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There were no white sheets, hooded masks, cross-burnings, bullets or hate speeches. It was just college kids in black ninja-warrior Halloween costumes with fencing masks, holding tiki torches. That didn't stop outraged faculty at Atlanta's Emory University from thinking the robed students paid homage to the Ku Klux Klan. The professors organized, mobilized and struck. It used to be students who took over buildings and held faculty hostage. Now it's faculty taking over pep rallies and holding students hostage.

Welcome to the modern university protest, Southern style.

That great university campus edict of "Thou Shalt Not Offend" rose to heights unseen since the "water buffalo" incident at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1993 a white student, woken by the loud behavior of a group of black women outside his dorm, called them "water buffalo" and invoked the campus language police.

"Robegate" has produced a jagged fault line dividing faculty and students. Most students (and to be fair, many professors) think critics among the faculty went hysterical over nothing. The faculty, in turn, is dismayed by a lack of sensitivity to the region's racist past.

The robed and masked students were part of the Paladin Society, a secret nine-member group formed by three students who were frustrated by Emory's lack of school spirit. Looking for a breakthrough event that would energize the student body, the Paladin Society and school administrators settled on a surprise outdoor pep rally at night. They chose Sept. 17 because it was the school mascot's 100th birthday and the 161st anniversary of classes.

At 8 p.m., Palladin members stood outside with their tiki torches while administrators rousted students out of their rooms with bullhorns, enticing them with the promise of a mysterious gathering. Five hundred or so black and white dorm residents were guided by the tiki torch-bearers onto a soccer field where music, food and dancing awaited them. The kids were trying to raise school spirit. They raised hell instead.

After various meetings, articles and editorials in the school paper, the controversy crested with a published letter demanding an end to the costumes and secrecy. The letter was signed by approximately two dozen of Emory's most prestigious faculty members (including a Nobel laureate).

"The public rituals and costumes of its (student) members," the letter stated, "recall the most disturbing and negative features of southern history: lynching and other forms of racial violence and intimidation sponsored by such white supremacist organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan. While the current image of Atlanta is one of racial progress, until the 1940s, Atlanta was regarded as the capital of the Ku Klux Klan. The symbolism and public rituals of the Paladin Society potentially undermine Emory's commitment to diversity and progressive social change."

Right. Pep rallies attended by black and white students as a ritual with racial undertones. That kids in Halloween costumes provoked a campus-wide controversy is a measure of the racial wounds and hypersensitivity slicing through Atlanta. Memories of the KKK hang over the South's belt like a beer belly, thwarting its diet-conscious residents. No matter how Southerners try to diet -- with fat-busting euphemisms, carbo-loading amnesia or protein-shaking reconciliations -- the weight comes crashing back. This time the weight landed on a liberal campus that was once used as hospital grounds for wounded Confederate soldiers.

The modern KKK was allegedly born on Easter Sunday, 1915, in Stone Mountain, a Georgian town 15 minutes from Emory. "It sent chills up my spine," Southern history professor Dan Carter said when he saw pictures of the robed students. "And I'm white. The South has a long history of masked vigilantes wreaking havoc on African-Americans and anybody else they didn't like."

Next page | Does the Klan serve Krispy Kremes with ghost stories?