Leaders of University of Kansas protests say they seek systemic change, not

Missouri students have been protesting even before their semester began, but more recently students there took part in a hunger strike and around 30 football players refused to participate in team activities.

Response to growing social and racial unrest is coming quickly at the University of Missouri.

One day after the resignations, a veteran associate law school dean, Chuck Henson, who is Black, was named to the new position of interim vice chancellor for inclusion, diversity and equity.

Three months after the ruling, Gaines left his home for stamps and was never seen again.

The movement is showing up at large campuses and small, elite and not-so-elite institutions, campuses with strong histories of student activism and not.

After student demonstrations at the University of Missouri last week forced the resignation of a businessman college president who never should have headed a university and who did not adequately respond to racism, I got to shoot video of dancing and singing.

About 71 percent of White students at Missouri’s Columbia campus graduate within six years, compared to about 55 percent of Black students.

One demand was met as Wolfe resigned, followed by Loftin.

Students at University of Missouri asked others around the nation to dress in black and observe the troubles that black students at their university, as well as other universities, are experiencing. They will tell protesters we are “whining” when we engage in what a university is supposed to make us do – think critically. But in so doing, a few colleges have not only limited free speech, but they have also led students to believe that they have a right to expect a world where they won’t be offended.

Around midday Thursday, November 12, a threat was posted on Yik Yak, an anonymous social media platform. A couple of times this year, black students have been heckled by people who hurled the “n-word” at them on and around campus. And this event was not an isolated incident-students have always been complaining about racial tensions and the failure of the administration to adequately address concerns about inequality on campus. Their white colleagues backed them. On the other hand, it’s a crying shame to see that the United States of America – under an African-American President, no less – has drifted so far from the late Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s vision of a country in which people are judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. “No matter what, someone will have that mind frame”. I recall the sad days of “Ali Must Go” in Nigeria of the 1970s when the university authorities, with the support of Obasanjo’s military government, used all manner of force to brutalize students who were legitimately protesting the hike in the cost of university education.

The state of affairs at DePaul is slightly different.

Allen and several other students said they gave SMU President R. Gerald Turner a list of demands Monday, including the recruitment of more black students, professors, administrators and trustees. DePaul junior Tomas House attributes this to the nature of Chicago and its residents.

Gray-Little, who is black, issued a statement Friday in which she said, “We can do better”. “We’re exhausted of all talk, no action”.

One relatively simple demand from the protestors, that the University of Missouri have 10 percent of their faculty be comprised of African Americans, would require Mizzou to hire an astoundingly high 400 new educators. Many, like House, do agree that more could – and should – be done.

One freshman said, “Some students were asking if I knew about the protest and why I wasn’t there”. “I suppose something like that could happen here, but would anything be done?”

The university has since released a police report showing that in fact officers found just what students had cited. What the future will be for Mizzou and those standing in solidarity with them is still under construction but the hope is that, by continuing to point out these issues and encourage discussion, things will change.