My opinions on these recent happenings at Missouri are all pretty angry and sad.
For those that live under a rock, Mizzou students and faculty staged a walkout and protest this week directly targeted at the leadership of Missouri, specifically President Tim Wolfe and Chancellor R. Bowen Loftin. The protesters were protesting the lack of action on the part of these men in response to the racist occurrences on campus, though both had a dubious reign in their respective positions. Protesters skipped classes, marched, and camped in the public Jesse Quad. One student, Jonathan Butler, even went on a hunger strike.
These protesters were doing their thing for weeks, but it escalated in the last week. The turning point came when the football players inserted themselves into the protests by boycotting their next football game. A move which would cost the school millions of dollars both presently and in the future. It was too much for the school and both Wolfe and Loftin were ousted within the next 48 hours. This was a huge takeaway from the situation: Athletes reinforced their power. What a dying student couldn’t do, the football team accomplished by tweeting. The athletes showed everyone where the balance of power truly lies in these universities. It’s interesting to see how this precedent impacts the inevitable angry students down the road. Imagine if Alabama football or Duke basketball refused to play until they received compensation for their jersey sales and profits made from their likeness. It could be a slippery slope.
But truly this was a sad time. The school received terrorist threats and many classes were cancelled. Angry racists also vandalized the black culture center while harassing minorities on campus. I have friends afraid to leave their dorm. It’s disheartening,
Everyone fucked up here. Media coverage, outside of the local, student run organizations, were garbage. So much bias and misinformation was given to the public to spread like wildfire. Protesters weren’t at fault either. They treated the media horribly and, frankly, inexcusably. Then Butler’s lies about Wolfe hitting him with his car also went viral. Both incidents set their cause back tremendously. And the poor behavior of assholes against the movement was shameful. But I’ve touched on that already.
The only party which did well in the face of this adversity were the athletics and, specifically, Gary Pinkel. He could’ve easily given in to his bosses, boosters, and conservative pundits. But he didn’t. He united a team that was apparently divided and made the difference in the movement. Then recovered from the off days to upset BYU Saturday to possibly salvage the season. Along with football, the basketball team won twice and the volleyball team won twice. All of these were important first steps to gluing this divided campus back together.
That was the glaring part of all of this. The campus was divided, seemingly split in half. It was “our opinion vs. yours.” It’s going to be a while for this university to recover from this. It has caught a bad reputation and rightfully so. In the past year, Mizzou has replaced two chancellors, a president, and an athletic director. It’s in a state of flux, but as I’ve learned in government class, “It will live on. Bureaucracies are hard to kill.”
