UT frat party is being called racist over "border patrol" themed party

AUSTIN, Texas - Most times it's a good thing when people are still talking about the party you threw over the weekend, but in this case it's not.

A fraternity at the University of Texas threw a party over the weekend that many people are calling racist.

FOX 7 spoke with that Greek organization Monday and they tell us that was not their intention.

Many students say Fiji threw a "border patrol" themed party, costumes ranging from sombreros to construction gear. That's what is being found offensive.

"It sounds pretty offensive to me, especially not only that it was named border patrol but the costumes sounded like they were stereotypical almost. Or even just kind of racial profiling. I would like to think we're better than that here at UT so that kind of hurts my pride a little bit," says James Driver, UT student.

The Campus Climate Response Team has received eight incident reports so far from people who have been offended by the event that was thrown by Fiji.

"I believe it started as a western theme and sort of evolved into a border theme of sorts. I don't know officially what the parameters of that party were but the Division of Student Affairs and Dean of Students are actually meeting with that student leadership of that group this afternoon to address the event as well," says Erica Saenz, Associate Vice President for Community and External Relations, UT Austin.

Pictures from the party show people going in wearing construction worker gear.

Other people there dressed up with a sombrero and a poncho.

There was also a giant sized Patron bottle and a photo cut-out on display of a man and woman wearing Mexican attire.

"Maybe just more regulations on what they can exactly do. That just sounds really offensive to me," says Driver.

The President of the fraternity tells FOX 7 that the party was called "Fiji Marshals," with a western theme. A tradition for them since the 1970's.

We asked about the Mexican themed cut-out but he said he couldn't comment on that, other than stressing they are not racist and would never condone it.

As for the University of Texas, they don't either.

"Primarily our message from the university standpoint is that these incident reports, and the events of them, do not reflect the values of our university. They certainly do not reflect the values of a majority of our students of course. Back to your point, sometimes these students do not intend for that to be offensive," says Saenz.

This isn't the first time the university has dealt with something like this.

A Campus Climate Trend Report for the 2013 to 2014 academic year was just released Monday.

They received 670 reports regarding 69 distinct bias incidents, which represents a 713 percent increase over last year.

The majority of reports were involving race and ethnicity.

That increase largely stems from two high-profile incidents sponsored by a student group.

The "Catch an Illegal Immigrant" event garnered 572 reports and ended up being canceled.

All incident reports will be reviewed over the next two days and mediation will be given to those individuals.

Again, the Division of Student Affairs did meet with the fraternity Monday and will assess the situation.