UCSD Student Paper Runs “Verified” Apology from Student Who Hung Noose

Instead of an apology there has been steady escalation and now the noose. So, what exactly will the excuses be for this cowardly act that brings up memories of the confederate KKK of the South in their attempts to keep slavery and the non-whites in fear? Is it that are uneducated, is it that their parents planted these seeds of hate, is it that they are live in fear because our President in the white house is not 100% white. This is what the republican party of “birthers, baggers and blowhards” have brought you. These kids follow what their dullard leaders say, they listen to Beck, Hedgecock, Hannity, O’Reilly, Rush and Savage and the rest of the Blowhards, they are young and dumb. Are you surprise at what they do when you know what they think?

Don’t threaten to censor people. What a rookie move. This comment is relevant and you need to turn your power-trip down a few notches. Don’t let your emotions mediate. Your pet peeves do not supersede the open conversation at hand.

When someone runs around posting the same spam message again and again without actually responding to the content of the posts, it’s perfectly acceptable to delete. There’s no open conversation going on when it’s one person spamming the comments with a nonsensical post.

On to the content of this letter: does this change anything? It doesn’t seem like this person was a racist, just stupid. And this person was a minority student, apparently. Can the BSU (and now the Guardian it seems) tone things down now and stop stereotyping all UCSD students who aren’t taking over the Chancellor’s offices as ignorant and racist? Contrary to what they’ve been yelling, it seems like this was an individual act that really shouldn’t reflect anything larger.

Awful funny that, in this racially/ethnically charged atmosphere, this woman has neither race nor ethnicity. If it turns out to be a non-white, that will really screw up the narrative, won’t it?

Has anyone considered that she hung the noose to fuel the fire? Hanging that noose was the best thing that ever happened to the BSU. Now they have “evidence” to back up feeling threatened! I’m very skeptical that this girl didn’t know what she was doing.

Good catch, Chris. But what is a minority student in this context? Whites are a minority on the campus.

Even if there were 500 white people left in America, they will never be considered a minority in the race-baiting rhetoric as we know it.

I can’t help noticing that this is the same “you misunderstood my intention” argument which received no credibility whatsoever from the UCSD administration when it was made by the students who attended the off-campus cookout party.

There are still two things missing: (a) who were the accomplices and what were they thinking and (b) who sent that threatening letter to the school newspaper?

The problem with these symbol acts of hatred, is that they reflect bigger systematic support for discrimination against groups of people. The vandalism of the LGBT center represents the same feelings of people who voted Yes on Prop 8 and the people who opposed the Matthew Shepard Act and believe LGBT people deserve to be discriminated against in housing.

Just sitting around and accepting vandalism, disgusting comments, racist political cartoons, etc. tacitly condones it until perpetrators are emboldened enough to express themselves through violence.

No it doesn’t condone it, it just respects the right of people to have bad ideas, and makes those bad ideas more clearly bad to everyone else. Really think about what censorship would do, and read J.S. Mill, and you will understand.

@Jason

Did I say anything about censorship?

Justin, it appears like there wasn’t an actual threatening letter. No news source has reported that and the Guardian itself has made no mention of it. Like the earlier alleged “second noose” that turned out to be nonexistant, it sounds like that letter was another rumor that got out of hand and caught up in the folk wisdom of the protesters.

http://crdlovesyou.blogspot.com/2010/03/dear-montana.html

Racism begins with our families, parents, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, grandparents, people we admire, respect and love.
However, as we grow and mature we come to the realization that what we were told by our family when we were children were slanted lies base on their prejudices. We realize that most people are like ourselves and not so different and want the same things, like a home, steady work, a Medicare plan and schools for our children (if you travel you will see this). We realize that most people are of good hearts and goodwill.
This reminds me of a parable from the good book where a Levite and Priest come upon a man who fell among thieves and they both individually passed by and didn’t stop to help him.
Finally a man of another race came by, he got down from his beast, decided not to be compassionate by proxy and got down with the injured man, administered first aid, and helped the man in need.
Jesus ended up saying, this was the good man, this was the great man, because he had the capacity to project the “I” into the “thou,” and to be concerned about his fellow man.
You see, the Levite and the Priest were afraid, they asked themselves, “If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?”
But then the Good Samaritan came by. And he reversed the question: “If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?”
That’s the question before us. The question is not, “If I stop to help our fellow man in need, what will happen to me?” The question is, “If I do not stop to help our fellow man, what will happen to him or her?” That’s the question.
This current climate of blaming, mocking or demeaning others for our own short comings, We have had this before and we have conquered it.
Remember “Evil flourishes when good men (and women) do nothing”. Raise your voices with those of us who believe we are equal and we can win this battle again.

