Jaren Stewart, vice president of Clemson’s student government, stands with Killian McDonald (left), its president, and Hannah Ohlund, its secretary of engagement. Mr. Stewart, the university’s highest-ranking black student leader, is facing removal from office just weeks after he and other student senators sat for the Pledge of Allegiance in a protest of the racial climate on campus. His critics say Mr. Stewart’s impeachment is unrelated to his protest.
An arm of Clemson University’s student government voted on Monday to impeach the university’s most prominent black student leader — Jaren Stewart, the student-body vice president. Members of the student senate voted weeks after Mr. Stewart led other members of the body to sit during the Pledge of Allegiance in a protest of the racial climate on campus.
Armed with those details alone, the situation doesn’t look good for a university that has seen a number of controversies related to its racial climate. But students supporting the effort say it’s not about the pledge protest or race at all — but rather, several misconduct allegations against Mr. Stewart. And, while insisting that the student government acts autonomously, top administrators agreed that race was not a factor in the vote.
Mark Land, vice president for university relations, said there was no cause and effect in Mr. Stewart’s protest and his impeachment, which triggers a hearing where senators will vote on whether to remove him from office. "The issues that have been brought up related to the impeachment have nothing to do with his decision not to stand for the pledge," Mr. Land said.
Asked whether the impeachment vote could point to racial tensions on campus, he said: "I would hate to generalize because there have been other African-American student leaders here who have been very successful. The issues in this case are, you know, there’s more to it than race."
L. Christopher Miller, associate vice president and dean of students and adviser to the student government, said that the impeachment vote was not racially motivated.
When asked about the perception that black student leaders could face censure by their peers for airing views about racism, Mr. Miller named current and former African-American leaders in student government.
"He is the only African-American executive within the cabinet as the vice president. There are several senators that are African-American senators and Hispanic, Latino as well," Mr. Miller said, pointing out that the president of the student senate last year was African-American. "Our current attorney general is an African-American female," he added.
Miller Hoffman, a student senator, filed the articles of impeachment, referencing a complaint filed against Mr. Stewart when he worked as a residence assistant, according to the meeting minutes. An incident report from Mr. Stewart’s time as an RA was first published on October 3, on the website FitsNews, a conservative news site with the tag line "Unfair. Imbalanced."
The form, dated April 27, states that when Mr. Stewart was an RA he entered residents’ rooms without their permission, and that he entered a room while women were changing their clothes and wouldn’t leave when asked. The report also stated that a student senator had complained that Mr. Stewart once "intimidated" her after she voted in a way that he didn’t agree with.
On Thursday morning, Mr. Stewart spoke to The Chronicle by phone for about 10 minutes, but abruptly ended the call. He later declined, via text message, to offer further comment for this article, including a response to the allegations made against him.
Impeachment was first brought up in the student senate on October 9, two meetings after Mr. Stewart’s protest, according to meeting minutes. Because of a procedural error, the measure did not pass, Mr. Miller said.
In that meeting, Mr. Stewart alleged that the impeachment was a direct result of his protest. He called the vote a "social lynching," according to a video of the meeting published by the conservative website Campus Reform. He also said that the complaint about his conduct as an RA had been resolved.
"I was the face of disruption, the status quo here at Clemson University," Mr. Stewart said in the video of the meeting. "When I took a knee they saw the vice president took a knee. They saw that student government as a whole, but they were looking directly at me."
During the debate preceding Monday’s impeachment vote, Mr. Hoffman said that the complaint in April had resulted in an order that Mr. Stewart not contact the senator who alleged that he had intimidated her. A university spokesman declined to comment on the report, citing the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, the federal law that protects student records.
Minutes from the meeting show that senators heavily debated whether to impeach Mr. Stewart. One senator brought up Mr. Stewart’s role as a prominent black leader at Clemson. "Jaren is a strong minority representative on this campus and we need to consider that," read the minutes.
A Voice for the Unwelcome
During the meeting at which he protested, on September 25, Mr. Stewart sought to explain his gesture. By remaining seated during the pledge, he wanted to shine a light on Clemson’s racial problems in the same way that National Football League players had focused attention on the country’s racial divide by kneeling during the national anthem.
In his remarks, Mr. Stewart referenced several incidents at Clemson, including a 2007 partywhere students made fun of black stereotypes and at least one student dressed in black face, a 2014 fraternity party where students dressed as gang members, a 2016 sit-in protesting racism on campus, and Ku Klux Klan recruitment fliers on campus last year.
"I am speaking for those who have not felt welcome at Clemson," Mr. Stewart’s remarks read. "But this collective gesture does bring light to an issue that hurts us daily. The marginalization of minority students."
Although South Carolina’s population is approximately 30 percent African-American, only 7 percent of Clemson students are black, according to a 2016 "Fact Sheet" on the public university’s website.
Mr. Stewart said he faced immediate pushback after the protest. Leland Dunwoodie, the senate president, told him that he would have preferred that Mr. Stewart had made his remarks on the protest later. Mr. Stewart was also flooded with emails from faculty members, students, and alumni, and comments from his classmates, he said. Some notes were supportive and other chastised him for the move.
In an emailed statement, Mr. Dunwoodie wrote that he supported Mr. Stewart’s right to protest and that the impeachment articles were not related to that action. "I completely and absolutely support Vice President Stewart’s ability to make these remarks," Mr. Dunwoodie wrote.
Mr. Stewart said he’s also faced opposition and had his ideas ignored by other senators because he campaigned with candidates who were not previously involved in student government.
But Steven Patrick, another senator, said that Mr. Stewart’s dark-horse campaign isn’t why student legislators are wary of him, but that it had made for an uphill climb.
"People are concerned about his actions as student-body vice president," Mr. Patrick said. "Certainly his coming from a dark-horse ticket set the stage that he needed to really work for unity, and a lot of people don’t think that he worked toward that unity that was so needed when he was elected."
The proceeding that could result in Mr. Stewart’s removal from office is scheduled for November 6, Mr. Patrick said.
