American University officials released two security videos showing a possible culprit for a racist incident that took place Monday at the university—three bananas were hung around campus from what appeared to be miniature nooses, causing fear and anger at the university, USA Today College reports.
In a statement, university police said the videos depict a single individual wearing black clothing. The poor quality of the videos make it impossible to see any distinguishing features on the person. The videos also don't explicitly show the person hanging the bananas. Nevertheless, they're the police's best guess as to who may have committed this hate crime.
— AUStudentGovernment (@AUSG) 1 May 2017
The term “Harambe bait” was written on the bananas, referring to the gorilla killed at the Cincinnatti zoo last year. "AKA," the name of predominately black sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha, was also on the bananas.
American University officials have made it clear that they believe this incident is legally a hate crime, especially as it happened on the day the unversity's first black woman student body president, Taylor Dumpson, was sworn in, according to USA Today. Dumpson released a letter imploring the univeristy community to "unite in solidarity with those impacted by this situation."
A campus meeting was held Tuesday to discus the incident and what the school would do to address it. But that wasn't enough forhundreds of students, who launched a demonstration signifying their dissatisfaction with the university’s response. Ma’at Sargeant, the president of the school's Black Student Alliance, told The Washington Post, “We shouldn’t have to be begging for our existence to be validated on the campus.”