OK, this has gotten out of hand, so why does the noose have to be immediately interpreted as a sign of racism. This girl was just messing around with a piece of rope. I think this situation is great because it shows how there is not much racism in our society. Just the fact that she tied a noose and wasn’t even thinking about racism is great. Just shows how the noose is no longer interpreted as a racism by many just shows how we that we have moved on. I asked about 15 college students today “what would you think if you saw a noose in your library?” less than half said they would think of it as a form of racism.

One thing I haven’t seen mentioned here:

She is a “minority” student. If it turns out that she’s also a foreign student is it STILL a racist act? Nooses do not carry the same connotation in other countries as it does here. Not in Mexico, nor in Canada (as far as immediate neighbors) even.

I am a firm believer that continuing to assign negative values to objects because of past history only serves to perpetuate racism.

Ah, more mistruths. This is Kris. You know, the “white” guy who is “just a racist”? Yeah, that one.

I tend not to enter these debates because if I spent my time responding to every idiot on the internet I would’ve offed myself a long time ago (maybe this is what some people want?) but the reality is that 1) I’m not white. 2) Not one member of my staff isn’t part of a minority group in the US (indian, asian, jew, mexican) and we MOST CERTAINLY have had rights violated. Firstly, disciplinary action is a VIOLATION OF THE FIRST AMENDMENT. Secondly, all funding for media organizations has been frozen and there are committees who are trying to find (quasi) legal methods to defund JUST the Koala. You know what that is? A violation of the First Amendment (and last I checked, that’s a right we still are supposed to have). Does this seem like the kind of world you want to live in? Maybe we should just bioengineer blindfolds and ear plugs, lest someone be offended.

I’m certainly not going to chime in on whether or not the demands are ridiculous, as no one should ever be dumb enough to confuse satire with dialectic, but they are definitely demands and the university needs to start taking its students seriously. We have rights, we have goals, and we have desires. We’re not just paychecks and excuses to live in your university-provided mansion. We’re not going away, and I absolutely support any group that’s sticking it to them

Angus – We reposted two of your articles, and it seems to us that you are the voice of reason around here. Keep up the good work and reporting. Very crucial to have accurate info coming out of UCSD. See us OBRag.org

i agree with montana. the right wing pundits have polarized race issues and the compton picnic debacle owes more to beck and hannity than the KKK.

ok… I am a foreigner, and think it is really really strange what happens here.

I have friends from all over the world, from all different kinds of cultures, so I am everything except for a racist, I like and love everybody with a good heart, but this whole noose thing is FAR over the top. OF course it was not her intention! There many things I could think of to do, to upset people, but a noose?! I see an American culture looking and even searching for things that happen to call it racism. You would be blind if you would say that there is no racism in the world, and that is a terrible fact, but innocent incidents like this? It is a wrong timing of this girl for a ‘mistake’ like this, but she has been suspended…SUSPENDED?! It could happen to EVERYONE. And if you don’t see this, you will not help America getting over this weird accusing culture, that exists for no reason and only makes it worse. And to come back to the girl: she went to the police herself…why would you do that if you are a racist? Nobody would ever find out.

So please stop accusing and call people racists for no reason and focus a bit more and the bigger picture and the bigger problems, because with this attitude the problem will stay for ever.

Setting aside the question of whether or not it is likely that somebody could have “accidentally” fashioned a large noose and hung it prominently, merely stating that one is a “minority” probably means a lot less than it appears to mean. In the present climate, an African American or Latina American woman would likely have stated her ethnicity and social status with more precession than just “minority,” which suggests that the person may be using that word coyly (she’s white and considers herself a member of a statistical minority at UCSD). Or that she may be Asian American. In the present controversy, I fear that neither ethnicity would grant her the presumption of innocence.

