Police report confirms University of Missouri swastika story

The University of Missouri named Michael Middleton as interim president.

The Board of Curators tapped Middleton at a closed-door meeting Wednesday night, according to the school.

With the backing of its coach, the football team threatened to boycott this Saturday’s game against Brigham Young University unless President Tim Wolfe stepped down.

The turnover in administration began after campus groups, including Concerned Student 1950, started protesting the treatment of minorities on the Columbia campus and school leaders’ perceived lack of response to their complaints.

“We are excited for the new leadership under President Middleton!”

He also spoke candidly about the challenges the four-campus system faces and the broader societal divide that he’s spent most of his adult life trying to bridge, including a stint in Washington as a trial attorney in the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division.

Middleton also worked as an interim vice provost for minority affairs and faculty development, a role in which he was credited with turning women’s studies and black studies programs into their own departments.

MU Policy Now, a student group made up of graduate and professional students, had been pushing for the president’s role to go to Middleton, who retired as deputy chancellor of the Columbia campus in August and had been made a deputy chancellor emeritus. He had been working part-time to assist Loftin design a plan to increase inclusion and diversity on campus.

The board accelerated the transition of authority from Loftin on Thursday to interim chancellor Hank Foley, giving Foley the responsibilities of the MU Office of Chancellor effective immediately. She quickly resigned afterward, sparing her colleagues the trouble of removing her.

It isn’t the first time the Gaines/Oldham Black Culture Center has been the target of a racist attack.

“As a founder of the leader of Black collegians when I was a student here, I delivered a list of demands to the chancellor in 1969”.

Police say someone spray-painted over a portion of a sign early Thursday at the center.

Police said the threat was made at 11:59 a.m. The full message said, “I’m gonna shoot up this school”. An arrest warrant had issued for him. Park is charged with felony making a terroristic threat.

Ben Trachtenberg, an associate law professor who chairs the Columbia campus’ Faculty Council on University Policy, also praised it, calling Middleton “a very smart guy who knows a ton about the university”.

Reports of racially charged threats have permeated social media. There was also a rumor the Ku Klux Klan had arrived on the Columbia campus, which turned out to be baseless.

Stottlemyre is accused of posting on Yik Yak,”I’m gonna shoot any black people tomorrow, so be ready”, a Northwest Missouri State University spokesman told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

The first arrest was logged by campus police at the University of Missouri. He was initially “contacted” by police 90 miles away in Rolla.

Boone County Circuit Judge Kimberly Shaw denied the request on bail after the prosecutor argued that Park was a threat to the community.

It was unclear how police homed in on the suspect. Another cautioned dark understudies essentially not to come to grounds the following day and another said “we’re sitting tight for you at the parking areas… we will execute you”.

Even before the arrest was announced, campus police had said there was no imminent danger.

“The campus is not on lockdown. There is heightened awareness due to the national attention we are getting, but again the reports you are seeing on social media are largely inaccurate”. University of Missouri officer Dustin Heckmaster said that quote was believed to have originated with the OR shooter, Chris Harper-Mercer.

Protesters clamored for change and for Wolfe to step down. He resigned on Monday.