At the @UWBadgers [1] game and there is a man with a mask of President Obama and a noose. This is racism, why was this allowed into the stadium? pic.twitter.com/zKEqhdDYny [2]
— 😏 (@woahohkatie) October 29, 2016 [3]
Two fans at a University of Wisconsin football game on Oct. 29 crossed the line with a costume that featured President Obama (and Hillary Clinton) in a noose with Donald Trump holding the other end of the rope. Despite the horrifyingly offensive display, the two were allowed to stay throughout the duration of the game.
The full "costume" required one of the attendees to wear the noose, a striped prison suit, and alternate between a President Obama mask and a Hillary Clinton one. Meanwhile, the other attendee wore a Donald Trump mask as he held the rope. The pair was photographed by someone else at the game, and the picture was promptly shared on Twitter [4].
The pair was then captured exiting the seating area in another tweet, shown below, from the same person. However, the pair was not fully leaving the game as the tweet implies. Instead, the University of Wisconsin had simply asked them to remove the "offensive components" of the costume, i.e. the noose, which they did. After following those orders, the two men were allowed to stay.
It APPEARS the men were first asked to removed the Obama mask then asked to leave. This was their exit... pic.twitter.com/Xv1UxMOfaW [5]
— 😏 (@woahohkatie) October 30, 2016 [6]
In a statement released on Twitter, the university agreed that the costume was offensive [7] and "counter to the values of the university and athletic department," but ultimately chose to not kick them out, citing free speech.
Statement from UW-Madison pic.twitter.com/gInAArKn8F [8]
— Wisconsin Badgers (@UWBadgers) October 30, 2016 [9]
While the school stipulates that the costume was an expression of free speech, one can argue that the the noose is a tool for hate speech [10], one that implies and could possibly incite violence against people of a particular race.
