The changes brought about by these amazing students are
something we all can and should be proud of.
As a faculty member, I can say that I and most of my faculty
colleagues—in fact ALL those I’ve spoken to or heard from—feel the changes that
have taken place over the past three months have been very positive and very
beneficial for the campus as a whole. Personally I am so very proud of our
students, and I am so inspired by what they’ve accomplished. And I’m proud of
all the faculty who have stood up for and with those students, and have
suffered unimaginable attacks and threats from a hostile public for doing so.
To be clear, for those readers who may not be as intimately
familiar with the goings-on here in Columbia, the departure of Wolfe and Loftin
was not all about race; there were so many issues that troubled students, faculty,
staff, and our community (which includes the entire state of Missouri).
Opposition to these two leaders was strong among faculty, staff, and even
high-level administrators—the deans of all of MU’s schools and colleges signed
a letter demanding Loftin’s departure. Two campus departments issued unanimous
letters of “no confidence” in the Chancellor. (See this Columbia Tribune article on Long-Standing Issues at MU.)
The issues that had been brewing on campus for months, even
for years in some cases, were too many to enumerate fully, but included attacks
on graduate student funding and health insurance, attacks on Planned
Parenthood, complete lack of transparency in decision-making, and failure to
act on racist incidents at the University. It was this last issue that finally
brought about the much-needed change on campus, and brought the attention of
the national media to our door. Most specifically, it was the decision by black
football players to strike in support of the demands of #ConcernedStudent1950
and the hunger-striking student, that made folks from all over the country feel
they had a stake in what happened here. After all, what’s more important than
football?
There were many, many problems on our campus, but it was the
black student protests that finally brought down these two incompetent leaders,
Wolfe and Loftin. Strengthened by the “Black Lives Matter” movement, and in the
same state as Ferguson, black students at Mizzou (including black football
players, who are first and foremost students) felt empowered to demand change
that has long been overdue. But the fact
remains, Wolfe and Loftin HAD to go, for a variety of reasons.
Wolfe and Loftin did the right thing by stepping down. But
the reactions on social media, as well as on a number of bogus-“news”-sites
(like Fox Sports), displayed an outpouring of anger—WHITE anger—from people who
have no familiarity with what has been going on at our campus; and of sympathy
for the two very powerful white men who were apparently perceived as the poor
victims here, giving in to the demands of spoiled children and the so-called
“radical left” (i.e., their MU faculty supporters) who have supposedly trampled
all over free speech and press freedom.
I have repeatedly heard comments to the effect, “Poor Tim Wolfe, why is
he being blamed for some idiots shouting racial slurs on campus? What’s he
supposed to do about it? It’s not his fault!” Anyone who thinks this came out
of nowhere, or in response to just a one-week-long student protest, is either completely
ignorant or deliberately obtuse.
For some observers outside the University opining via social
media, recent incidents of racism on campus sound annoying but harmless. Some ignorant folks have suggested that black
students were overreacting to being called racial slurs on campus. (See this NPR article on "whiny" protesters.) I’m astonished that anyone could be so
insensitive and dismissive of these students’ experiences. The truth of the matter is, these incidents
were NOT isolated, and they were certainly not harmless. Anyone who knows anything about American
history should know that the use of these horrible racial epithets has
frequently been accompanied by racial violence, even lynchings, with no
repercussions for the perpetrators. So
even if the jerk yelling the n-word at a group of black students gathered on
campus was not literally threatening to lynch them then and there, the act of
hurling that abusive language is embedded in a historical, entrenched pattern
in which that word has been used to threaten, warn, and intimidate its targets,
who know that physical violence is always percolating beneath that veneer of
“harmless” “free” speech.
I have taught at the University of Missouri since 2003, and
I have been aware of many racist incidents on campus over the years, mainly consisting
of graffiti and vandalism. (See this New York Times article on racism at MU.) One particularly notorious incident happened in 2010 when two
young white men strew cotton balls all over the lawn outside the Gaines/Oldham
Black Student Center, referencing picking cotton under slavery. Subsequent
forums to address the racial climate were very educational; black community
leaders came to campus to talk about the history of the black community in
Columbia and to share their historical perspectives; faculty and students listened,
and marshalled our expertise on holding “Difficult Dialogues” to promote
understanding among members of our campus at various fora. At the Black Studies
Conference (which happens every other year), a student in the room asked a
panel of faculty and grad students, “why do we have Historically Black
Colleges, but there aren’t any Historically White colleges?” One of my faculty colleagues (who has since
left the University, unfortunately) didn’t miss a beat; he replied “There are.
You’re in one.”
It was surprising to find that some 20-year-olds were
unaware that universities like ours didn’t admit black students for over a
century. But these young people don’t have that historical memory, and if people
around them don’t talk about history and race, they might never know. Most of the students who were on campus at
that time have moved on, leaving today’s crop of undergraduate students to feel
as if these racist incidents have either come out of nowhere, or have been here
all along, with no one trying to do anything about the problem. Today, though, the University IS trying to
bring about permanent change, positive change, under our new leadership.
The educational mission of the University demands that we
keep working to change the campus culture, in order to make the campus a
welcoming place for ALL our students.
