Nathaniel Cary

ncary@greenvillenews.com

Internal emails between Clemson University administrators show that the two students who admitted hanging bananas from a pole next to a banner honoring African-Americans claimed it was not racially motivated.

In one email Almeda Jacks, Vice President for Student Affairs, questioned whether anyone would believe that story, though her email suggested that administrators did believe the students.

The emails also suggest administrators still elected to use the incident to address concerns of racial hostility on campus and engage in a dialogue with concerned students, including a question-and-answer session for students the following night.

The incident sparked protests that eventually led to a nine-day student sit-in at administrative offices at Sikes Hall where five students were ticketed.

In a statement to The News on Friday, Clemson said, “The student protests that took place at Sikes Hall were part of ongoing diversity and inclusion concerns and not tied solely to this banner incident.”

But Clayton Warnke, a Clemson student who sought the emails, said the banana incident was the spark that incited the protests.

“That is the very reason most of the participants in the march and sit in became involved,” he said.

Clemson released the emails to The Greenville News after a group of interested students had also acquired them through a Freedom of Information Act request.

The emails detail communication between administrators and communications staff on how to respond after a bunch of bananas hanging from a pole at Fort Hill, the former plantation home owned by John Calhoun, was photographed and posted to social media.

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The bananas were discovered on the morning of April 11 and the photo quickly spread through social media. Clemson President Jim Clements wrote an email to students that afternoon saying the incident was “hurtful, disrespectful, unacceptable and will not be tolerated.”

By that night, two students had come forward and said they’d placed the bananas on the pole, and according to an email sent at 7:14 p.m., April 11, from Jacks to Clements and the university’s executive leadership team, the university believed the students explanation that the incident wasn’t racially motivated, but chose to use it as a “teachable moment.”

“Their claim is they had no idea of pole or banner,” said Jacks’ email, which was written on an iPhone.

Her email said the students intended to throw the bananas into Core Campus, the university’s new 260,000 square-foot housing, retail and dining facility that is under construction, because construction noise woke them up, but they decided not to.

They tried to put the bananas in trees “and when that failed…. Saw pole and tossed them,” she said. “Nobody will believe that,” she said, “tho (sic) our folks think true.”

In the same email, Jacks said the act was not a criminal charge or student conduct violation.

On Friday, Clemson released a statement to the News that said her email was an update to an ongoing investigation and that the following day Jacks told media that the university was addressing the matter through its standard procedures.

“Clemson University was forthcoming with this information to those who inquired,” the university said Friday.

In its statement, Clemson didn’t say whether its administrators believed at the time that the incident wasn’t racially motivated but chose to use it to engage in dialogue with protestors.

Zach Talley, one of the Clemson students who requested the emails, said he believes the administration allowed the protests to escalate even though they knew the incident to be a false flag.

"Now it appears (based on the Almeda [Jacks] email) that this was more or less the result of manipulation by administrators,” Talley said. “They lied to our faces over and over again. I fail to see how such manipulation could create a "teachable moment.”

In her email April 11, Jacks said, “Dean of Students has authority to use as teachable moment.”

The next day, then-interim Dean of Students Chris Miller led a question-and-answer session for students and by the following evening, more than 100 members of the Black Student Union held a march from Fort Hill to the administrative building.

Clements addressed the crowd then, saying “I know we were all hurt by the incident on Monday. You were hurt, I was hurt. It was sad and sickening. But those things happen here at Clemson and anywhere.”

The Sikes Hall sit-in followed for nine days as students camped out inside and then on the steps of the administration building.

It ended after Clemson announced a series of eight changes to create a more diverse and inclusive climate. Those included doubling the number of underrepresented minority faculty by 2025, setting goals by August to increase minority enrollment and requiring all employees to participate in diversity training.