Phoney Hate Crime at UC San Diego

Here we go again with what's become a familiar and increasingly frequent scenario on American College campuses: another hate crime false alarm, this time at the University of California, San Diego. According to reports in the Los Angeles Times and Inside Higher Education this morning, a "minority student" has acknowledged responsibility for the placement of a phantom noose in the school's library. It was, she is quoted as saying in the student newspaper, simply a "stupid mistake," not intended to fan racial tensions. I may be cynical, but I have to wonder why anyone would want to string a noose above a library carrel in the frist place, and then simply forget about it during a time of heightening racial tensions on campus. For now, I guess, we'll have to take the student's word for it. The UCSD administration, of course, had been poised to send in the US Cavalry. Unfortunately, even though the troops will be called off for now, the Chancellor and her colleagues will probably simply redouble their commitment to bring "greater diversity" to the campus, clueless that it's probably such policies that helped to arouse racial animosities in the first place. I'm certainly not expecting an apology.