UC San Diego student admits hanging noose in library

Larry Gordon

LOS ANGELES — University of California, San Diego police said Friday that a student admitted hanging a noose from a library bookcase in an incident that set off a new round of protests and a sit-in at the chancellor’s office.

In statements released by campus police, the student’s identity was not released and no further information was provided about a possible motive. All officials would say was that the student contacted campus police and admitted hanging the noose on a lamp fixture on top of a seventh-floor bookcase in Geisel Library.

Police originally said they were investigating the noose incident as a crime with “intent to terrorize.” Student protesters, angry about the noose and other recent racially charged incidents, occupied the office of UC San Diego Chancellor Marye Anne Fox.

In sympathy, black students at University of California, Los Angeles organized a brief sit-in at that school’s administrative headquarters, Murphy Hall, in the hallway outside the office of Chancellor Gene Block. A campus spokesman said about 100 protesters were involved, no one was arrested and there was no damage. It ended after Block went out and talked with the students and expressed concern about the situation at UC San Diego.

Meanwhile, in Northern California, an apparently unrelated protest about higher student fees at the University of California, Berkeley turned violent Friday morning, with two people arrested after demonstrators fought with police and set trash cans on fire, police said.

The demonstrators broke windows and sprayed graffiti in Durant Hall, a former library building under renovation on campus, and then shattered a glass doorway and set the trash fires in the shopping district just off campus by Telegraph Avenue.

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