Superintendent rails against noose found in school restroom as 'breach' of district's 'values.' Turns out student attempting self-harm created it.

A noose made out of shoestring was found in a Connecticut school restroom earlier this month — and initially the district superintendent railed against what appeared to be the attitudes behind the creation of the noose, WVIT-TV reported.

"This is a very serious breach of the values of our community. Such behavior cannot and will not be tolerated," New Haven School District Superintendent Iline Tracey said in a message to the school community. "We will work with staff and students to understand what happened and to keep it from occurring again. We will take action to make sure students are safe, and all are respected."

Oops

Well, it turns out the noose found in the Nathan Hale School restroom on Oct. 1 was created by a student who attempted self harm, city spokesman Kyle Buda told WTNH-TV later that day, adding that the student in question was taken to a hospital.

Investigators said it was determined that the incident was not racially motivated, WVIT reported.

Nathan Hale School serves K-8 students.

Far from the first faux pas

In addition, there have been numerous instances in which racism was assigned to various discovered objects that people inaccurately viewed as nooses.

In June, a loop at the end of a steel construction cable attached to a crane at Central Connecticut State University triggered a number of folks who saw a "noose" instead.

"Regardless of what someone else says about that, what I see, as a black man? That's a noose. Period," Ronald Davis, president of the New Britain NAACP, told WTIC-TV. "No ifs, ands, or buts about it. Take it down."

Other examples:

• Last year numerous people — including then-New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo — assumed they saw a noose at Marcus Garvey Park in Harlem. But the NYPD Hate Crime Task Force said it actually was left over from a construction scaffold.
• A "noose" found in a University of Michigan hospital in 2019 sparked a hate crime allegation, and the office of Counseling and Workplace Resilience even was made available to those who experienced "distress" over the incident. But it turned out that an employee simply was practicing tying a fishing knot.
• Far-left Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney in 2018 said then-President Donald Trump's "hateful rhetoric" was to blame for a black doll found hanging with a noose at a playground. Except it was placed there by two boys under 13 — one white, one black — who did it to scare people and who weren't aware of the hate-related imagery.
• In 2015, a University of Delaware student reported finding three "nooses" hanging from a tree in front of a campus building one day after Black Lives Matter activists staged a protest. The school president said campus police were "investigating" the "hate crime" and that "we need to stand together against intolerance." However, it was determined that the ropes actually were left over from a previous campus activity involving paper lanterns.

This story has been updated to reflect that Nathan Hale School is a K-8 school, not a high school as originally reported.