Another racist charge debunked

Student: Noose in UCSD library a ‘stupid mistake’
By Steve Schmidt, UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
Tuesday, March 2, 2010 at 12:02 a.m.
LA JOLLA — In an anonymous letter circulated on campus yesterday, the University of California San Diego student who hung a noose in the school library last week apologized for what she called a “mindless act and stupid mistake.
“I know what I did was offensive — regardless of my intentions — I am just trying to say I’m sorry,” read the letter, which was published in the student newspaper, the UCSD Guardian. “As a minority student who sympathizes with the students that have been affected by the recent issues on campus, I am distraught to know that I have unintentionally added to their pain.”
The 10-paragraph letter was unsigned. In a note to readers, the newspaper said it had “verified the author’s authenticity.” Campus authorities said details in the letter are consistent with what they know about the incident, which was reported late Thursday.
Authorities would not provide the student’s ethnicity or any other details about her, saying it might compromise their investigation into the incident.
The student, who came forward on Friday, was suspended from UCSD after claiming responsibility for hanging the noose on the seventh floor of the Geisel Library. She may also face criminal charges.
The incident — the third in a rash of race-related events linked to UCSD — sparked a protracted demonstration Friday that led to a student takeover of Chancellor Marye Anne Fox’s office for several hours.
Students and administrators throughout the UC system continued to discuss the state of race relations on campus yesterday, and there are plans for a community forum tomorrow in San Diego.
The student claims in her letter that she and her friends were playing with a rope when one of them tied it into a noose.
“I innocently marveled at his ability to tie a noose, without thinking of any of its connotations or the current racial climate at UCSD. I left soon after with one of my friends for Geisel to study, still carrying the rope,” she writes. “After a bit of studying I picked up the rope to play with, and ended up hanging it by my desk. It was a mindless act and stupid mistake. When I got up to leave, a couple hours later, I simply forgot about it.”
The student said the rope was left in the library last Tuesday. It was not reported to campus police until 10:30 p.m. Thursday.
Before learning that the student had stepped forward, Fox called the incident a “dastardly” event that marked a “dark day in the history of this university.”
Outrage over the noose came on the heels of two other racially charged incidents — a recent off-campus student party that mocked Black History Month and a show on a student-run TV station that backed the party and was laced with intentionally provocative and derogatory language directed at African-American students.
In response to the fallout from the incidents, Fox and her executive staff met with members of the campus Black Student Union for several hours yesterday as they continued their dialogue over how to attract and retain more African-American, Latino and other students that are not well-represented on campus. African-American students make up 2 percent of the UCSD undergraduate population. Around midday, Fox said the talks were going “quite well.”
Similar talks unfolded in Sacramento, where UC President Mark Yudof and UC Board of Regents Chairman Russell Gould met with students yesterday to discuss ways to combat intolerance. Yudof decried the UCSD incidents, along with similar recent incidents at UC Irvine and UC Davis.
“These are the worst incidents of racism I have seen on campuses in 20 years,” Yudof told about 100 students who were staging a sit-in. “I understand that students don’t feel safe; they don’t feel comfortable on their campuses.”
Black student leaders and others believe the events are indicative of a university system that doesn’t do enough to help blacks, Latinos and others who are outnumbered and say they feel unwelcome on campuses.