Students on Friday took over the chancellor's office at the University of California, San Diego, to protest the hanging of a noose in a campus library, the latest in a string of racially charged incidents.
Students wearing red handkerchiefs over their faces blocked the doors to Chancellor Marye Anne Fox's offices around noon while more students inside chanted "real pain, real change." The students remained inside the office several hours later.
Authorities say the noose was found dangling from a light fixture on the seventh floor of Geisel Library on Thursday night.
Hundreds of students also were protesting outside the university administration building, where speakers have denounced the noose as an example of intolerance on the campus where less than 2 percent of the students are black.
A University of California statement said a student admitted she and two other people were responsible for hanging the noose. The statement did not identify the students or their race or include a motive.
UC and campus authorities did not indicate whether the students would be charged with a hate crime. Under state law, hanging a noose to terrorize is punishable by up to a year in jail.
"Whatever the intent of the authors of this act, it was a despicable expression of racial hatred, and we are outraged," the UC statement said. "It has no place in civilized society, and it will not be tolerated."
To blacks, a noose recalls the days of widespread racism and lynchings.
"How am I supposed to walk into that building? How am I ever going to be safe there?" said ethnic studies major Cheyenne Stevens, who is black.
Mustafa Shahryar, 21, said he had seen the noose as he left the library.
Shahryar, who is from Afghanistan, told the crowd he grew accustomed to racial slurs while growing up in Southern California but was stunned to see the noose.
"Nothing phased me until last night," he said. "I just took that noose as an attack on all of us."
Black stereotypes
The school has already been in turmoil over an off-campus "Compton Cookout" party organized by some students that urged people to dress as ghetto stereotypes and promised there would be chicken, watermelon and malt liquor.
Chancellor Marye Anne Fox condemned the party, and the school began an investigation to determine if any students might face discipline. The school also initiated a campus-wide "Battle Hate" campaign.
Campus administrators held a "teach-in" against intolerance on Wednesday. the same day hundreds of students from UCSD and other universities staged a campus protest, demanding that officials make more efforts to combat racism.
Some students countered that the reaction to the party had been overblown. Others accused the campus Black Student Union of using it to push demands for more black professors and funding for ethnic studies.
Last week, the Associated Students president pulled funding from a student-run TV station after The Koala — a campus media outlet with a reputation for being offensive — came out in support of the party, called black students ungrateful and used a derogatory term for African-Americans during a program.