Inside How Missouri’s Leadership Scrambled to Quell a Campus Crisis

As protests over race relations at the University of Missouri threatened to boil over last fall, administrators scrambled behind the scenes to assess threats of violence, mollify demonstrators, and grapple with a social-media frenzy that fed on anger and spread panic across the system.

A review of more than 150 pages of emails, obtained by The Chronicle through a public-records request, provides a window into top-level administrators’ frenetic efforts to restore order at Missouri over a six-day period, from November 6 to 11, beginning with the Mizzou football team’s decision to boycott games in solidarity with a graduate student on a hunger strike and concluding two days after the university’s top two officials resigned.

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.

• Students Should Feel Like ‘Equal Partners,’ Says New Diversity Officer
• Melissa Click, Professor Who Riled Free-Speech Advocates, Is Fired
• What It’s Like to Be Black at the U. of Missouri
• Thrust Into a National Debate on Race, 2 Missouri Chiefs Resign

Timothy M. Wolfe, the system president, and R. Bowen Loftin, chancellor of the flagship campus, in Columbia, communicated regularly throughout the crisis. Both men had taken some criticism amid student complaints over racially charged incidents on the campus, though it was Mr. Wolfe who ultimately became the target of protesters, who accused him of being apathetic. Yet, as the emails show, all the administrators felt growing pressure to respond to a situation that threatened to spiral out of control.

November 6

On the same day that Mr. Wolfe issued an apology to demonstrators, he wrote in an email to Mr. Loftin and others about providing “mental-health resources” to the protesters, who had set up an encampment on the quad. Mr. Wolfe had met earlier that Friday with Jonathan Butler, who at that point was five days into a hunger strike that he said would not end until Mr. Wolfe resigned.

“Please make sure,” Mr. Wolfe wrote, “we are reaching out to them and making available the resources required for these passionate protesters.”

“Also,” he continued, “I heard that the people that are camping out are being harassed or being called names and the request for security or something that would protect their rights and safety is required. Please address this as well.”

Mr. Wolfe was, by this point, under scrutiny by the national news media and facing tremendous pressure to step down. But Mr. Loftin had his own problems. A group of nine deans on the flagship campus, upset with Mr. Loftin’s management style, had been working for weeks to force him out.

November 8

Mr. Wolfe’s apology did little to placate the protesters, who had assembled under the name Concerned Student 1950, a reference to the year Missouri admitted its first black student. On November 8, Missouri officials discussed via email what they might offer up to the group, which had written a list of demands that included hiring more professors with minority backgrounds and improving mental-health resources.

In a draft statement, which Mr. Loftin distributed to system officials, the chancellor pledged to seek more money from the system to improve efforts at diversity hiring, and he said that he would “strongly encourage” faculty members to augment curricula to address “inclusion, diversity, equity, and the experiences of marginalized groups in society.”

Zora Z. Mulligan, the system’s chief of staff, responded with a number of questions, including what she described as “the big one":

“Do you think this will reverse or slow the escalation of anger and protest on the campus?”

If the Columbia campus was a powder keg, Missouri officials had now come to view social media as a match. Yik Yak, a smartphone application that allows users to post anonymously, became a platform for threats of violence. The messages on Yik Yak and other social media like it were concerning enough to Mr. Loftin that he contemplated whether he could or should shield them from the view of students.

The proposal was never carried out, and the statement was never made public, but internally it engendered discussion about whether blocking smartphone apps might infringe on users’ constitutional rights. In her email to the chancellor, Ms. Mulligan said that she had gotten a note from “Paul,” presumably Paul R. Maguffee, the system’s general counsel, who said “it might be a First Amendment issue but unlikely to be pursued.”

Christian Basi, a spokesman for the campus, said in an email to The Chronicle on Thursday that “our policy is to only block sites that are known to be hosting malware, and thus pose a direct security risk to our network and systems.”

November 9

Both Mr. Loftin and Mr. Wolfe announced their resignations on November 9. But tensions persisted. At 3:39 p.m., Charlie J. Parker Jr., coordinator of diversity programs, sent an email to his colleagues in the Office of the Chancellor’s Diversity Initiative expressing concerns for his personal safety. Mr. Parker, who is black, wrote that he and another black member of the staff had felt threatened by “a white male student who attempted to fight us” while the two men walked across the campus:

“He turned around and yelled, ‘Are you guys talking to me?’ ‘Do you have a problem?’ While saying these things he approached us in a manner as if he was going to fight us. We were both rightfully surprised and extremely upset by his provocation, but we decided to turn away and ignore his advances.”

“This is an example of when a person of color states a space is unsafe,” Mr. Parker continued. “If we as professional staff of color cannot walk out of our office building without be threatened, then we have a huge problem. I say all this to express that my main concern is for the safety of the students, and I would submit that as an office we need to focus on how we can take IMMEDIATE measures to ensure safety of students of color on this campus.”

At 8:36 p.m., Noor Azizan-Gardner, chief diversity officer, forwarded Mr. Parker’s email to Henry (Hank) C. Foley, who by now had been designated as Mr. Loftin’s interim successor.

“I fear that the backlash will be coming in full force,” Ms. Azizan-Gardner wrote. “We should strategize for possible scenarios.”

