Another racist incident connected to UCSD

Parents Forum
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<p>"(CNN) -- The University of California San Diego has suspended a student who admitted to hanging a noose in a campus library, school officials announced Friday.</p>

<p>"We are feeling real pain, and we will take real action," said UCSD chancellor Marye Anne Fox told reporters. "The safety of our students, faculty, and staff is my primary concern."</p>

<p>The student, whose identity was not released, admitted Friday to police at the University of California San Diego that she hung a noose Thursday night in the library, police said....</p>

<p>The noose incident occurred two weeks after Black History Month was mocked in an off-campus party that was condemned by the school."
Student</a> admits hanging noose in campus library - CNN.com</p>

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<p>A girl did this? It’s horrible enough that a guy would do this, but a girl? I know that sounds sexist, but do girls do this kind of thing?</p>

<p>Just awful.</p>

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<p>Some idiotic students decide to have an off campus party with a negatively racial theme (i.e. dressing ‘ghetto’), some students on campus over react (IMO) and somehow hold the university itself responsible for what these students did on their own time off campus which charges things up more, another idiot student uses an offensive racially charged word on the campus student run television, the university shuts it down, students react much more, and now this other idiotic student for some reason hangs a noose in the library and now there’s even more of a reaction (understandably) by students on campus. The student has been suspended.</p>

<p>It’s really ridiculous. A handful of students acted inappropriately and ignorantly - likely not smart enough and not deep thinking enough to realize that their actions would be so offensive to most people and cause this kind of reaction. From what I’ve read I don’t think most of these people even really ‘meant’ any racial offense - they were just too stupid to realize that what they did ‘was’ offensive. If they truly meant no offense then that at least is a good thing although I don’t get why anyone would hang a noose somewhere. I’d like to hear more about why the girl would do such a thing but I suppose we may not hear about that.</p>

<p>fwiw - I’ve never perceived UCSD as a bastion of racists and this was a very small number of students who performed these stupid and ignorant actions. UCSD is racially diverse with Asians the majority, whites are in a minority, and AfAms are in a small minority. The admission standards are pretty high academically although obviously smart people can do stupid things. UCSD is known more for its serious engineering, science, and medical students. </p>

<p>I hope these incidents really were due to the ignorance of a handful of students as to how their actions would be perceived and not actually due to any racial hatred. I don’t think they realized that what to them might have been a fun satirical theme for their party could have instigated this kind of reaction that ends up leaving some students uncomfortable on campus and with real concerns for their safety whether real or perceived. These students don’t deserve to feel uncomfortable or fear for their safety due to the actions of some students who behaved stupidly.</p>

<p>More from UCSD - [UC</a> San Diego : Battle the Hate](<a href=“http://battlehate.ucsd.edu/]UC”>http://battlehate.ucsd.edu/)</p>

<p>I know I used the terms ‘idiotic’, ‘stupid’, and ‘ignorant’ in my response which I usually don’t do but it was difficult to avoid them in this response.</p>

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<p>I’m sorry, ucsd<em>ucla</em>dad, but you’re losing me here. Holding a “ghetto” party may only rise to the level of “inappropriate,” “ignorant,” “idiotic” etc., but hanging a noose in the library is WAY past that. If you can imagine that the person who did it “meant no offense,” then your head is so far in the sand that we may need an archaeological team to extract it.</p>

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<p>The “off-campus party” was held specifically to mock Black History month. They knew exactly what they were doing.</p>

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<p>I cannot imagine what was in that student’s head to do such a horrid thing. </p>

<p>Are we certain that it was with racist intent? Do we know if the girl intended to commit suicide? I just can’t imagine such an action.</p>

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I agree and stated so…

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I don’t think this directly implies any ‘hate’ though. It implies ignorance (in how it’d end up being perceived) or an utter lack of caring certainly but not necessarily racial hatred and I think there’s an important difference between the two. But I don’t really know what was going on inside the heads of that handful of students who thought it’d be a good idea to hold a party like this.</p>

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<p>“Suspended” … poetic justice of sorts.</p>

