Then shortly before the University’s Homecoming in October, members of a black student organization called the Legion of Black Collegians claimed that an apparently drunken white student hurled similar slurs. “This is the beginning”.
Advertisement
Eventually, the activist’s demands will be impossible to meet. The university’s governing board also pledged more support for those who experience discrimination and said diversity and inclusion training will become mandatory for faculty, staff and students.
“It broke my heart, because I was really trying to find my place at Mizzou”, Head said.
Supporters of Concerned Student 1950 celebrate following University of Missouri System President Tim Wolfe’s resignation announcement, on November 9.
Students are arriving on campus believing racism remains persistent in America today. The university declined to issue further statements Monday. What could they do, if all students refused to go to class and pay tuition until we got the changes we wanted?
“We found a way that we could make a difference and we made that difference”, said Jackson. 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. “Right now the problem that people are focused on is just the all black one”.
“Every time we are able to talk to an administrator, we bring it up”, Pringle said.
“I think everyone kind of carries around this sense that like yes, there’s racism, but like I’m at Yale”. On a few campuses the focus is on issues experienced by black students, while on others the discussion is about many minority groups. The march finished where it began – at the Arch. Students carried the homemade signs and chanted, “we stand with Mizzou”, “black lives matter” and “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”, a phrase suggested by Brooks in her letter.
ASSOCIATED PRESS University California Los Angeles students stage a protest rally in a show of solidarity with protesters at the University of Missouri on Thursday, November 12, 2015 in Los Angeles.
It’s the difference between feeling understood and the pressure of being seen as representing a race, students and others said.
“That illustrates that Mizzou’s concerns for their minority students lie exclusively in their wallets”, Higginbotham said. Black student make up just 3 percent of campus, so administrators photo-shopped Black people into their brochures to make it look like there are more people of color. College presidents, football coaches and professors all are much more likely to be white, too. Four years of that will do nothing to prepare students to run the world. Many are creating social clubs and working groups emphasizing dialogue among students, as seen in Georgetown University’s Working Group on Slavery, Memory, and Reconciliation. This shouldn’t have happened in 1963 or any time.
Black student activists have also been organziing at Yale in recent weeks.
Racial tension, lack of black faculty, retention of black students and lack of funding and support for the Department of Africana Studies are issues faced at a majority of Predominantly White Institutions (PWIs), including Rutgers, she said. “Here in New Haven, the assumption is first that I am a ‘townie'”.
“It shouldn’t take days of our tears and anger to move an administration to listen”, Ibala said.
Transparency during the next steps will be critical, said Reese, president of National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education. Jackson along with Daniel Clayton, both political action co-chairs for the University of Florida chapter of NAACP, heard about the controversy going on in Missouri and felt the need for a student gathering to unite and voice opinions. At Ithaca College in Upstate NY, students citing the Mizzou protests called for the resignation of their college president, criticizing his lackluster response to racial incidents on campus.
“Raise your hand if you’re a little bit uncomfortable”, she said as a smattering of hands went up.
Advertisement
I am walking out because when my white mother was kicked out of college for dating my black father, our family had about a million dollars of earning potential stolen from us, and the bill is due.
