IF IT WEREN’T FOR HOAXES, WOULD WE HAVE ANY HATE CRIMES AT ALL? Albany expels students indicted in hate crime hoax.

The University at Albany has expelled two black female students and suspended a third after they were indicted for allegedly lying about being victims of a hate crime.

Ariel Agudio and Asha Burwell have been dismissed from the university and Alexis Briggs has been suspended for two years, according to an email sent to the school community Thursday by President Robert J. Jones, the Albany Times Union reported.

The women grabbed national headlines — and a sympathetic tweet from Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton — after claiming that a group of 12 to 20 white men hurled racial slurs and attacked them on a CDTA bus about 1 a.m. Jan. 30 while others stood by and did nothing.

The alleged incident sparked a large on-campus rally defending women of color and the social media campaign #DefendBlackGirlsUAlbany.

I now start with the presumption that these stories are bogus.