After Missouri’s Leadership Exodus, Hard Questions Loom on Race, Power, and Culture

As the sun rose on Tuesday over a tent encampment in the heart of the University of Missouri’s flagship campus here, a few sleepy protesters shook off their blankets and made their way to classes. Football practice was set to resume in the afternoon, the threat of a costly boycott averted, and the graduate student whose weeklong hunger strike had alarmed his friends and campus administrators was eating again.

By all accounts, the resignations of the university’s top two administrators represented a remarkable coup for student protesters who had demanded new leadership to deal with their concerns about racism, the treatment of graduate students, and other issues on the campus.

Turmoil at Mizzou

In 2015, student protests over race relations rocked the University of Missouri’s flagship campus, in Columbia, and spawned a wave of similar unrest at colleges across the country. Read more Chronicle coverage of the turmoil in Missouri and its aftermath.

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But the looming question now is what happens next. How does a university of 35,000 students create a climate in which students, faculty members, and the staff can feel comfortable talking about race? What concrete steps can the university system take to make the campus more welcoming to diverse students? And how does it do that in a careful, collaborative way, while being mindful that protesters might expect quick results in an age of Twitter activism?

Those are just a few of the questions that a 12-member committee, made up of faculty, students, and staff, will continue to wrestle with over the next several months.

“The students just won. Two kings’ heads rolled,” said Berkley Hudson, an associate professor of journalism and chair of the Faculty Council Committee on Race Relations, as he reflected on Monday’s resignations of Timothy M. Wolfe, president of the university system, and R. Bowen Loftin, chancellor of the flagship campus. Mr. Loftin said he would step down on December 31 to take a research-focused position with the university.

One committee member is Jonathan Butler, the graduate student who drew national attention to the protesters’ demands by refusing to eat until Mr. Wolfe had resigned. Having Mr. Butler on the committee will help keep students’ frustrations and concerns foremost in the minds of the panel’s members, Mr. Hudson said. Still, vexing questions remain and will take time to answer.

“How do we confront the fears and misunderstandings about race?” Mr. Hudson asked. One possible solution would be having trained facilitators lead discussions in ways that would make people feel comfortable opening up, he said.

“We have to find a way to have these difficult conversations. If we don’t, we’re going to have Confederate flags driving up and down the street and anonymous Yik Yak attacks,” he said, referring to angry and threatening social-media posts by those who have objected to the protests.

‘Unacceptable and Offensive’

Organized as a group called Concerned Student 1950, named for the year the university admitted its first black student, student protesters in October published a list of demands that included a handwritten note of apology from Mr. Wolfe and an acknowledgment by him of his “white male privilege.” The protesters also demanded a “racial awareness and inclusion curriculum” overseen by a committee made up of “students, staff, and faculty of color.”

Mr. Wolfe said on Monday that many of the demands had already been included in a draft of a systemwide diversity and inclusion strategy, which the system has been developing and plans to release in April.

“We want to find the best way to get everyone around the table and create the safe space for a meaningful conversation that promotes change,” he said.

Like many colleges across the country, increasing diversity is one key challenge facing the university. About 8 percent of the students on the flagship campus are black, but only 3 percent of the faculty members are, Mr. Hudson said.

Academic departments need to have not only the will but also the money to recruit, nurture, and retain minority faculty members, who might be reluctant to move to a community in the Midwest with a history of racial tensions.

Some of those steps will be part of the system’s approach in the future, according to Donald L. Cupps, chairman of the university system’s governing body, the Board of Curators.

He issued a statement on Monday apologizing on behalf of the university “for being slow to respond to experiences that are unacceptable and offensive.” He said the board was committed to making the “significant changes” needed to heal racial tensions.

The board will appoint a diversity officer for the system, review all system policies relating to staff and student conduct, and provide more support to students, faculty, and staff who have experienced discrimination. The system will also provide more support for hiring and retaining diverse faculty and staff members, the board said.

The flagship campus will have mandatory diversity training for all faculty, staff, and future students.

‘A Feeling of Empowerment’

Jacqueline Kelly, a retired faculty member, stopped by the protesters’ encampment on Monday afternoon to thank the students she’d been supplying with blankets and water over the previous several chilly nights.

Ms. Kelly said she hoped the university would hire new leaders who were more proactive in responding to complaints about racism. “Silence sends the message that these behaviors and attitudes are OK,” she said.

“I feel strongly that what these bright, determined students are doing, the administration should have done a long time ago,” she said. “It’s a new day, and I couldn’t be prouder of the students and the football team.” A group of players had threatened to boycott football events until Mr. Wolfe had resigned.

Alexus Carson, a sophomore who brought her younger sister and friends to witness the historic day, said that when she read a tweet on Monday morning saying that the president had resigned, she ran out of class to find students cheering and dancing on the main quad.

“It was like the tension had lifted and there was such a feeling of empowerment,” she said. “I’m personally glad that President Wolfe stepped down. It’s not going to stop racism on campus, but it’s going to create a spiral effect and give hope to everyone.”

Shortly after word began to spread about Mr. Loftin’s resignation, on Monday afternoon, several members of the football team filed into the encampment and broke their silence with a few prepared statements to the news media.

As they were leaving, J’Mon Moore, a sophomore on the team, told reporters he met with Mr. Butler several days into his hunger strike after learning about his protest from a classmate. “When I first saw him, he collapsed. That’s what drew my attention,” he said. He told his teammates about Mr. Butler’s protest and, within an hour, had the team on board. “We wanted to use our platform to stand behind him and, at the end of the day, that’s what we did,” Mr. Moore said.

At least one member of the football team, speaking anonymously to an ESPN reporter, said team members had actually been divided on whether to boycott practices, and he doubted that the team would have gone ahead with the threat if it had a stronger record. (The team is currently 4-5.)

One onlooker said he was still trying to make sense of the tumultuous turn of events. Nick Jordan, a junior, said he was shocked by how quickly both the chancellor and the president had gone. “I think it got to the point of no return where both of them had to go, but in a way, it seems like there was a rush to conclusion,” he said. “I don’t know if everyone knew all the facts.”

A Sense of Proportion

Looking on at the cluster of national media figures outside the encampment, Eric Wetz, a senior who is white, said the entire controversy had been blown out of proportion.

“One man can’t be responsible for a few racist incidents by a couple of intoxicated students,” he said of the president’s forced resignation. “I’m against allowing a small group of students to control the university and having one guy say, I’ll harm myself unless I get my way.”

But a freshman, who for solidarity and safety reasons would identify herself only as Concerned Student 1950, defended the group’s tactics.

“We weren’t being heard, so we had to be dramatic and strategic,” said the student, who is black. “We didn’t think that the hardest thing to check off our list — having the president resign — would be the first thing we’d accomplish, but we’re going to continue fighting to make the grounds of this campus inclusive.”

On Tuesday a protest leader said the tents would stay up until all of the students’ demands had been met. “This is just the beginning,” said Curtis Taylor Jr., a senior. “People need to critically examine their role in perpetuating racism. These were not isolated instances.”

Asked what needed to happen for the campus to heal, one faculty member said it was premature to answer that question.

“Healing comes after everyone is fully aware of the underlying racism and discrimination that led to the protests and feels that they can and will do something to address it,” Casandra E. Harper, an associate professor of educational leadership and policy analysis, wrote in an email. “I don’t think we’re there yet as a campus.”

Katherine Mangan writes about community colleges, completion efforts, and job training, as well as other topics in daily news. Follow her on Twitter @KatherineMangan, or email her at katherine.mangan@chronicle.com.