students protest racist incidents at uc campuses

National news outlets have started to pick up on the recent racist incidents spread over several University of California campuses, with news of -- I kid you not -- a KKK-style hood found at UC San Diego this week: Racist incidents, protests spread at UC campuses.

On Tuesday, student demonstrators gathered at rallies at UCLA and UC Irvine, sepaking out to condemn the recent spate of racist incidents at UC San Diego that targeted black students and another incident last month at UC Davis, where someone carved a swastika on a Jewish student's door.

The protests came on the same day UC San Diego announced the discovery of a white pillowcase fashioned into a KKK-style hood and a day after UC Santa Cruz officials found an image of a noose scribbled on the inside of a bathroom door:

Officials found the hood, which bore a hand-drawn circle and cross, on a statue of children's book author Theodor Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss, outside the main campus library late Monday. A rose had been inserted between the statue's fingers.

Detectives were analyzing the pillowcase for fingerprints and DNA evidence, a university statement said.

UC San Diego Chancellor Marye Anne Fox vowed to punish the culprits to the fullest extent of the law. "We will not tolerate these despicable actions," she said in the statement.

The hood came on the heels two other UC San Diego incidents: a February off-campus, student-organized "Compton Cookout" party that mocked Black History Month with ghetto stereotypes; and a noose found hanging from a library bookshelf last week.

UC San Diego campus police said they had completed their investigation into the noose incident and turned their results over to the city attorney on Tuesday for possible hate crime charges.

It should be noted that one of the students responsible for the library noose apologized to the university community in an anonymous letter published Monday in the campus newspaper. She claims the noose was formed while she and friends were playing around with a piece of rope and had no meaning as a lynching symbol. Whatever the case, it was pretty damn stupid.

Through all of this, you have to hope that whoever's responsible for these incidents are just a few loser idiots using extreme behavior to get a rise out of the community. Go to hell. And to all of the students standing up and speaking out against hate and prejudice at the University of California, stay angry.