When I’m right, I’m right. (It’s been known to happen!) Last week I made the following prediction about a “hate crime” at St. Olaf College in Minnesota. Students protested after a racist note was left on a student’s windshield, and it all seemed so familiar:
1. Racist rhetoric found on campus
2. Students draw up list of demands
3. Yelling, and plenty of it
4. Hoaxer wanted to raise awareness https://t.co/9Fnfvcxt0A— Jim Treacher (@jtLOL) May 1, 2017
And that’s exactly what happened. Nathan Rubbelke, College Fix:
A note that used the n-word and threatened a black female student at St. Olaf College — sparking an intense protest that led to classes being shut down for a day as student demonstrators accused the school of institutional racism — “was not a genuine threat,” the school’s president said Wednesday.
President David Anderson said in an email to students that an investigation into the note identified a person of interest “who confessed to writing the note…”
In a second campuswide email sent later Wednesday, Anderson used stronger words to explain what happened: “The reason I said in my earlier note that this was not a genuine threat is that we learned from the author’s confession that the note was fabricated. It was apparently a strategy to draw attention to concerns about the campus climate.”
In other words: There was no racism to protest, so somebody created some. To raise awareness.
Anderson isn’t identifying the culprit, but I’m not sure why. If you concoct a hate-crime hoax that brings an entire college campus to a standstill, you should be punished. The hoax is the real hate crime.