Jabar Shumate, whose resignation as the University of Oklahoma’s vice president over diversity and inclusion efforts was announced Tuesday, said Wednesday that he was given an ultimatum to quit or be fired.
OU spokeswoman Erin Yarbrough said in a prepared statement Wednesday that officials conducted an audit and confronted Shumate with allegations of “significant misuse of university assets.”
Shumate said he was given the ultimatum on Monday, and OU said he resigned during that confrontation.
University officials had said in a statement Tuesday that Shumate resigned “to pursue other career opportunities.”
In a prepared statement read at a press conference Wednesday, Shumate described the ultimatum and allegations of misuse of university assets as a “high-tech lynching” and as “false accusations.”
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A copy of the audit was not available Wednesday evening, and Shumate and his lawyer, Lindsey Mulinix-Ewert, declined to go into detail about it.
Shumate, a former legislator from Tulsa, said he resigned amid talk that his office, the Office of University Community, and its staff and student leaders were being told to vacate the old Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity house so that “the fraternity would eventually be reinstituted.”
OU disputes the assertion that SAE will return to the campus.
SAE’s demise on the OU campus led then-President David Boren to create Shumate’s position.
In March 2015, a video surfaced of OU Sigma Alpha Epsilon members singing racist lyrics on a party bus. Boren moved swiftly to ban the fraternity from campus and announced the creation of a vice president position focusing on diversity and inclusion. He tapped Shumate for the job.
Shumate said Wednesday that “to do this work in the SAE house was perhaps one of the best ways and symbols the university could (use to) really nationally set a standard that you can move toward reconciliation and not cover up the connections, the places, where incidents happen.”
Shumate said he had been involved in discussions with OU’s general counsel, general counsel’s staff and director of real estate operations. He said he had been told he would have to move himself, his staff and student leaders from the former SAE house “and that the fraternity would eventually be reinstituted and that needed to be done quickly while the students were away.”
“I did not think that it was wise to roll back all the work that had been done and to bring the fraternity back when the university was still healing,” Shumate said.
He said he argued against bringing back the SAE fraternity without a campus-wide discussion.
University officials said in a prepared statement that the SAE fraternity is not reopening a chapter at the University of Oklahoma.
Shumate previously served as a state senator for District 11, which includes north Tulsa and parts of southeast Osage County, from 2012 to 2015. He also served a term in the House of Representatives in 2004.
As a vice president, Shumate reported directly to Boren. In an administrative reorganization by new OU President Jim Gallogly, Shumate was demoted to associate vice president and was assigned to report to Provost Kyle Harper.
“OU highly values and appreciates the position of the chief diversity officer and the office of university community,” Yarbrough said. “Because this was not a preplanned exit, the university has not yet named an interim chief diversity officer.”
