At Western MI University in Kalamazoo, where there are 2,644 black and 1,162 Latino students in the 23,556-student body, university president John Dunn said the Mizzou situation should prove to be an instructive moment for all universities.
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“It definitely is a death threat”, Tanaera Green, a student activist, said. “I know I’ll have something in common with them”. He said he’s tried to convey to administrators for a year that black students, disabled students and many others deal with discrimination regularly. “We want the interim to be strong and make a few of these changes”.
“It nearly seemed impossible not to say something”, said sophomore Maya Berry, who volunteered to share her experiences as an African American young woman at the Black Out.
Before I committed to attend MSU, I went to a Mustangs Rally. “It’s good to talk with those who understand”. There have been cotton balls left outside of the black culture center that represented slavery and white suppression of other cultures, swastikas painted in human feces on a bathroom and other similar incidents. After black rights advocacy groups, including Concerned Student 1950, Racism Lives Here, and the Legion of Black Collegians, held various protests across Mizzou’s campus, administrative figures acknowledged the racism prevalent in their community.
However, it is questionable whether or not University of Missouri’s President Tim Wolfe was and is responsible for creating such a hostile school environment that would cause protest on this huge scale.
University of Missouri students demanded the President’s resignation. Five days after Butler’s hunger strike was announced, the football players announced they would not practice or play until Wolfe is removed.
It’s accepted that the president of the University of Missouri stepped down in a racial dispute only when the football team threatened not to play a game. This was shortly followed by the resignation of MU Chancellor R. Bowen Loftin, after nine deans of the University requested his dismissal. For the time being, former Civil Rights lawyer Michael Middleton has been named interim president at the university.
“The fact that there is so much hatred brewing shows how necessary something like this is”, said Rahimah Faiq, president of the student government at Rutgers-Newark.
The university also tweeted that “students, faculty and employees are encouraged to return to their normal routines on campus”.
Junior Pearci Bastiany was another student who shared his experience at USF’s Black Out last Thursday.
“My race and my religion stand out when people see me, when people meet me”, says first-year U of T student Jameelah Abdoulaye.
“Black students are facing anti-black racism on campus and that’s an issue that needs to be addressed”, said Susanne Nyga, a third-year social work student and organizer of the event calling on action from students, faculty and administration. Supporters were asked to wear all black. Toutant planned the event with little time to prepare and alert the campus.
Students said they have no specific beef with Rutgers or Kean, but it was important to keep the issue in the forefront. The demonstrators dispersed at around 4 p.m. “Then the people who actually wanted to be there would come”. It wouldn’t be a publicity stunt for the whole entire University to prep for. “I was excited to see that people came out”. Fr. McShane’s statement conveyed that message clearly.
“These things are not isolated to Missouri”, said Toutant. Police harassment of black students in particular was commonplace.
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Working to redress the “deepening divides that now characterize our democracy” begins with examining where we are as a society, in our own institutions, and “with a commitment to reversing the corrosive legacies of discrimination, marginalization, stigmatization, and violence in our society”, Schneider said.
