Ripples of racism spur campuses into action
A backlash to racism on U.S. campuses, reminiscent of the civil rights protests of the 1960s, has been growing louder. In the latest incident, about 30 black football players at the University of Missouri say they won’t participate in team activities until the university system’s president resigns.
Mizzou joins several schools dealing with racially tinged incidents over the past few weeks.
At Ithaca College in Upstate New York, students say President Tom Rochon has given inadequate responses to several allegedly racist incidents. Students circulated a petition asking for a vote of “confidence” or “no confidence” in the president.
At Yale University, protests erupted after an Oct. 28 university email warning about racially insensitive Halloween costumes prompted a professor to complain that Yale and other campuses were becoming “places of censure and prohibition.”
At Berkeley (Calif.) High School, a freshman confessed to leaving a racist message invoking public lynching last week on a school computer, sparking a massive student walkout.
At Mizzou, Jonathan Butler, a black graduate student, started a hunger strike on Nov. 2 in response to what he and other campus activists say is President Tim Wolfe’s inadequate response to racial harassment. Most recently, on Oct. 24, a swastika was drawn on a dorm wall with human feces.
The movement comes about 15 months after a white police officer in Ferguson, Mo., shot and killed Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager.
“There are a lot of complicated things going on here that do relate to Ferguson, but it also relates to, you know, what’s going on in the United States now,” said Berkley Hudson, chairman of the Missouri Faculty Council race relations committee. “When I grew up in Mississippi the same thing happened in the ’60s in a different kind of a way where there’s a real reluctance of people to let go of the attitudes ... they hold.”
In a statement Sunday, Wolfe didn’t mention resigning but said, “It is clear to all of us that change is needed.” He said the university administration had been meeting “around the clock” on how to address the campus issues.