Today’s universities, with notable exceptions, are bastions of extreme political correctness. The problem is so bad, you wonder how anyone can learn anything useful.
In fact, they don’t. Students are so indoctrinated into an alternate reality of white supremacists hiding under the bed and fascists sitting next to them in class that fear becomes the norm. Anything and everything — even unrelated and unremarkable occurrences — can set off a wave of hysteria.
In the case of Michigan State University, the hysteria becomes a parody.
A student living in a dorm room reported a “noose” hung outside her door. The armies of righteous indignation were activated and the “incident” became a cause on social media.
The president issued a condemnation, students decried racism on campus, and black people reported being in fear for their lives.
In the immortal words of Emily Litella: “Never mind.”
A lost shoelace at Michigan State University caused a racial uproar Wednesday after someone mistook it for a noose.
MSU President Lou Anna K. Simon released a statement Wednesday morning saying she was “distressed” after finding out “a student reported a noose was hung outside of her room.” Simon commended the student’s “courage” for reporting the “racial incident” and put out a clear message.
“This type of behavior is not tolerated on our campus,” Simon said. “No Spartan should ever feel targeted based on their race, or other ways in which they identify.”
But by Wednesday afternoon, the investigation by MSU Police revealed there was no noose.
Instead, they found “the object was a packaged leather shoelace and not a noose,” MSU spokesman Jason Cody said in a news release, adding that the shoelaces “are packaged in a way that someone could perceive them to look similar to a noose.”
Officers tracked down and interviewed the student who lost both of the shoelaces. That student happens to live on the same floor as the one who made the report.
“Also, the original shoelace found inside the residence hall was not directed at any individual,” Cody said, adding that police believe someone found the shoelace and put it on a stairwell door handle after picking it up off the floor.
This isn’t the first time this sort of thing has happened. At Delaware State University in 2015, frightened students reported nooses hung on trees all across the campus. Again, the president condemned the act and students demanded the university do something about it.
An investigation revealed that the “nooses” were the remains of paper lanterns hung across campus to decorate the trees:
Interim university President Nancy Targett initially called the appearance of the pieces of string with metal hangers at the end a “deplorable act” and “hateful display” when they were found by a student hanging in trees in front of a campus building Tuesday night. But in a statement posted online around daybreak Wednesday, Targett says the investigation found that the items weren’t instruments of a hate crime, but were left over from an event on The Green, a campus open space.
Still, Targett says the incident revealed the campus’ sensitivity to the potential issue and shows a need for “continuing dialogue.” She invited the community to gather Wednesday afternoon.
Get it? Even though the whole thing was a gigantic mistake, we should treat it seriously anyway.
Somehow, I doubt the president said much about jumping to conclusions and making a first-class ass of yourself at that community meeting.
Sometimes, I try to imagine what these students will be like as American citizens in 10 years. It is at that point that I hope for an early death so I won’t have to think about dealing with these cretinous imbeciles who literally get hysterical at the drop of a shoelace.
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