{"id":377919,"date":"2010-03-01T18:12:33","date_gmt":"2010-03-01T23:12:33","guid":{"rendered":"tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d8341c630a53ef0120a8e865d1970b"},"modified":"2010-03-01T18:11:39","modified_gmt":"2010-03-01T23:11:39","slug":"student-apologizes-for-uc-san-diego-noose-incident-claims-no-racist-intent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/377919","title":{"rendered":"Student apologizes for UC San Diego noose incident, claims no racist intent"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

The UC San Diego student reportedly responsible for last week\u2019s controversial noose episode issued a public, but anonymous, apology Monday and said she’d had no racist intent when she hung\u00a0the rope from a bookcase in the campus’ main library.\u00a0The discovery of the noose set off angry protests at a school already tense from racially charged episodes and triggered a round of condemnations from UC leaders and even the governor.<\/p>\n

In a letter published Monday on the front page of the campus’\u00a0student newspaper, the Guardian, the student wrote that "this was not an act of racism" and contended that it\u00a0was a "stupid mistake." She said it was the\u00a0result of fooling around and\u00a0had nothing to do with seeking to intimidate black students with a symbol of lynching. <\/p>\n

"I know what I did was offensive — regardless of my intentions — I am just trying to say I\u2019m sorry. 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," wrote the student, who was suspended Friday and remains under investigation by campus police for a possible hate crime. <\/p>\n

The letter is signed "by Anonymous UCSD Student" and offers no clues to her identity or ethnicity. A note at the end of the letter states that the newspaper had verified the author\u2019s authenticity.\u00a0Sari Thayer, the Guardian\u2019s Web editor, said in a telephone interview that the woman had approached the paper and asked to publish the letter and that "a reliable source" had confirmed it.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n

In the letter, the woman said she and friends had been playing with a rope, jumping with it, making a lasso and then a noose early last week. She then carried it to the library, where she was studying, and strung it over a desk there Tuesday and forgot about it. Its discovery Thursday night caused a firestorm on campus, where racial tensions were high after a Jan. 15 off-campus party\u00a0mocked Black History Month and a derogatory term for blacks was used on a student television show.<\/p>\n

When she realized the controversial noose was her responsibility, "I felt so ashamed and embarrassed, and the first thing I did was call the campus police and confess," she wrote. She said her motivation\u00a0in publishing the letter was "to hopefully put a little bit of faith back into the UCSD campus by clarifying that it was not an act of racism."<\/p>\n

A campus spokesperson said campus police\u00a0are continuing to investigate\u00a0the\u00a0incident and are consulting about it with the San Diego County district attorney’s office\u00a0and the U.S. attorney’s office.\u00a0 The student remains suspended while the investigation continues, the spokesperson said.<\/font><\/a><\/p>\n

— Larry Gordon<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The UC San Diego student reportedly responsible for last week\u2019s controversial noose episode issued a public, but anonymous, apology Monday and said she’d had no racist intent when she hung\u00a0the rope from a bookcase in the campus’ main library.\u00a0The discovery of the noose set off angry protests at a school already tense from racially charged […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4840,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-377919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4840"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=377919"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377919\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=377919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=377919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=377919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}