KU Student Exec Committee demands top student leaders resign

This was Jessie Pringle’s profile picture well before the “racial tension” issues were brought up.

While the troubles at the University of Missouri are a far cry from those at Ramapo, Thursday’s rally, according to Jordan, was a way to encourage the Ramapo community to become more aware of national issues. Students demanded that Wolfe and Loftin address complaints of racial insensitivity on campus.

The demonstrations at Mizzou’s campus in Columbia came on the heels of unrest at Yale University, and have been copied – complete with demands for resignations -at dozens of other colleges, including Ithaca College in NY, the University of Kansas and Claremont McKenna College near Los Angeles.

As marchers made their way through campus, many students waved in support or even joined in the march. African Americans represent only seven percent of the University of Missouri population. In one week, the football team forced the resignation of the chancellor and president of the biggest university in the state of Missouri. The University of Alabama’s faculty is also 6 per cent black, but the proportion of black students is higher at 11.46 per cent. After protests at the Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, California, last week, the dean of students-who told a Latina student in an email that she would work to serve those who “don’t fit our CMC mold”-was forced to apologize and resigned”.

Tensions increased in late October, when a swastika drawn with human feces was discovered in a residence hall bathroom.

Six students at Monday’s event held a butcher-paper sign reading, “SMU stands in solidarity with Mizzou”. Rather than undertake a serious review of its administration and the incidents about which students had taken offense, the university quickly capitulated, apparently to protect revenues from the football team.

How has the movement spread?

A person of ordinary sensibilities would think that tends to show that the University is neither institutionally racist nor narrow-minded.

Head, who is studying political science and worldwide studies, has spoken out publicly about his own experiences with racism during his time at the university, most recently in September. Hashtags such as #InSolidarityWithMizzou, #InSolidarityWithYale, #ConcernedStudent1950 and #BlackOnCampus now have thousands of results on Facebook and Twitter. “And I say to them, “Listen, if you hear somebody using a racial epithet, if you hear somebody who’s anti-Semitic, if you see an injustice, I want you to speak out”, Obama related to Stephanopoulos.

The University of Missouri said that social media posts saying that the Paris terror attacks diverted attention from campus protests are fakes.

“To the students of color at Mizzou, we, the students of color at Boston University, stand with you in solidarity”, Jackson said. But protesters say that Mr. Middleton is an exception, not the rule – a black administrator and faculty member on a campus where just 3.2 percent of tenure-track professors are black – and that needs to change. The next morning Maute and Jordan met in the Black Student Union office to create posters with phrases like “Ramapo in Solidarity with Mizzou” and “We Support Jonathan Butler” painted on them; these were later passed out to people at the march.

“He failed to do anything, and that itself is an act of racism”, she said.

“It illustrates the disproportionate power of football finances and fundraising”, she said. With millions of dollars in sports revenue at stake, his resignation was only a matter of time.

How is UC Berkeley addressing these concerns? Outrage over the goings on at Missouri has spurred protests at other colleges around the country, including Yale, Ithaca College in NY, Smith in MA and others. Black students are less likely to graduate within six years compared with their classmates.

“Universities remain primarily white because they continue to do business as usual as they have done since they were built as intentionally upper class white, male, elite bastions”, he said.