HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Clemson’s Fake Hate Crime Story Gets Worse:
An email exchange between top Clemson officials suggests that the administration welcomed the opportunity to use the now infamous “banana banner” incident to push a progressive agenda.
On Monday, April 11, a bunch of bananas was found hanging from a banner mounted on campus honoring the history of African Americans at Clemson, resulting in on-campus protests and a sit-in that lead to the arrest of five students.
According to emails released by Clemson under the Freedom of Information Act that were obtained by Campus Reform, key players involved in the incident seemingly regarded its racial undertones as an occasion to suffocate conservative sentiments out of the administration.
Last week, in response to a separate FOIA request, Clemson released emails sent by top administrators in the immediate aftermath of the incident, one of which seemed to suggest that school officials believed that the students who hung the bananas were not racially motivated.
“Two students came forward and told they had done bananas,” Vice President for Student Affairs Almeda Jacks wrote in an email to other administrators on the evening of April 11. “Their claim is [that] they had no idea of pole or banner,” she explained, adding, “nobody will believe that tho [sic] our folks think true.”
In a more recent correspondence between Altheia Richardson, executive director of Clemson’s Harvey and Lucinda Gantt Multicultural Center, and Professor Todd May, who apparently has been trying with little success to move conservative administrators away from their “party line,” the two seem to hint at the potential leverage the incident could afford in future conversations with school leaders.
Some Clemson students, who were verbally intimidated at a protest after the incident, commented on the exchange and offered their own theories on its significance.
“From what I read, it seems like Altheia was warning those two professors [another professor was copied to the exchange but did not participate] not to assume that Clements and Almeda were unprogressive,” student Miller Hall, member of a free speech activist group known as “We Roar,” told Campus Reform, saying it is likely that Richardson was “convincing them that they could get them to cooperate with the progressive agenda.”
Zach Talley, another WeRoar member who also serves as editor-in-chief of The Tiger Town Observer, explained that May has in fact been trying for years to infiltrate the administration with his liberal ideologies, but has been repeatedly stonewalled by a reluctant president.
“He has been for years and years and years pushing a liberal agenda,” Talley remarked. “May is the brain behind the operation, and he tries to accomplish his liberal agenda through minorities on campus because he is a straight white male.”
Notably, one of the student protesters involved in April’s sit-in is the son a top administrator at Clemson, Alesia Smith, who later recused herself from leading the investigation into the banana banner incident due to a conflict of interest. The date of her recusal is noted as April 14, which is in the middle of the date range for records released in the latest Freedom of Information Act response, yet while the dump does include emails from other administrators concerning the university’s conflict of interest policy, no mention of her recusal is included in the release.
I imagine the South Carolina legislature will look into this.