KATC (Durham), April 2, 2015

An undergraduate student at Duke University has admitted to hanging a noose in a tree and is no longer on campus, university officials said Thursday.

At a news conference Thursday afternoon, school spokesman Michael Schoenfeld said the school would not release the name of the student who admitted to hanging the noose, found early Wednesday in a plaza area at the heart of the campus.

The student was identified with information provided by other students and will be subject to Duke’s student conduct process and that an investigation is continuing to find out if others were involved, Schoenfeld said.

Schoenfeld said the school believes federal education laws protecting information about students and their grades prevent the school from describing his or her gender, race or whether the student had been in trouble in the past.

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Officials say the noose was found about 2 a.m. Wednesday in the plaza outside the Bryan Center, the student commons building. Black Student Alliance vice president Henry Washington said he and about 14 other students saw the noose hanging overnight after being alerted via Twitter. {snip}

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At a gathering Wednesday in front of the university’s Gothic chapel building, Duke President Richard Brodhead told a crowd of several thousand that their presence was a rejection of what the noose symbolizes in a region where lynchings were once used to terrorize black residents. And he said that while administrators and campus police investigate who displayed the noose and why, it is up to each individual to reject racism.

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