Turmoil forces out 2 at Missouri
Leaders resign amid protests, racial tension
COLUMBIA, Mo. — Months of student and faculty protests over racial tensions and other issues that all but paralyzed the University of Missouri campus culminated Monday in an extraordinary coup for the demonstrators, as the president of the state’s university system resigned and the chancellor of the flagship campus said he would step down to a less prominent role at the end of the year.
The threat of a boycott by the Missouri football team dealt the highestprofile blow to President Tim Wolfe and Chancellor R. Bowen Loftin, but anger at the administration had been growing since August, when the university said it would stop paying for health insurance for graduate teaching assistants.
It reversed course, but not before the graduate assistants held demonstrations, threatened a walkout, took the first steps toward forming a union and joined forces with students demonstrating against racism.
Then the university came under fire from Republicans for ties its medical schools and medical center had to Planned Parenthood. The university severed those ties, drawing criticism from Democrats that it had caved in to political pressure.
But it was charges of persistent racism that,
time and again, sparked the strongest reactions, along with complaints that the administration did not take the problem seriously enough.
Wolfe, 57, was hired in 2012 from the corporate world, not academia, an outsider brought in to cut costs in the four-campus system. That was no recipe for popularity, but the last three months left him particularly isolated.
He announced his resignation just before a meeting of the university’s governing body, the Board of Curators, amid speculation that it might try to oust him.
Wolfe said he took responsibility for the anger and frustration on campus, asserting that conversations with community leaders, students, faculty, donors and others led him to his decision, more than just the football players’ threatened boycott.
“What was starting to become clear was the frustration and anger was evident, and it was something that needed to be done that was immediate and substantial for us to heal,” Wolfe said.
New initiatives announced
As the resignations of Wolfe and Loftin were announced, the Board of Curators unveiled a slate of new initiatives to address racial tensions on campus, including hiring a diversity, inclusion and equity officer for the entire University of Missouri system. The university also will provide additional support to students, faculty and staff members who experience discrimination; create a task force to create plans for improving diversity and inclusion; and require diversity and inclusion training for all faculty, staff members and incoming students.
Officials said Loftin, who came to Missouri from Texas A&M in 2013, would remain at the university in a research role.
Opposition to the administration reached a crescendo in the last week. A graduate student, Jonathan Butler, who was a veteran of the Ferguson protests, held a highly publicized hunger strike, saying he would not eat again until Wolfe was gone.
Protesters formed an encampment on a campus plaza and stayed there around the clock. A coalition of Jewish groups told Loftin that they were “dismayed” by his lack of action after a swastika was drawn on a dormitory wall. Deans of nine of the schools on the Columbia campus called for Loftin’s removal.
On Monday, the student government demanded Wolfe’s ouster, and much of the faculty sent word to students that classes were canceled for two days, in favor of a teach-in focused on race relations.
But it was the football team that may have dealt the fatal blow to the university’s leaders, 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 strike by a team belonging to the country’s most dominant football league, the Southeastern Conference, drew national attention, and officials said that just forfeiting the team’s game Saturday against Brigham Young University would cost the university $1 million. The team is 4-5 and in danger of not being invited to a bowl game.
“That got the attention of the alumni and the board, along with a substantial penalty they would have been facing,” said U.S. Rep. William Lacy Clay, a Democrat who represents part of the St. Louis area. “That would have been a disaster for their recruiting of black athletes and of black students to the university.”
Not everyone was pleased with the resignations. Dudley McCarter, a former president of the university’s alumni group, said that alumni, in calls and emails on Monday, had expressed disappointment in Wolfe’s decision.
“They feel like he was backed into a corner and was made a scapegoat for things he didn’t do,” McCarter said.
Loftin was popular at A&M
Loftin, a native Texan, was the president of Texas A&M from February 2010 to July 2013, where he was especially popular.
He worked the crowd at the 80,000-fan stadium at Aggies games and took photos with students calling out to “Dr. Loftin” as he roamed the campus.
He enjoyed a particular wave of popularity after moving the Aggies football program to the Southeastern Conference.
Before leading A&M, Loftin worked as a research associate at NASA, chaired the department of computer science and led a research institute in NASA virtual environments at the University of Houston.
He left his top role at A&M to direct an academic institute focused on homeland defense in the university’s engineering college, he said at the time, but chose to head to Columbia after the opportunity to lead another prominent public university was too good to pass up.