Post by Graveyardbride on Oct 7, 2017 3:52:24 GMT -5
‘Noose’ Turns out to Be Lost Shoelace
LANSING, Mich. – Officials at Michigan State University investigated and released strongly worded statements earlier this week because a female student claimed to find a noose on the handle of a stairwell door in a residence hall. Turns out, the alleged “noose” was just a stray shoelace.
The first report of the packaged leather shoelace someone decided was a noose occurred Wednesday morning, reports the Lansing State Journal. Police – and, of course, the office of institutional equity – investigated after a female student reported it as a noose.
The president of Michigan State University, Lou Anna Simon, rapidly released a statement denouncing nooses and describing the shoelace hanging on a dorm door in Holden Hall as “a racial incident.” In Simon’s statement, she said: “A student reported a noose was hung outside of her room. I want to recognize the courage it took for the student to report this incident. This type of behavior is not tolerated on our campus. No Spartan should ever feel targeted based on their race, or other ways in which they identify. A noose is a symbol of intimidation and threat that has a horrendous history in America.”
By Wednesday afternoon, campus police managed to locate a shoelace that matched the “noose” outside the dormitory. They even managed to track down the student who had lost the shoelaces.
A Michigan State spokesman, Jason Cody, then suggested the shoelaces were somehow specially packaged in a noose-like shape. “The matching packaged shoelace was found outside of the residence hall,” Cody said in an updated statement. “Officers located and spoke to the student who lost both of the shoelaces, which are packaged in a way that someone could perceive them to look similar to a noose.”
The student who lost the shoelaces lives on the same floor as the student who called in the noose threat.
“Also, the original shoelace found inside the residence hall was not directed at any individual,” Cody reassuringly added. “It originally was seen on the hallway floor and later on a stairwell door handle, where officers believe someone put it after picking it up.”
The Michigan State fake noose kerfuffle is another in a very long line of allegations about nooses on college campuses which turned out to be hoaxes – or paper lantern remnants, or something other than nooses.
Michigan State is famous, of course, for blatantly discriminating against male students by maintaining a taxpayer-funded women’s study lounge in its main student union – in which male students could not trespass. Officials at the taxpayer-funded school also outlawed whiteboards from doors in dorm buildings earlier this year because it was possible that someone could scrawl an offensive message or image on them.
Source: Bill Owens, The Daily Caller, October 6, 2017.
