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Missouri University Prez Resigns
Over Racism
Hey America, there’s a price to pay for ignoring racism. Just ask the now ex-president of the University of Missouri system, who was forced to resign after showing indifference toward race relations among students on campus.
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It all started several weeks ago, when racial tensions began to simmer following a few racially charged incidents at the overwhelmingly white campus in Columbia.
Several African-American students (including the president of the Missouri Students Association) reported being called the “N” word while walking to class. Another set of students experienced the same treatment while rehearsing a play. When dozens of students took their concerns to University of Missouri System President Tim Wolfe — hoping the university could provide tolerance training to improve race relations — they were ignored.
Wolfe either didn’t believe the charges or didn’t care about the charges — but he ignored the students, which launched a terrible domino effect and made a bad situation even worse.
On October 10th during the Homecoming Day parade, a group of students refused to be ignored by Wolfe and stood in front of the vehicle he was riding in during the parade.
Instead of getting out of the car or at least offering to hear the students out, Wolfe sat angrily in his car while security people used physical means to clear the students from the vehicle’s path. While fleeing, Wolfe’s vehicle struck one of the protesters, but the Mizzou president still offered no words, no apology, no nothing. Borrowing its name from the year African-American students were first admitted to the university, the “Concerned Student 1950” was born. Tensions and the temperature was increasing.
On November 2nd, African-American graduate student Jonathan Butler (who is the student struck by Wolfe’s car) began a hunger strike while calling for Wolfe’s resignation. Instead of acknowledging Butler and the reason someone would need to go on a hunger strike just to gain the attention of the university president, Wolfe remained nonchalant and uninterested. The situation was getting unnecessarily hotter.
Then over the weekend, the university’s Missouri Tigers football team announced that they would not practice, would not lift weights, would not watch film and would not play a game until Wolfe resigned. Their actions turned the hot-button issue into a national story, while gaining the attention of important alumni and the world.
National news organizations flocked to the Columbia campus, only 2 hours from Ferguson, Missouri, where the topic of race is still a sensitive subject following last year’s shooting death of Michael Brown by a police officer. The media delivered live shots of a protestor tent city next to the school’s iconic columns to a shocked national public. It was not the image Wolfe ever imagined he’d have to deal with.
Next up, Wolfe had a run-in with protestors in Kansas City. Wolfe was asked a question about “systematic oppression” that he answered so poorly, it produced howls that chased him as he walked away from the conversation. Video footage of the interaction went viral and caught fire on social media by late Friday night.
After being inundated with calls from university donors, influential alumni, parents and concerned citizens, Wolfe finally came to the realization that he had turned a deaf ear to African-American students and unnecessarily threw gasoline on a smoldering fire that never needed to burn, but was now burning out of control. The writing was on the wall. It was time for Wolfe to go.
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And so, on Monday morning, Tim Wolfe conceded and stepped aside.
“I am resigning as president of the University of Missouri system today,” Wolfe said in live remarks. “My motivation in making this decision comes from love. I love MU, Columbia, where I grew up, and the state of Missouri. I have thought greatly about this decision, and it’s the right thing to do.”
“To our students: from Concerned Student 1950 to our grad students, football players and other students, the frustration and anger that I see is clear, real, and I don’t doubt it for a second,” Wolfe continued. “So the question really is, is why did we get to this very difficult situation. It is my belief we stopped listening to each other. We didn’t respond or react. We got frustrated with each other, and we forced individuals like Jonathan Butler to take immediate action and unusual steps to effect change. This is not, I repeat not, the way change should come about. Change comes from listening, learning, caring and conversation. We have to respect each other enough to stop yelling at each other and start listening, and quit intimidating each other.”
Interestingly, only hours after Wolfe resigned, university chancellor R. Bowen Loftin announced he would also step down amid the controversy over race.
Loftin praised the efforts of Jonathan Butler, who ended his hunger strike earlier in the day.
“I want to acknowledge his extraordinary courage and leadership,” Loftin said about Butler. “A very tough, tough young man, a very focused young man, a very intelligent and forward-looking young man, so we owe him a lot.”
Tolerance and indifference to racism brought down 2 top university administrators, which could have been completely avoided if the university had simply listened.
Price paid. (Hopefully) lesson learned!
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NY Times: But it was the football team that delivered what might have been the fatal blow to Mr. Wolfe’s tenure, when players announced on Saturday that they would refuse to play as long as the president remained in office, and their head coach, Gary Pinkel, said he supported them. The prospect of a football strike drew national attention, and officials said that just forfeiting the team’s game next weekend against Brigham Young University would cost the university $1 million. [….] Rod Dreher: Well, now we know: the football team at Mizzou takes priority over everything else. The University of Missouri is a football team with a university attached to it. […] But isn't that true for many, if not most, American colleges and Universities with "big time" baskeball and football programs?! Of course the primary issue here is that in 2015….soon to be 2016…. WE (Americans) are still wrestling… Read more »