Surveillance Videos:
Steve Burns
WMAL.com
WASHINGTON – (WMAL) American University has released surveillance tape of a lone suspect believed to have strung bananas hanging from nooses in three different locations on campus. The bananas had AKA written on them, the initials of the predominantly African-American Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority. American also put up $1,000 for information leading to an arrest.
The surveillance tape and reward information comes after a community meeting on Tuesday. A largely African-American group walked out of the meeting, forming a protest on the quad. Reporters who arrived to cover it were quickly rounded up by school officials and told to leave campus grounds.
Students largely were hoping for a more forceful response from school administration, especially after what was seen as an unassertive reaction in a similar incident last fall.
“They need to expel some of these people,” one student told WMAL.”It doesn’t make sense that I could be sitting in a classroom with the same people doing these actions.”
“If AU continues this passive behavior, nothing’s going to change,” another student said.
Many said they were not surprised by the incident, viewing it as just another example of the school’s toxic racial undertones.
“We constantly live in fear, wondering who on campus we can trust and who we can’t,” another student said.
American University President Neil Kerwin sent a memo to all students on Monday, calling the incident “a racially insensitive act of bigotry.
“While this incident targeted AU’s chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated, and occurred after the first black woman and AKA member was sworn in as the Student Government president—our entire university community has been adversely affected by this cowardly, despicable act,” Kerwin wrote.
Students said problems at the school run deeper than just a few bad apples.
“A lot of my professors didn’t know how to handle these situations, didn’t know how to talk and relate to race situations in the classroom,” one student said. “A lot of the time, black students have to be, like, the professor on race in a lot of classrooms, and have to explain race relations, and explain why we feel that something is disrespectful or racist.”
Another student called for more stringent background checks in the admissions process.
“We all come from different places, and we have to unlearn things,” she said.
This is the first year of a mandatory diversity class for freshmen, which this student said is a step in the right direction.
“Having a uniform thing so no one can say ‘I didn’t know,’ ‘I didn’t know this was offensive,’ ‘I didn’t know this wasn’t funny’ – I think that’s what’s going to really be the solution.”
Copyright 2017 WMAL.com All Rights Reserved. (Photo/Video: American University)
