OU International Student Recounts Racist Incident With Men’s Lacrosse Team 

The University of Oklahoma is investigating an incident that occurred on January 17th on their recreation fields.

Monday, January 24th 2022, 10:15 pm



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A racist incident launches an investigation at a local university. A group of international students were playing soccer at the University of Oklahoma Intramural Fields when they were abruptly told to leave. 

Sophomore OU Student Ali Barazi is still processing what took place on the field a week ago. 

“We started playing on the lacrosse goals, we did not know what lacrosse was, so we thought they were soccer goals. We didn’t even know they were lacrosse goals to begin with,” said the International student. 

He said members of the OU Men’s Lacrosse team showed up and telling them they booked the field for the next two hours. 

“They called us Mexicans and they called us sand and then they said the n word after that,” he said. 

He and his friends sat down with the university about the incident. 

“There were two Americans and then the rest of us are Middle Eastern, so it was odd for them to call us Mexican because of the color and completion of our skin…it was very racist,” said the student. 

He said the University told them they try to treat situations like this as learning experiences.  

“If this is going to be allowed, then no matter how many supportive emails they send us we are not going to feel supported unless something is done,” he said. 

The student said OU suggested having the students take diversity courses. 

“I feel like the minimum that should be done is that the lacrosse team should be banned from playing until the members that said the racist things come forward,” said Barazi. 

The University sent News 9 a statement that said in part “additional information is being gathered and Fit+Rec is reviewing the process for reserving intramural fields.” 

“They made it a logistics issue instead of a racism issue. This is not the main problem…even if we were at 40,000 students using one goal no matter what the argument is about there is no reason for it to become a racist argument,” he said. 

Barazi told News 9 this is not the first racist incident they have experienced on campus. 



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