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<p>I perceive incidents such as these, that happen in a sequence, instructive. They have the impact of pushing the envelope or testing the waters to find out what’s acceptable to others. </p>

<p>An off-campus party with ethnic themes that portray negative stereotypes could absolutely be ignorance, and viewed by the party-makers as having the intention to be humorous, ironic, edgey satire. </p>

<p>When others object from the targeted ethnic group, they are met with surprise by some participants, who claim honestly they didn’t mean to offend, and might even apologize sincerely. Others at the same party (or, hearing the same jokes…)react with defensiveness, cry “PC” at any objections, and feel genuine anger at the ones who object for spoiling what they thought was fun. </p>

<p>In that second wave of anger, someone puts up a noose, which is a more deliberate and pointed expression of hatred against the people who objected to the first incident.</p>

<p>It doesn’t surprise me that UCSD_dad, whose posts consistently reflect thought, kindness and fairness across ethnicities, can’t figure out why anyone would do the second type of incident. It’s not that his head is in the sand; it’s more that someone who does not hate cannot fathom the mind of someone who does. </p>

<p>I often deconstruct such incidents by comparing them to another ethnicity and see where the lines seem to fall. For example, a party “about” Asian kids where everyone wore tennis shorts and traded equations is unsavory. I wouldn’t attend, I would’nt appreciate it, I’d object to it. However, putting barbed wire around an Asian Studies Center with a sign calling the area an “internment camp” is quite another and compares more to the noose hanging in the college library. </p>

<p>Or, to hit close to home, if someone made a private theme party “about” Jewish kids and people wore blackhats and designer purses trading lame jokes about money, I surely wouldn’t appreciate it, same as the “asian” party described above. If I, or a group of “I’s”
were to state my objection and wake up the next day with a swastika painted on my temple, that’d be a whole 'nother story. </p>

<p>One reason serious people do object to ridiculing jokes or theme parties is not because they are “PC” but because, in experience, they know that one ignorant situation can give license to the next person (who actually harbors hatred) to lash out and do a hateful act. That doesn’t mean the parties and such were hateful in intent to begin with; they were likely ignorant only. Problem is, they create a slippery slope or climate that unleashes a more hateful act. </p>

<p>A lot of folks can recognize and possible forgive ignorance, but draw the line at excusing vitriolic hatred as mere ignorance. In a group of people, some will fall off when those lines are drawn and say, “Hey, I went to the party but that doesn’t mean I think it’s okay to hang a noose, for goodness sakes.”</p>

<p>^PS, I think their surprise is genuine and I hope they learn from the sequence of experiences. Objections to ignorant private jokes, parties and the like are not just “PC.” They sometimes prevent the incubation of much worse expressions and actions, further along the same slippery slope.</p>

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ucsd<em>ucla</em>dad, this sums up what I thought you were doing–sorry if I misread you. </p>

<p>Great post, paying3tuitions.</p>

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<p>All the details haven’t been released yet about this noose incident, which makes me wonder who the person who placed the noose was and what was her motivation. Was it someone trying to make an “artistic” statement? There was an incident at Miami University a few years back that turned out to be some wanna-be artiste. Not revealing the race of the alleged perpetrator is also interesting; what if this student was black? Rushing to judgment seems to be a trademark of this whole disaster and the “outrage” over the fact a suspension is the only punishment known at the moment seems to be leaping to conclusions. </p>

<p>I’d also like people to read the demands of the Black Student Union and tell me if you think that these will do anything to actually help race relations: <a href=“Custom Domain by Bitly”>Custom Domain by Bitly; Most of them seem to be simply power/$$ grabs designed to only further segregation and obsession with race. </p>

<p>Another point that troubles me after reading the BSU demands and listening to their videos/statements (in person a few times) is that their main argument is that UCSD is somehow inherently racist. The only evidence offered in support is that fact that some black students feel like people look at them funny ways or that professors treat them differently. Note that “feeling” is not necessarily reality and plenty of college students feel the same way. They also demand aggregating the few who have done racially divisive actions into the rest of the UCSD student body and appear to have no respect for the First Amendment or even due process. To them, it’s not free speech if they disagree with it. While the noose incident clearly went beyond free speech, it’s still only one thing by one person and we again don’t know the whole story behind it. But that doesn’t matter to the BSU. </p>

