Racism still lives at the University of Missouri

By Troy Daugherty

Racism is alive and it has been thriving at the University of Missouri.

There have been a lot of protests at the university by students recently who say that systematic racism is built into the college and that the administration has been allowing it for years.

There have been protests going on for a while now on campus, but they recently gained a lot more attention when student Jonathan Butler went on a hunger strike until Tim Wolfe, university system president, would agree to resign from his position on campus.

Once Butler started his hunger strike the football team came out in support of him and also requested the immediate removal of Wolfe.

This got the university’s attention because if the players are on strike, then it’s probable that they will not play, and that would cost the school greatly in ticket sales.

The protesters were successful in their initial demands and Wolfe, along with Richard Loftin, campus chancellor, resigned.

The problem is that the university believes that now everything is fine and their problems are solved. Simply removing a couple of the staff members doesn’t get rid of the racism that these students deal with everyday.

This is just the start of a long process that the university will have to go through to get rid of racism that has existed on campus for so long.

In 2010, white students were caught throwing cotton on the lawn outside the Black Culture Center on campus. Their punishment was two years of probation for littering.

The problem here isn’t with the punishment, but because of why they were punished. The college made it clear that it was for littering and had nothing to do with the racist acts the students committed.

These types of instances have continued over the years with other student’s acts ranging from screaming racial slurs around campus to people drawing swastikas on the dorms.

These are some of the reasons the students wanted Wolfe to retire.

Many have stated that he had nothing to do with the problem, but that is the problem: He had nothing to do with it.

He didn’t do anything to stop these actions from occurring or properly punish the students when they did act.

More recently, the students have released a list of demands they want before they stop protesting.

Among these demands are things such as an increase in the number of black students on campus, an increase in the staff members that are black, and required cultural study classes for all students.

Whether the university will give in to the demands remains to be seen, but if the protest continues to grow at the rate that they are now, it seems likely that they will have no choice.

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