After 36 books on LGBT issues were vandalized with urine in a Harvard library last month, Harvard police have determined that the damage was not a hate crime but an “accident” by the university’s library staff, the Harvard Crimson reported.

The books, which covered same-sex marriage and lesbian and gay issues, were found in a state of irreparable damage in Lamont Library on November 24. Beside them on the shelf was an empty bottle that had presumably contained the urine.

Library staff did not report the incident until last Friday, December 10, when the news caused a stir as a hate crime. But on Monday the Harvard University Police Department concluded that the bottle had actually been spilled by “our own library personnel,” Harvard College Dean Evelynn M. Hammonds wrote in a campus-wide email.

Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences spokesman Jeff Neal told the Crimson he does not know why a bottle of urine would be kept in the library to begin with.

We were wondering the same thing.