A crime committed in the name of hate is a horrible thing and no rational person would dispute that.

But before you sign up to protest a hate crime on your college campus, you might want to make sure a crime was really committed.

Unfortunately, people sometimes fake hate crimes, as documented at Inside Higher Ed:

When threatening notes that targeted minority students started showing up around the Trinity International University campus in 2005, administrators spoke to the campus and conferred with police before ultimately evacuating all students of color from their residence halls. The Federal Bureau of Investigation came in to look into the apparent hate crime, and arrested a suspect in less than a week.

The whole thing was fake.

Things didn’t go quite that far this year at Central Connecticut State University, after a student claimed to be receiving notes in her dormitory room that attacked her for being a lesbian. But hundreds of students did hold a rally for her in March, long before police discovered earlier this month (thanks to a camera in a hall closet, which was installed after the one initially placed in her room was turned off) that she was slipping the notes under her own door.