Players boycotting at Missouri

Call for changes after recent racial tension at school

In response to mounting racial tensions at the University of Missouri and an administration’s perceived failure to address students’ concerns, members of the school’s football team have threatened to boycott its remaining games, leaving administrators reeling and emboldening student activists who have been demanding a change in leadership.

Anthony Sherrils, a sophomore defensive back for the Tigers, said on social media late Saturday night that a group of African-American players — including several starters — were joining an on-campus movement, posting a photograph that included 31 football players alongside a statement that called for school president Tim Wolfe to resign or be fired.

Players say they won’t return to football-related activities until Wolfe is gone, and coaches had no choice but to cancel a Tigers’ practice Sunday, casting doubt on whether Missouri will be able to field a team Saturday against Brigham Young — or in any of its three remaining games.

“The athletes of color on the University of Missouri football team truly believe ‘Injustice Anywhere is a threat to Justice Everywhere,’” Sherrils tweeted, sharing a statement from the activist group Concerned Student 1950. “We will no longer participate in any football related activities until President Tim Wolfe resigns or is removed due to his negligence toward marginalized students’ experiences. WE ARE UNITED!!!!!”

The football team is perhaps the most popular — and certainly most visible — student group on campus, so the players’ surprising decision has drawn the national spotlight to a series of incidents that had cast an ominous cloud over the school’s fall semester and made Wolfe a controversial figure on campus.

Wolfe did not publicly address his job status Sunday but did concede that dialogue is needed at Missouri, the state’s largest school with an enrollment of more 35,000.

“It is clear to all of us that change is needed,” Wolfe said in a statement, “and we appreciate the thoughtfulness and passion which have gone into the sharing of concerns. My administration has been meeting around the clock and has been doing a tremendous amount of reflection on how to address these complex matters.”

The campus controversy is unfolding in the backdrop of larger state-wide discussions of race, social justice and cultural understanding. Fifteen months ago, Michael Brown, 18, a black man, was killed by a white police officer in Ferguson, Mo., which sparked protests, looting and a wide-ranging dialogue that spread across the nation but has been particularly taut across the state of Missouri.

“The demonstrations by these students are a reflection of where things are going nationally in terms of people being fed up with intolerance,” said the Rev. Traci Blackmon, a St. Louis minister heavily involved in the Ferguson protests. “The notion that the administration would not take a very strong no-tolerance policy toward hatred of any kind is just unconscionable. And the response to the absence of that is what you’re seeing now.”

Concerned Student 1950 has organized various demonstrations in the past month, centering on Wolfe’s failure to respond appropriately after what Missouri graduate student Jonathan Butler described as a “slew of racist, sexist, homophobic” incidents on the university’s campus.

Butler entered the seventh day of a hunger strike Sunday and has expressed a willingness to die if Wolfe is not removed.

He was pictured alongside Missouri football players in the photograph released Saturday.