The president and the chancellor of the University of Missouri are both out of a job.
They resigned under pressure from groups who say that they hadn't responded quick enough
or intensely enough to some racist incidents on campus.
After threats of a faculty walk out and a strike by several of the black players on
the football team, both men agreed their time was up.
The players’ strike and the resignations have thrust Mizzou into the national spotlight,
but they’re just the latest developments following a string of racist incidents on
campus.
Black students are underrepresented at the University of Missouri.
And they’ve faced racism for years.
In 2011, a statue on campus was sprayed with racist graffiti;
in 2010, cotton balls were strewn outside the Black Culture Center.
This September, the school’s student body president, Payton Head,
wrote in a Facebook post that a group of white men shouted the n-word at him from a pickup
truck.
The post went viral, and Head and other black students wanted a response from University
administrators.
Then, in October, members of a student group called the Legion of Black Collegians were
rehearsing for their homecoming performance
when they too say a man started yelling racial slurs at them.
The university’s chancellor, R. Bowen Loftin, denounced the slurs in a video
and said the entire university would be required to take online diversity training.
<<It’s enough.
Let’s stop this.
Let’s end hatred and racism at Mizzou.>>
But black students said they wanted a response from Loftin’s boss,
University of Missouri system president Tim Wolfe.
Graduate student Jordan Butler said he and other black students tried reaching out to
Wolfe, but were ignored.
They staged a protest during the school’s homecoming parade.
They stood in front of Wolfe’s car for about 15 minutes, blocking its progress through
the parade route.
Wolfe refused to engage with the protesters, and ten days after the the parade they wrote
a list of demands,
including Wolfe’s resignation, a handwritten apology, and an increase in black faculty
and staff.
The protesters called themselves Concerned Student 1950, which was the year black students
were first allowed at the university.
Tensions increased on October 24, when a swastika made from human feces was smeared on the wall
of a communal bathroom in a new dorm.
Nearly a week after they released their demands,
Wolfe met with members of Concerned Student 1950,
but the group said he did not address any of the demands they had sent him.
So six days after that meeting, graduate student Jordan Butler said he would go on a hunger
strike until Wolfe was fired or resigned.
Wolfe later issued an apology for ignoring the homecoming protesters,
but it was too little, too late.
In support of Butler, a good chunk of the football team announced that they wouldn't
play until Wolfe was removed from office.
A group of faculty members urged their colleagues to cancel class in solidarity with the protesters.
That same day, Wolfe and Loftin announced their resignations.
The dustup shows that college administrators can’t ignore students’ demands for social
change on campus--
especially if football teams start getting involved.
The players at Mizzou have shown they can wield tremendous power off the field, if they
choose to.