By Eric B. Meyer
On Martin Luther King Day, I performed community service with a few of my co-workers and my 4-year-old son. We went to a local center and spent a few hours making peanut butter sandwiches to feed the homeless.
Actually, we spent a half-hour or so making sandwiches. Most of us spent the remainder of the time continuing to make sandwiches, while my son ate peanut butter.
Win-win.
But imagine, if instead of performing community service, my co-workers and I decided to host an “MLK Black Party,” where we dressed in basketball jerseys, flashing gang signs and drank from watermelon cups.
An offensive “tribute” to Martin Luther King
KVVU-TV Fox 5 reports that this is exactly what a bunch of knucklehead students from the TKE Fraternity at Arizona State University did on Monday. Below is the video report.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUo-ZRfsgVg&feature=youtu.be
These students were not only ignorant enough to host this party, but two shared it on Instagram (complete with hashtags like #mlkparty, #watermeloncup, #hood, #blakcoutformlk and #ihaveadream). Both appear to have since deleted their Instagram accounts.
Takeaways for employers
There are two things to remember here:
- Policies can’t prevent stupidity. While it is prudent to educate and train your workforce on policies governing discrimination and responsible use of social media, stupidity like this proves that no matter what type of policy or guidance you may provide, problems in the workplace will arise.
- It’s how you respond that matters. When it comes to folks who create a hostile work environment for others, make sure that you take the immediate necessary steps that are reasonably designed to end the harassment.
Arizona State University has suspended the TKE fraternity. We’ll see whether some of the students involved continue to receive their education from ASU.
This was originally published on Eric B. Meyer’s blog, The Employer Handbook.