A noose was found at the UCSD library, and the campus police have issued a report calling it “[h]anging a noose with intent to terrorize.” It’s unclear if the incident is related to the recent outcry over the off-campus “Compton Cookout” party. During a recent teach-in, there was a massive walk-out by students angry at the school’s response. There are going to be new protests today over the noose incident.
update: I say that it’s unclear if it is connected but what I really mean is that it’s not clear if the party organizers are involved. The timing is too close for it to be unrelated. I would not be surprised if it turns out to be some idiot’s bad idea of a “joke” or “site-specific provocative art.”
update 2: A student has contacted the police and confessed to placing the noose. No other news, however.
update 3: Students are occupying the chancellor’s office.
update 4: More updates here.
An Ergodic Walk 
[deleted due to spam]
So someone is in custody, but no one’s discussing motive, identity, or race of the FEMALE suspect? Why does this remind me of the Madonna Constatine case, in which a noose appeared on the door of an African-American woman under investigation for plagiarism? (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madonna_Constantine for more.) In that case, the video was never released and things died down all of a sudden, and eventually Constantine was found to have plagiarized and was fired. It was difficult to come to any conclusion other than that she put the noose there herself.
Perhaps the latest noose was neither racist nor trying to get someone (ahem) off the hook, but merely an attempt to get people like Montana up in arms, people who see anything offensive and assume it must be the product of the half of America viewed as ideological enemies. Remember the census worker “murdered” by “teabaggers”? He committed suicide. The suicidal anti-capitalist anti-Bush pilot was somehow fit into the tea-party model, too. And the Obama-loving far-left professor who shot down many of her colleagues was dismissed as a symptom of right-wing fervor by those who read all about her but only processed the words, “Alabama” and “gun.”
Of course there are crazies and jerks on all sides (the right has Ron Paul, for heaven’s sake). But somehow we find that every left-wing crazy is a lone nut, while every right-wing crazy (or left-wing crazy who isn’t a stereotypical liberal) is a “dullard who listens to Beck, Hedgecock, Hannity, O’Reilly, Rush and Savage and the rest of the Blowhards.” It must be so easy not to have to think critically about such matters and just blame the right wing for everything wrong in America.
I don’t know whom the suspect will turn out to be or what her motives were. But I suspect she won’t turn out to be an obsessive watcher of Fox News, in spite of Montana’s fantasies.
The rumor I heard is that it was supposed to be an artistic statement, but that may be just a rumor. The student has been suspended, but I haven’t seen any statement/explanation.
Interesting about the rumor of it being an artistic statement. Update if that becomes more than a rumor, let us know. I was thinking after writing this that maybe it’s someone who’s just utterly clueless, but if it was supposed to be an artistic statement, that lends credence to the hypothesis that this was designed to provoke (rather than to terrorize).
I just noticed that Montana has been spamming blogs with this identical comment, so I’m going to spam it as well.
Why does there always seem to be an inverse relation between the quality of what’s being said and the force (and quantity of times) with which it’s being said?
Wow, that’s pretty messed up.
liked this blog post!