by Clare Duffy |
Update 11/12/15: University of Missouri system governance board has appointed Michael Middleton interim system president until a permanent replacement for Tim Wolfe is found, according to USA Today. Middleton is a black law professor who recently retired from the university after 30 years, and had been working with former-chancellor Loftin on a curriculum geared towards racial equality.
A student movement calling out University of Missouri system leadership for negligence of racism on campus spurred administrative change at the MU this week.
UM System president, Tim Wolfe, resigned Monday amid increasing pressure and racial tensions. Later that day, University of Missouri-Columbia chancellor R. Bowen Loftin stepped down and, effective Jan. 1, will become director for research facility development.
Tension on MU’s campus had been brewing since the beginning of the semester, if not longer.
Student body president Payton Head, who is black, had racial slurs yelled at him from the back of a pickup truck in September, and began a dialogue on Facebook in September about bigotry, anti-gay and anti-transgender attitudes on campus. More recently, a Legion of Black Collegians meeting was interrupted by a drunk white male who used a racial slur when asked to leave, and a swastika was drawn in feces on the wall of a dormitory bathroom.
In an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, graduate student Jonathan Butler described feeling unsafe and excluded since beginning his undergraduate education at MU in 2008. With the goal of ousting Wolfe, Butler began a hunger strike on Nov. 2 that lasted eight days.
Butler told Cooper that he was prepared to die for the cause.
“A lot of people know how corrupt the system is and they thought I was going to die from the day I made my announcement…(I took) precautions in terms of updating my living will,” Butler said. “This wasn’t an easy decision to make, but for the three weeks prior to the hunger strike, I really took some time with consulting my spiritual leaders...Knowing that I am truly committed to this change, that’s what I really set my heart on doing.”
Butler’s hunger strike came several weeks after student group Concerned Student 1950 - named for the first year African-American students were admitted to the university - issued a list of demands to MU including, “Wolfe’s removal from office and a more comprehensive racial awareness and inclusion curriculum overseen by minority students and faculty,” as reported by CNN.
Concerned Student 1950 staged several protests on campus over the course of the semester, including a walkout in support of Butler.
The movement gained significant momentum when about 30 black members of MU’s football team declared a strike Sunday night, calling for Wolfe’s removal. These players were soon backed by other members of the team, both black and white, as well as head coach Gary Pinkel.
The strike added a financial element to the tensions by creating the possibility of forfeiting the Tigers’ Nov. 14 game against BYU, which would have cost Missouri one million dollars.
Head said that the resignations were necessary to the growth of MU, the state of Missouri and the nation as a whole.
“This is not only a UM system issue, it’s a national issue that we need to address as a whole,” Head said. Clare Duffy is the news editor for The Beacon. She can be reached at duffy17@up.edu or on Twitter @claresduff.
