“These incidents are being used increasingly to create a climate of fear and intimidation,” Doron Ezickson, the ADL’s regional director in Washington, said in a statement. “These racist posters must always be taken seriously, and responded to appropriately.”

The Confederate posters appeared just months after another racially charged incident on AU’s campus. That episode in May involved bananas found hanging from strings “in the shape of nooses,” according to the school.

A statement released at the time explained that the bananas were “marked with the letters AKA.” Those are the letters for Alpha Kappa Alpha, a sorority with membership that is predominantly African-American. On Wednesday, Burwell said the number of security cameras on campus had increased from 400 to 600 since May.

In September 2016, a black student at AU reported that a banana was thrown at her in a dormitory. The same night, another black student discovered a rotten banana outside her dorm room door.

For American’s upperclassmen, the experience with the Confederate flag posters was “nothing new,” said Jones, the president of the AU chapter of the NAACP. Many students believe the school’s administration has been complacent in the past, and hasn’t embraced more enduring measures to assure change, she said.

“Because of AU, I have become more radical in my thought, which is unfortunate,” Jones said. “Now I think students really have to take what they want, and if we want something, be serious about it and organize accordingly.”

Crime Alert by sarah_larimer on Scribd

Read More:

After bananas and nooses on campus, here’s how a student body president copes

A killing ‘woke a lot of people up’ at U-Md. What will happen now?

Maryland’s state song has pro-Confederate lyrics. Now U-Md.’s marching band isn’t playing it.