USA student protests: why are they spreading?

Of course, the relationship between colleges and the “student athletes” who make money for them is fairly questioned.

Middleton, whose appointment as interim system president was announced Thursday, said he keeps a list of those original demands on his desk. “This is the beginning”.

Protesters, including the Mizzou football team, demanded the removal of President Tim Wolfe following criticism of his response to anti-black and Jewish incidents on campus.

Eventually, the activist’s demands will be impossible to meet. Tensions on campus have not entirely dissipated.

Protest leaders at the University of Kansas say they’re pushing for changes to ensure that problems faced by minority and other “marginalized” students are addressed swiftly and effectively.

When I left southwest Missouri to attend the University of Missouri in Columbia, I always joked with my friends that it would be my first real experience with diversity.

The lesson from Mizzou that solidarity is key was repeated by student activists who linked their struggles to the fight against racism on campus.

Numerous issues cited almost five decades ago persist.

Students of color who’ve spoken with HuffPost say that does not surprise them, given that students are growing up witnessing high-profile deaths of unarmed black men and teens, like Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice and Eric Garner. Those experiences are coupled multiple examples of fraternity and sorority parties featuring black face and caricatures of various ethnic groups, while Muslim students at a few campuses have been subjected to spying by law enforcement.

Said George: “We were aware – from the issues that occurred previous year with Ferguson, Baltimore, NY City. Black lives matter at the University of Kansas”. Curriculum included more black studies.

“Look at those guys playing Frisbee – that is the definition of privilege”, said one speaker. “I think it was the right move for their president to step down”. She promised more details later this week on actions the university would take. Much of the student body stood in support of Butler, including the University of Missouri football team, which boycotted all football-related activities in solidarity with Butler. Members of the University’s Legion of Black Collegiates said they were called racial slurs by an unknown person while rehearsing for a performance they were putting on. I daresay something similar is playing out on campus now – minus the exectutions, of course.

Although the population of Missouri is 12 percent black, only 3.2 percent of its tenured faculty and staff is black. And young black professors are more likely to wind up in dead-end adjunct positions, which more and more colleges are adopting as a cost-saving measure.

Of course, far from being oppressed, students at Missouri and Yale are junior members of the country’s elite, enjoying huge advantages over their peers.

The University of California-Berkeley was one of eight main campus public universities with a greater percentage of black faculty members than black students.

Reared on a diet of “microaggressions” and “hostile environments”, “safe spaces” and the need for “validation”, many of these students have seemingly conflated hurt feelings with actual outright discrimination. This shouldn’t have happened in 1963 or any time. Last month, two predominantly white fraternities organized (then canceled) a rap-themed fraternity party that encouraged people to bring out their “inner thug”. Could universities admit waitlisted students now in protesters’ place and more students next year?

But in the near term, both Reese and Bial emphasized that colleges will have to be quicker to respond to individual incidents of racism.

The protest was a chance for Black students to have their voices heard in an institution that all-too-often silences their stories.

The president also said he is enthused about several days of marches and protests on the taxpayer-funded Mizzou campus. “If a knucklehead on a college campus starts talking about her, I guarantee you she will give as good as she gets”, he said.