Discussion for article #242638
“Already, at Chancellor R. Bowen Loftin’s request, the university announced plans to require diversity training for all new students starting in January, along with faculty and staff.”
From what I’ve read, faculty need diversity training, too.
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The whole damn state of Missouri seems to need diversity and sensitivity training.
To find out, ask the blacks-not the whites.
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It isn’t clear to me why they are demanding the resignation of the president. It may be justified, but none of the media coverage that I have read has indicated what the president has done (or not done) that has made him the focus of the demands. Is there anyone familiar with this story that can help me here?
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“”“but agreed in a statement Sunday that “change is needed” and said the university is working to draw up a plan by April to promote diversity and tolerance”""
Its 2015…shouldn’t that have taken place by now? Maybe the 75 year delay is part of the problem.
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Every state in the Union has the problem…yours too.
They are demanding he acknowledge his “white male privilege” and if he does not they want him to resign. He’s the top dog and I guess the buck stops there although there does not appear to be any evidence racism is his bag. Again, we see a well intended movement get over taken by zealots that want more than a fix. Making the President cop to white male privilege isn’t going to do a fucking positive thing. It’s going to anger the folks that need persuading to accept change.
The football angle and its associated revenue thing will probably bring about some change. But it will be an empty deal for the Black students.
If you want to paint someone or thing an asshole you best not paint yourself one at the same time.
The Mizzou system has four campuses. The urban campuses in St. Louis and Kansas City have had diversity training for years. The head of the Columbia campus has slow walked diversity training at the predominately white campus in Columbia. Even now he says it will happen next year. The entire Columbia campus needs it now. Wolfe answered a question about systemic racism with an answer that sounded like it blamed the students. He says he was ambushed and he changed his answer when he thought about it, but that he didn’t have the appropriate answer immediately available tells you just how low these issues were for him.
The participation of the football team seems to have changed everything.
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Based on what I heard on NPR this morning, it also sounds like the breaking point was the administration responding to recent episodes of gross racism by students by calling for “open dialogue,” which appears to be the thing it does, and has been doing for years, whenever white students act like racist assholes.
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Agreed. But I am not sure what they expect Wolf to do, besides turn in his resignation because of unidentified racists assholes on campus. There isn’t one particular incident, from what I have read, that he can bring the Hammer of God down upon anyone.
The timing of the player’s stance is somewhat suspect as well. Mizzou has had a horrible season, after winning the SEC East Championship the past two years. So walking out on a losing season, it almost sounds like they were looking for a good excuse to bail. I mean, these incidents aren’t a brand new phenomena that sprung up this year…but the players weren’t walking away from Championship seasons.
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Oh, let’s be clear: calling for the resignation of the president is the default demand of student activists from time immemorial, regardless of the gravity of the issue. And resisting that demand is almost always the right decision.
Now when the faculty gets in on it too, yeah, you need to go . . .
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It’s because he has been tone deaf to the complaints for months and when he has responded, it’s been in generalities. The final straw seems to have been his refusal to talk to the students at the Homecoming parade… Diversity training for next year’s incoming freshman is hardly enough, but so far, that’s all he’s come up with. .
You can bet if the football coach and athletic director are putting their jobs on the line by supporting the boycott, there’s a lot more to this than has been publicized.
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And, just like that, Wolfe is gone. The last straw?
The team refused to play their next game potentially worth millions of dollars.
Like others here, I’m not exactly clear what Wolfe’s head on a platter is going to do regarding changing the general racist atmosphere that is going around there. Now, this will get the team to play this weekend but I’m not seeing this as being a real solution to the problem. What’s to prevent the Board from just gong out and hiring another President just like Wolfe who will perpetuate the same noxious attitude on campus?
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It isn’t anything he did. Wolfe’s problem was in not doing anything. The Chancellor at MU has slow walked the University’s response to the overt racism of some of its students with Wolfe’s support. If the administration had firmly and promptly responded to the various racial incidents Wolfe would have survived.
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And I get that part. But the new Chancellor may simply be a more agile, less obstinate version of Wolfe. We’ll see but I’m skeptical.
Not to mention, there’s the faculty and how they’re dealing with this.
Yeah sure, but it’s about the degrees. In Colorado, we just don’t have that many blacks to begin with.
Not only the facility but the coach was quite supportive of the players, something that usually does not occur considering the player-coach relationship.