But Missouri officials appeared genuinely perplexed as to what to do. Minutes later, Mr. Foley emailed Gary L. Ward, vice chancellor for operations and chief operating officer, asking, “What do you think we can do? Can we increase police presence on campus, or would that have unintended consequences?”

November 10

By now, a literal and figurative storm was brewing. The campus police worried that a pattern of bad weather could threaten encamped demonstrators, and Yik Yak users were spewing racist vitriol. “I’m going to stand my ground tomorrow and shoot every black person I see,” one anonymous user wrote.

A counterprotest movement, fueled by outrage that administrators had seemingly bowed to an angry mob, had begun to take shape.

“I am getting calls from all groups of people now saying they are coming to campus to protest the protesters,” Maj. Brian Weimer, a public-information officer with the University of Missouri at Columbia Police Department, wrote to Mr. Ward, the chief operating officer. “This is going to completely tax all our resources if this occurs in addition to watching out for others on campus due to various threats.”

A day earlier, an incident at the protesters’ encampment had intensified the crisis. Melissa A. Click, an assistant professor of communication at Missouri, was caught on video at the demonstration site, where she grabbed the camera of a journalist and called out for “some muscle” to get rid of him. Ms. Click and Janna Basler, the campus’s assistant director of Greek life, who was also seen blocking a reporter in the video, were painted as icons of political correctness, defending the safe space of students at the expense of the rights of the press.

Missouri officials, concerned about how to handle a nationally organized protest movement that might descend upon the campus, consulted with a host of law-enforcement agencies about what to do, records show. The encampment, administrators were told, was a lure for outsiders.

“This is what the FBI is telling us,” Mr. Ward wrote, at 1:49 p.m. “The longer they stay, the more likely the professional protesters will be here.”

Within a minute, Mr. Foley replied, “I believe they are coming.”

Mr. Ward had been skeptical of the encampment from the start. When the protesters requested, through the diversity office, that the university provide a gas generator, Mr. Ward pushed back, suggesting the demonstrators should “move off our quad.”

“I very much appreciate our students and their right to protest, but they are right now killing the grass and putting stakes in the ground where we have underground sprinkler system,” Mr. Ward had written on November 6 to Ms. Azizan-Gardner, the chief diversity officer, cc’ing Mr. Loftin, the chancellor. “No other group or individual have been allowed to set up home on our quad.”

But the students prevailed, helped in part by Michael A. Middleton, a veteran civil-rights lawyer and retired deputy chancellor at Missouri’s Columbia campus. “This will be on national news in the next few days,” Mr. Middleton, who has since been named the system’s interim president, wrote to Mr. Loftin. “I think we need to do everything humanly possible to support our students in their free expression.”

Once the students got power, they asked for more.

“The generator is set up,” Mr. Ward later wrote. “They want a fire pit. We told them ‘no.’”

Meanwhile, the threats on social media to the campus had increased, and Missouri officials grappled with whether to cancel classes, sought to comfort students, and fielded criticism for failures to communicate adequately.

The challenge of student safety was so confounding that, on the night of November 10, the chancellor took matters into his own hands, inviting several student leaders to stay in his home.

But that step, too, raised concerns. “To your residence?” asked Mr. Foley, when Mr. Loftin told him about the houseguests. “Is that advisable, Bowen?”

“I hope so,” replied the chancellor, noting that the campus police were monitoring his home. “We will be fine.”

Mr. Foley remained uneasy. “Just be aware,” he wrote to Mr. Loftin, “that things have a way of whipsawing.”

The university, which faced some pressure from lawmakers, parents, and students to cancel classes, never did so. Instead, officials encouraged students to call 911 if they felt they were in any danger, conveying this message through Mr. Loftin’s Twitter account, where he uses the handle @bowtieger.

But many people remained ill at ease.

“Note there is criticism for not communicating,” Mr. Foley wrote to Mr. Loftin and other top officials at 10:53 p.m. “Don’t think Bowtieger’s Twitter is adequate.”

At 11:16 p.m., James Spain, vice provost for undergraduate studies, wrote to the group, relating a call he had received from a student’s mother “on my home phone.”

“He wanted to leave his dorm and the campus,” Mr. Spain wrote. “He indicated white supremacists were on campus — there were riots and threats for shootings.”

Mr. Foley assured Mr. Spain that there was no evidence of such threats, but Mr. Spain underscored that “right now, social media is spinning out of control — I think we need to make a statement.”

When Mr. Foley passed those concerns along to Ellen de Graffenreid, vice chancellor for marketing and communications, she said, “We are pushing social media.”

“AOK,” Mr. Foley replied.

November 11

To some extent, records show, the university was conscious of the symbolic messages it was sending as well. On the morning of November 11, Mr. Wolfe, the departing president, told a group of vice presidents that he thought it appropriate to cancel a social event that evening.

“Hi guys — In the constantly shifting series of events that is our new normal … let’s hold off on tonight’s gathering,” Mr. Wolfe wrote. “Several members of the team are going to be tied up with the board meeting, and with the mood on campus, ‘fun’ just doesn’t feel right.”

That afternoon, university leaders released a public statement.

“We feel the weight of the world’s eyes upon us,” they wrote. “We will not flinch from the work ahead.”

Steve Kolowich contributed to this report.

Jack Stripling covers college leadership, particularly presidents and governing boards. Follow him on Twitter @jackstripling, or email him at jack.stripling@chronicle.com.