The Baltimore Sun reports: “Johns Hopkins University administrators suspended the Sigma Chi fraternity yesterday after a weekend ‘Halloween in the Hood’ party that included a skeleton pirate dangling from a rope noose.”

Apparently the hanging skeleton at the Halloween party, combined with the party’s ”hood” theme, evoked images of racist lynching. This set off a wave of guilt and recrimination: Members of the fraternity apologized, calling the ordeal “shameful.” The university president called it “deeply disturbing.”

No one, apparently, has spoken up to offer the most probable explanation: 1) The party was put together to have some innocent weekend fun, not to denigrate any racial group; 2) If the party can be said to have been making fun of anything, it was making fun of “ghetto culture,” which is quite distinct from “black culture”; and 3) The hanging skeleton was a simple Halloween decoration, with no intended (or even reasonably perceived) connection to race-related lynching.