WORD!

I just have to say, I don’t know of any Asian student here who would refer to themselves as a “minority.” It simply isn’t accurate. Asian students are the majority here, particularly in bio and chem majors. Use of the word “minority” in the context of UCSD almost certainly means she is black or latino. Most latinos, however, do not use the term “minority.”

Yep, people do things you wish they wouldn’t do, and people do things I wish they wouldn’t do. And your entire rhetoric underwrites the suppression of free speech in the United States. The only reason free speech gets suppressed these days is to suppress ideas that “hurt” “minority” groups. Get rid of your student activism “hurt” rhetoric, and we get rid of the excuse for violating the first amendment on behalf of minority students.

You read too much cultural theory. I know because you pluralized “symbolism.”

The guy who created the party has offered an lengthy and public explanation.

I sounds to me that until we see her in person that we will continue to confirm and deny what she real is.

Mike, you are wrong. The breakdown at UCSD is 49% Asian, 29% White and the rest is mixed. Less than 2% Black. Keep in mind that to get into this school you need to have brains and an exceptional extra credit. They call this the smart school. If you don’t have the grades, you don’t get in. If you play the race card, try UC Berkeley. They let anyone in except whites.

Oh, one point that I did not make is that for administrators, faulty and the wealthy do have entitlements/ set-asides programs for their family members, so the claim that UCSD is a smart school, that if you don’t have the grades, you don’t get in, is just an illusion and sinmply not true. As we know the majority of the past UCSD administrators, faulty and the even more the wealthy have been white. But do not the let the facts get in the way.

She did not say she was “black”, she said she was a minority. If you pay attention to what you read you won’t sound so ….uniformed.

Another hate-crime noose hoax. About 90% of all the news-making nooses and swastika vandalism incidents turn out to be perpetrated by the very “victims” themselves. When they get caught, as they almost always do, they always try to weasel out of it by saying they were “trying to draw awareness to racism” or some such liberal BS.

(1) UCSD: A group of dumb white frat guys hold an event called a “Compton Cookout.” This pisses people off as it used Black History Month as a reason to mock black people with racist stereotypes. Also involved is some idiot who tries to use this opportunity for shameless self-promotion, who also happens to be black. To say the least, the guy is basically a wannabe Flavor Flav.

(2) UCSD: Another dumb white frat guy gets mad that blacks are offended of being relegated to a bigoted stereotype. He tries to hold another racist event.

(3) UCSD: Meanwhile, a terrible student media publication (which, after viewing their website consists of all white staff, nudity, staff wrestling each other, and well, not much else), pushes their limits calling black students “ungrateful n——” – not just that word, but also that apparently the black students owed them something. They have a reputation of being trashy, and at this point, administration and faculty rush to condemn racism by students of the campus and various protests begin. Funding is also cut from all student media at UCSD, creating an extra bitter controversy.

(4) UCSD: On Friday of that week, a noose is found in the library. Everything gets worked in a frenzy and – something I’ll address later – a large amount of white commenter’s on the internet begin claiming that is was probably a black student who planted it in order to gain more sympathy. In addition, there are rumors of a threatening note sent to the Guardian and a second noose, there was no second noose, and the threat seems to be just a rumor.

(6) UCSD: Protests basically happen at all schools in support of the students. There are various sit-ins, and teach-ins, and what have you. School administrators become pushed to be more active in fixing what’s going on.

I have not seen this noose person, but most of you blame her and conveniently forget wear this all originated. Dear Beck, Hedgecock, Hannity, O’Reilly, Rush and Savage your chickens have come home to roost.

When everyone crys a river over every slight that comes the way of the Black community, it reveals a dire inferiority in their community.

If Blacks really were superior or equal to other racial groups, there would be no mention of such slights because no one would be offended.

The fact that so many White posters feel offended reveals that they see themselves and inferior to many others as well.

Oh, you’ll deny it all right. What you will not do is move to a majority non-White society and stay there for the rest of your life.

You know, to prove that you believe in true equality; that you are not just paying lip service to the idea of equality for the sake of fitting in.

Afterall, the common defence is that there are not differences among the members of the human species (race is a division within a species.)