Last week a committee of the KU Student Senate called for three top student government leaders to resign by Wednesday evening at 5 p.m., or face possible impeachment proceedings. As a university president, you shouldn’t be more than willing to let a student of yours die in order to preserve your career and what’s left of your integrity.
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What’s going on with our college students?
The studies suggest that black faculty may be drawn to small schools’ focus on humanities and social sciences, which typically attract more black students than sciences and engineering, but also the emphasis on teaching, rather than a publish-or-perish attitude that leaves many professors elsewhere more concerned about their research than their students.
A more serious backlash has taken place with pundits, many of whom have questioned whether actions by a few protest organisers and supporters run counter to freedom of expression.
“It broke my heart, because I was really trying to find my place at Mizzou”, Head said. The extreme antics that were implemented by Butler and his fellow black students on their campus were strongly needed in order for them to see real and legitimate change on their campus.
Hundreds of Boston University students assembled Friday in unity with students at the University of Missouri, where outbursts of racial tension and violent threats have amassed after two administrators resigned.
One of the problems with race in America today is that we talk only about improving race “relations” or having more productive “dialogue”, Miller said.
Wolfe had to go, for the Mizzou football team is a strong revenue-earning force for the university, and the African-American students form the bedrock of that team that is prominent in college football in America.
We, the undersigned Black alumni of Yale University who work in multiple fields pertaining to racial justice and Black culture, write with deep frustration, concern and offense over the hostile and violent racial conditions that your students recently brought to national attention.
“Does that put more of a burden on minority students or gay students or Jewish students or others in a majority that may be blind to history and blind to their hurt?” For the footballers to boycott the game would have cost the university more than $1million, in addition to other intangible losses. Sure, but the university business model is predicated on year-round recruitment efforts which would come to a screeching halt if black students loudly countered the happy narratives of collegiate diversity brochures.
Even so, the grievances of the students in Missouri were profound compared with the grievances expressed this week by students at Yale University in New Haven. When I was there, the black population of the school was only around 3 or 4 percent.
The university said the posts and tweets were made by people outside the Mizzou community to create conflict, according to its website. “It is just the feeling of not being heard, not being respected, and being placed on the margins of what’s happening in the world”. One of the many tweets posted reads: “Not to take away from Paris but just how they’re getting news coverage & the worlds support we deserve it too”.
Monteiro said universities “must first disruptively and intentionally hire a critical mass of faculty and adminstrators” of colour and make diversity an explicit part of strategic plans. “Black lives matter at the University of Kansas”.
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During an interview with Marc Maron earlier this year, President Barack Obama said racism is a sickness of which this country is “not yet cured”, adding, “It’s not just a matter of it not being polite to say nigger in public”. The hope, upon Obama’s coming to office in 2008, was that electing an African-American as U.S. president was going to be a potent signifier that America had moved on from the ashes of the racism of previous years.
