professionally taken pictures at organizational parties as a means of distributing photo proofs for purchase. The pictures have since been removed from the Web site.
ATO President Grant Gremillion refused to comment on the situation, but the fraternity released a statement regarding the incident.
\As an organization on the University of Mississippi campus, ATO is highly sensitive to the issue of race, and the chapter is sincerely sorry for this terribly unfortunate incidence,"" the statement said.
Wynn Smiley, chief executive officer of the national fraternity, said the incident was unfortunate and there will be an investigation into the chapter's responsibility.
""The investigation is to ensure that we understand what was going on and about the party itself, and to get a better idea of what was going on that night,"" Smiley said.
Similar incidents were uncovered last week at Auburn University in Auburn, Ala., where members of three fraternities posed engaging in racist scenarios for professional photographers.
According to a report in The Auburn Plainsman, members of Beta Theta Pi dressed in Omega Psi Phi fraternity jerseys while another Beta wore overalls and a straw hat. In this case, all of the men pictured had their faces and bodies painted black.
Other photographs from an Auburn Delta Sigma Phi function depicted a member dressed in Klan attire and a member clothed in mock FUBU'a popular line of African American clothing'with a noose around his neck, the Plainsman reported. In the photos, students posed holding rifles to the ""black"" man while a mock hanging occurred.
At UW-Whitewater, the Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity chapter received university sanctions Oct. 31 for producing a skit at a campus variety show in which a member appeared in blackface.
According to a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel report, TKE members performed a skit based on old Nike commercials, during which a white student wore brown face paint while portraying former NBA star Charles Barkley.
