University of Missouri police said Wednesday they have arrested a suspect accused of m…
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(Justin L. Stewart/Columbia Missourian via AP).
The University of Missouri president Tim Wolfe announced his resignation on November 9.
On social media, students are sharing their personal experiences with racism, using the hashtag BlackOnCampus.
(John Happel/Columbia Missourian via AP). The posts followed the resignations on Monday of the University of Missouri system president and the chancellor of its flagship campus in Columbia.
Several groups have vocalized support for Middleton, including Concerned Student 1950 and MU Policy Now.
When Payton Head ran as a gay, black man for student president at the University of Missouri – a school now known for one student’s hunger strike and other protests against the administration’s handling of racial bias and hostility on campus – he promised to “ignite Mizzou”.
“We must embrace these issues as they come, and they will come to define us in the future”. Since his retirement, he worked part-time with the campus’ former chancellor, R. Bowen Loftin, on a plan to increase inclusion and diversity at the school. On Thursday, the board of curators appointed a black interim president.
The letter writer vowed to shoot any African-Americans he saw on campus, and complained about Wolfe’s pressured resignation.
Watch Middleton’s statement about his appointment below. In October, an apparently drunken white student hurled insults at members of a black student organization.
Middleton, 68, has spent 30 years at the university – as an undergraduate, law student, faculty member and, now, administrator.
He also spoke candidly about the challenges the four-campus system faces and the broader societal divide that he’s spent most of his adult life trying to bridge, including a stint in Washington as a trial attorney in the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division.
Middleton had served as deputy chancellor at the school before retiring last summer.
In that role, he was credited with turning women’s studies and black studies programs into their own departments. One of the students, Hunter M. Park, made an initial court appearance Thursday in Columbia, where a judge ordered him held in jail, rejecting a request from his lawyer to set bail. Inspired by the Missouri case, students at Loyola University in Chicago and other schools are preparing a list of demands for their administrators. “The problem is when we have an administration, we have leadership who continues to send signals to these students that this kind of behavior will be tolerated on this campus”.
Campus police officer Dustin Heckmaster said in a probable-cause statement that YikYak willingly gave him the cellphone number that Tuesday’s poster had used to create the account from which the threats originated.
He’s also gotten blowback after posting on social media November 10 about what police later said were unconfirmed reports of Ku Klux Klan members on campus in the wake of anonymous threats to students this past week, including a threat from one user to “shoot every black person I see”.
Quianna Young, a sophomore finance major, heard about the vigil on Facebook and said she wanted to come and support students of Mizzou with love and prayers. He said he asked if the threats amounted to “saber rattling” and that Park responded, “pretty much”.
“Some of you are alright. Don’t go to campus tomorrow”, Park “smiled and stated, ‘I was quoting something, ‘” Heckmaster wrote.
“I just really put myself in that situation and thought about if I was a student of color [at Mizzou]”, Herbert said. “I feel as though most athletes and celebrities that don’t get involved in social injustice issues are just afraid of the reactions of fans that disagree and the potential repercussions from agents or company owners”. Basler did not return a message seeking comment. Nodaway County Prosecutor Robert Rice on Thursday filed one misdemeanor and one felony count of making a terrorist threat against Connor Stottlemyre, a freshman at the school in Maryville.
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Authorities say Brandenberg posted “I’m gonna shoot up this school” on Yik Yak on Wednesday.
