Many details of the recent Princeton case remain unknown, but previous panics suggest that skepticism is warranted.
‘P rinceton vehemently deplores this appalling act of hate — the University has zero-tolerance for racist and harmful actions such as this,” announced a spokesman for the prestigious Ivy League university late last month.
To what did he refer? In June, a noose was found by a contractor on a campus construction site, triggering Princeton’s denunciation of whoever had set it up. A couple weeks later, a rally was held where campus leaders and local activists spoke out against what has been construed as an attempt at intimidating minority students, faculty, and staff.
Lamps were lit, speeches were delivered, and songs were sung. The university’s department of Counseling and Psychological Services and Office of Diversity and Inclusion sent an email to students noting that “the symbol of the noose is a deplorable and intolerable insignia of white supremacy.”
“This recent incident is racialized and violent,” they asserted.
Certainly, it would be upsetting to find out that the knot was tied with the intention of conveying hatred. And even if it wasn’t, it’s understandable that students — without knowing its origins — might be frightened by even the possibility of bigotry, potentially violent bigotry, encroaching so close to home.
But that’s just the thing: No one knows what this object is or where it came from.
Princeton’s Department of Public Safety is conducting an investigation of the incident right now. But as of this moment, the university has yet to release any evidence that what was found is even a noose. The university has not made pictures of it available to the general public. Nor has it released any information about where exactly it was found.
The university has made one detail available to the school newspaper: The construction site was accessible only to authorized personnel, which would presumably narrow down the pool of potential perpetrators — unless, of course, the site lacks security measures that might keep out trespassers. But the university hasn’t released any details about the level of security at the site, such as whether there are surveillance cameras.
Indeed, the university has not responded to multiple requests for comment and opportunities to clarify the facts on the ground.
If past incidents with fact patterns that mirror this one’s are any indication, there are certainly reasons to be skeptical of the idea that this is the kind of racially charged, violent incident that the university is telling its students this was.
Controversy broke out at Central Connecticut State University over Memorial Day weekend when a standard steel cable loop with an American flag attached to it — meant to celebrate the impending holiday — at a construction site on campus was mistaken for a noose. After a short investigation made its innocent provenance plain, the college president nevertheless chastised the workers responsible for their “reckless and tone deaf behavior.”
At the University of Michigan, an employee tying a fishing knot on his break inadvertently sent a shockwave across campus when it was found on the ground and interpreted to be a noose.
A prolonged FBI investigation of a noose found on a construction site at Johns Hopkins University ended because “the bureau [was] unable to find sufficient evidence to pursue charges ‘despite extensive efforts.’”
Off campus, too, what has been believed to be a noose has often, in the fullness of time, been revealed to have more innocuous purposes. Famously, NASCAR driver Bubba Wallace mistook a piece of rope that had been in a garage for years for a noose meant to intimidate him.
So why, in the absence of evidence of malice and in the face of a number of similar incidents that have been proven not to have been the racialized incidents they were mistaken for, has Princeton been so adamant in labeling as a noose what it found?
What happened in 2019 at Stanford could be instructive. When a medical student noticed a piece of rope in a bush that she insisted hadn’t previously been there, and the university was not perceived to have made it its top priority, it caused numerous headaches for its administration.
An open letter published in the student newspaper accused Stanford of letting “huge areas of research and teaching, and immense areas of student, staff, and faculty concern, lie un-addressed, or treated with false concern expressed in the most vacuous language possible, and, most importantly, without the substantial actions that such concerns warrant.”
“In that emptiness and lack of assertive action, the administration acquiesces to hatred, prejudice, ignorance, and violence. In fact, in so acquiescing, it enables each of those things,” it went on.
The letter went on to call the administration “morally appalling” for its response, which read:
As many of you have seen in news reports, this weekend Stanford’s Department of Public Safety responded to a report of what was described as a noose near a residence for summer students. We take this matter very seriously, and DPS is currently investigating the incident. If additional evidence comes to light, it may be classified as a hate crime. We would strongly encourage anyone with more information on this incident to contact DPS. While we await further conclusions from the investigation, we deeply appreciate that a noose is recognized today as a symbol of violence and racism directed against African American people. Such a symbol has no place on our campus. We need to continue to strive for a community in which discrimination and hate have no presence. We will ensure that our community is updated on the status of the investigation into this very serious matter.
On campus, affirming the worst fears of students and faculty — even before the facts are known — is virtue, not vice. Responses are evaluated not for their proportionality to what’s known to have occurred but for whether they signal their position on the “right” side of history and their patrons’ feelings.
Unfortunately, while it’s no sin to state one’s opposition to bigotry, hasty reactions such a Princeton’s not only quite possibly overstate the immediate threat to minorities, they create an atmosphere of distrust and suspicion.
Ultimately though, administrators will with few exceptions choose this course over being accused — without basis, but with great effect — of either racism or insensitivity to it.
It’s impossible to say what Princeton’s investigation will turn up, but if it turns out not to be the worst, it’s the administration’s response that will have done the most damage.