<p>They’re also beginning a really disturbing process of singling out people who aren’t their “allies” ; a petition circulated among (mostly humanities-based) grad students rails: “Those defenders of the status quo have a fairly predictable task. As defenders of an entrenched hegemonic order, they have a safe and privileged role to perform in the current crisis: they will continue to hide behind legal rights, such as free speech, to justify actions and rhetoric that prolongs a long history of racism in which black culture and heritage is treated as their private property.” That petition goes on to demand that black students get special academic treatment, including extra time to complete assignments and tests. To me, that sounds far more patronizing and racist than anything that’s actually happened on campus. </p>

<p>Also see this statement from a sociology professor: “The large number of students and professors who do not yet get it need to be as inconvenienced as we feel threatened by this act. Exam time is coming round. Let them understand what it is to study in the shadow of a noose. We need to escalate this beyond Library Walk and take it into the classroom. If the students cannot attend lectures and concentrate in class study because they are hurting and angry, THEN NEITHER CAN WE TEACH IN THE SHADOW OF A NOOSE.” This sounds to me like they’re intending on disrupting classes and impeding the academics of students who don’t really care (it appears the majority of the UCSD student body doesn’t really care; the number of protesters has never been more than several hundred and many of those have come from other universities). </p>

<p>One final point: at the end of the invasion of the Chancellor’s office, I watched the leaders of the protests come out of their meeting with the UCSD administration and launch into a vitriolic rant. While the UCSD administration sat down with the protesters and took their demands seriously, the protest leaders responded with foul-mouthed invective against the UCSD administration and self-congratulatory statements about how “brave” they were by protesting. That action, to me, sums up this entire debacle.</p>

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<p>Me neither. Which is why I find the original offensive party and the subsequent escalations so surprising. If the stories in the newspaper are to be believed there is a very poisonous racial atmosphere on campus right now. UCSD was about the last school I would have expected this from.</p>

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<p>It’s a reference to lynching. It’s an implied threat to the black community.</p>

<p>I mean, yeah, maybe she meant to commit suicide in the library and then forgot to follow through, but really . . . Occam’s razor, folks. She hung it there because she’s racist and probably was moved to action due to being angry about the negative reaction to the stupid “ghetto party.”</p>

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Wait a minute. Somebody hangs a noose in the library and it’s the BSU’s job to “help race relations”? No. In this context it’s the BSU’s job to say “we’re mad as hell and we’re not gonna take it anymore.” Helping race relations is going to have to be a by-product of legitimate responses to that legitimate anger.</p>

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<p>Seems to me that people are becoming desperate to find things that are offensive. In my opinion, over reacting to things like this causes small minds to have far more power over us then they should.</p>

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I begin to lose hope when I read stuff like this. Do you have any imagination? Do you have any sense of history? Go to Wikipedia and type in “Lynching in the United States.” Read the article. Look at the pictures. Then tell me people are “over reacting” when they freak out over nooses hanging in public spaces. Remember when you look at those pictures that there still plenty of people in the United States old enough to have been alive when things like that were taking place on a regular basis. It’s not ancient history.</p>

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<p>I’m still shocked that some young girl would do this. Has there been anything released about her? Was she a member of some weird group or something?</p>

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<p>Don’t question me about my imagination or my sense of history. You don’t know the first thing about me. I gave my opinion and if you don’t like it, I don’t care in the least bit. Keep letting stupid little things prevent you from moving forward and then sit around wondering why nobody is getting better.</p>

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I didn’t say I did know anything about you. I asked questions. They were only partly rhetorical. I am truly mystified by how people can talk about lynching as a “stupid little thing.”</p>

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<p>Why are you so shocked? Do you think that women are immune to racism? Do you think that it was only men who propagated it for thousands of years all over the world?</p>