The Strange Recurring Case of the Collegiate Noose Panic

Controversy broke out at Central Connecticut State University over Memorial Day weekend when a standard steel cable loop with an American flag attached to it — meant to celebrate the impending holiday — at a construction site on campus was mistaken for a noose. After a short investigation made its innocent provenance plain, the college president nevertheless chastised the workers responsible for their “reckless and tone deaf behavior.”

At the University of Michigan, an employee tying a fishing knot on his break inadvertently sent a shockwave across campus when it was found on the ground and interpreted to be a noose.

A prolonged FBI investigation of a noose found on a construction site at Johns Hopkins University ended because “the bureau [was] unable to find sufficient evidence to pursue charges ‘despite extensive efforts.’”

Off campus, too, what has been believed to be a noose has often, in the fullness of time, been revealed to have more innocuous purposes. Famously, NASCAR driver Bubba Wallace mistook a piece of rope that had been in a garage for years for a noose meant to intimidate him.

So why, in the absence of evidence of malice and in the face of a number of similar incidents that have been proven not to have been the racialized incidents they were mistaken for, has Princeton been so adamant in labeling as a noose what it found?