Sounds like someone stoking division.
If you want to set off a panic at American University, leave some bananas in public.
The private university in Washington, D.C. has launched a public safety investigation after “multiple bananas were found hanging from string tied in the shape of nooses in three places on campus,” The Eagle reports.
It’s American’s second brush with racist bananas since last fall, when two white students were accused of throwing a banana at a black student, and a rotten banana was left in front of a black student’s dorm room. (The university refused to say how it punished the alleged perpetrators.)
These new bananas refer to last summer’s “Harambe” meme, which itself was frequently called racist, and the African-American sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha.
The university swiftly released a public statement earlier this afternoon, asking students to call campus police if they had any information about the banana incident.
Though American has no idea yet what the motive was for hanging the bananas – hate-crime hoaxes are not uncommon on college campuses – the statement referred to the bananas as “racist, hateful messages [that] have no place in our community.”
Incredulously, it continued: “The safety of our students is paramount.”
Student Government President Taylor Dumpson, the first black female in that position at AU, released a statement that suggests she doesn’t see any connection between endless “conversations” about race and continued pranks:
“It is disheartening an immensely frustrating that we are still dealing with this issue after recent conversations, dialogues, and town halls surrounding race relations on campus. But this is exactly why we need to do more than just have conversations but move in a direction towards more tangible solutions to prevent incidents like these from occurring in the future.”