MU Chancellor to Step Down at End of Year

Their efforts got a boost over the weekend when 30 black football players announced they wouldn’t participate in team activities until Wolfe was removed. He said he “takes full responsibility” for failing to take students’ grievances seriously and “forcing” them to strike against him to bring about the change their campus community needed. After Wolfe resigned, Butler said he ended his hunger strike. He also insisted that plans were already underway to address most of Concerned Student 1950’s demands, and that he and his staff “are confident that we can come together to improve the student experience on our campuses”.

The protests began after the student government president, Payton Head, who is black, said in September that people in a passing pickup truck shouted racial slurs at him.

In a statement, the Missouri Students Association said that tensions had been high ever since the shooting death of unarmed 18-year-old, Michael Brown.

Wolfe, 57, released a statement on Sunday, November 8, vowing to “address these complex matters”. Bulter, who was active in the Ferguson protests and then subsequently continued similar activist work at Mizzou, explained his hunger strike thusly: “I already feel like campus is an unlivable space”.

For months, black students at the University of Missouri have been protesting over matters of racial discrimination, citing that students felt unsafe on campus due to racial slurs and threats aimed towards black students. More recently, a swastika drawn in human faces was found in a student dorm.

Wolfe ultimately surrendered to the pressure and announced his resignation on Monday morning.

On Sunday, head coach Gary Pinkel tweeted out a photo of all the Tigers’ players and coaches standing arm-in-arm with the caption “The Mizzou Family stands as one”.

A spate of incidents, including African-American students being targeted with racial epithets on campus, led to what many felt was a lacklustre response by the school’s administration. He said the boycott, triggered by Wolfe’s handling of several racial incidents, was an “extraordinary” circumstance that made football a secondary priority.

The Federalist’s Robert Tracinski said the episode “makes sense only as a raw power play, as student agitators demonstrating that they can get rid of anybody they want to, that they run this place”.

The football team demanded media coverage, but protests at the university began with two student groups-Concerned Student 1950 and Legion of Black Collegians.

“It is my hope that the students, faculty, campus leadership and the University of Missouri System will have an open and meaningful dialogue that will become an example for the MU System campuses, the state and the country”, the Missouri lawmaker added.

When asked about the players missing practice, Pinkel said, “I didn’t think about the consequences, I was thinking about my players and supporting them”.