Victoria Camargo walked into class Thursday morning to find a 6-foot-long rope tied into a noose. It was about 9 a.m., and the noose lay on her professor’s lectern inside the Gannett Auditorium at Weimer Hall. The UF advertising sophomore thought it may have been a prop to be used in class. But her professor never acknowledged it. After the two-hour class, police were called and hauled the rope away.
“I walked in there, and it was just kind of thrown on the floor,” the 20-year-old said.
She was one of the first to see the noose. Soon enough, news of the act had reached the highest level of the university, prompting UF President Kent Fuchs to issue a campus-wide condemnation of the act some viewed as stirring racial tensions just days before Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
Adviser Judy Hunter said she called police when she heard about the incident from the professor, Michael Weigold, and from a student after the class ended. Weigold is white.
University Police is investigating the incident, as of press time, and has interviewed students from the class, UF spokesperson Janine Sikes said. She also said police are looking into allegations that Theatre Strike Force, a UF student improvisational comedy group, left it in there.
“The history of nooses certainly opens wounds for the black community,” Sikes said.
Sikes said a member of the improv troupe admitted to tying the rope into a noose, but it is unknown as of press time if that member left it in the classroom.
The member, whose name has not been released, told police he made the noose as a symbol of how his semester was going.
Theatre Strike Force denounced the member’s actions in an emailed statement Thursday night.
“The member acted as an individual, and the occurrence is not representative of the values of our club,” the group’s executive board wrote. “We sincerely apologize if any students or faculty members were made to feel unsafe due to the actions of this individual.”
Fuchs emailed students Thursday night about the noose, calling it a symbol of hate.
“While we do not know why the rope was placed there or the intention, recent reports indicate it may have been a prank,” Fuchs wrote. “Nonetheless, the shameful and deplorable history that nooses evoke opens wounds, particularly for members of the Black community.”
Diane McFarlin, the dean of the College of Journalism and Communications, also sent out an email Thursday night elaborating on Fuchs’ message.
“I was heartbroken when I first heard about this incident,” she wrote. “I felt profound relief when I learned that it appeared not to have been intended as a racially oriented message.”
At about 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Fuchs held a small white candle as he marched with UF’s black community during the Martin Luther King Jr. march and vigil, put on by the UF MLK Celebration. The noose at the university shows why the march is needed, Fuchs said.
“Those symbols can create a lot of hurt,” he said. “Diversity is part of our education.”
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UF President Kent Fuchs addresses a group of students at the Martin King with Malcolm X: Exploring Social Justice through Multiple Lenses opening ceremony on Thursday. The group marched from the Institute of Black Culture to the Reitz Union Rion Ballroom as a part of a candlelight vigil before the ceremony.
