Ole Miss sorority, Alpha Phi Ole Miss, Jakiyra Metcalf Ring
The Lyceum in Oxford, Mississippi, where campus officials had made no public comment on the doorbell footage by Sunday 8 November Adam Jones / CC BY-SA 3.0, cropped

The Alpha Phi chapter at Ole Miss says the women named online in connection with a viral video shot outside a Black student's flat are not members. It says social media users appear to have confused them with chapter members who share similar names.

The mix-up has badly upset those members and their families, the chapter says. Names began spreading online within a day of Jakiyra Metcalf posting the clip, with some tied to the sorority. Yet no official source has confirmed who stood outside the door that night.

What the Sorority Said

Alpha Phi's Iota Omega chapter posted its statement on Instagram over the weekend, as shown below. According to the chapter, the people named in recent posts 'are not members of Alpha Phi and have never been affiliated with our organization.' The chapter also condemned racist words and behaviour of every kind. The error, it added, did not make the incident outside the student's door any less serious, and the case should go through the university's proper channels.

In the statement, the chapter asked social media users to correct their posts. The statement also urged users to stop sharing members' names, photos, and personal details. The chapter says it is working with Alpha Phi's national executive office and the university office that oversees fraternities and sororities to set the record straight. Its statement does not name the women in the footage or say whether they are students.

What the Ring Footage Shows

Jakiyra Metcalf, a student at the university, posted the 13-second clip on TikTok on Friday 6 November. The camera's timestamp reads 8:37pm. Three women walk past her door, and one thumps her chest and makes monkey noises. A second woman steps towards the lens and copies the sounds, while the third follows without joining in. Metcalf tagged the university and asked what it had to say about the footage.

By Sunday, TikTok's counter showed the clip had passed nine million views. Metcalf later wrote beneath her post, 'We just found out they are our upstairs neighbors.' She gave no names and did not say how she knew where they lived. A woman who says her daughter shares the flat wrote on Facebook that university administrators had the footage and that the family wanted to know what steps the university would take.

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What Happens Next

Ole Miss said on Sunday 8 November it was investigating the footage, calling the behaviour 'offensive, hurtful and unacceptable'. It said it had offered those targeted information, resources and support, but did not confirm the three women's enrolment or any police involvement. Former NFL player Emmanuel Acho condemned the footage as racist harassment, asking why anyone would choose racism. Metcalf has promised an update.

Online sleuths have misidentified people before. Reddit's general manager apologised in 2013 after users wrongly named a missing student as a Boston Marathon bomber. In May 2024, Phi Delta Theta said it removed a member filmed making monkey noises and gestures at a Black protester during a campus demonstration at Ole Miss.

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