An Oklahoma college recruiter lost his job after he lined a group of high school students up based on their skin color and hair texture.
The unidentified man visited Harding Charter Preparatory High School in Oklahoma City last week to recruit for Oklahoma Christian University, reported KFOR. Instead of doing his job, he decided to perform a racist exercise with a group of juniors.
The recruiter instructed the students to line up according to their skin tone.
“He was like, 'Let's play a little game,'” student Korey Todd recalled. "He said, 'Okay, everyone now line up from darkest to lightest skin complexion.'”
After the students obliged, he made them line up again, but he switched the pecking order.
"He told us nappiest hair in the back and straighter hair in the front,” Rio Brown, another student, said.
Todd believes the recruiter wasn’t versed in how to act in a diverse environment.
"I could already see through his BS basically,” Todd said. “He was a white man.”
Brown said the man was so focused on the problematic game he “barely talked about the school itself.”
After OCU got wind of the activity, the recruiter was fired and the university issued an apology.
“The OC admissions counselor who visited Harding Charter Preparatory Academy on Monday is no longer an Oklahoma Christian University employee,” OCU said in a statement. “OC admissions leadership did not approve the inappropriate activity in advance and has communicated closely with Harding administration since the visit. Admissions staff are scheduled to visit the academy Monday to apologize to Harding students and staff on behalf of the University."
According to OCU’s website, ethnic minorities only make up 27% of the student body. Last year, the university renamed a building originally named after Church of Christ minister N.B. Hardeman. The renaming happened after the discovery of a 1941 article describing Hardeman’s mistreatment of Black people during a trip to Texas, per Religion News Service.
“When N. B. Hardeman held the valley-wide meeting at Harlingen, Texas, some misguided brethren brought a group of negroes up to the front to be introduced to and shake hands with him," minister Foy Wallace wrote.
"Brother Hardeman told them publicly that he could see all of the colored brethren he cared to see on the outside after services, and that he could say everything to them that he wanted to say without the formality of shaking hands. I think he was right. He told of a prominent brother in the church who went wild over the negroes and showed them such social courtesies that one day one of the negroes asked him if he might marry his daughter. That gave the brother a jolt and he changed his attitude!”
Harding principal Steven Stefanick framed the recruiter’s action as a routine visit gone wrong.
“As you are aware, our school is visited by many college representatives each year to recruit the most hardworking students in the state of Oklahoma,” the statement read. “Unfortunately, an incident occurred this Monday when a college recruiter from Oklahoma Christian University led a group activity with our students that involved inappropriate and hurtful statements.”
