Missouri Students Change The World Over The Weekend
Posted
Roger Grossman, Lake City Radio-
I don’t live near the campus of the University of Missouri, but what happened there over the weekend may just have changed the way the world operates. If you don’t know the story, over the past few months there have been a series of events that have divided the campus along racial lines. It started in August of last year with the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, which sparked a national debate over police use-of-force that was especially contentious on the Columbia, Missouri campus. The student government president, who is African-American, was allegedly called the “N word” by students riding in the back of a pickup truck in September. Payton Head took to Facebook to express his growing frustration with bigotry and anti-homosexual attitudes on campus. Five days later, Chancellor Bowen Loftin declared the actions of hate were “totally unacceptable” and said they would not be tolerated any more. But a week after that, African-American students began to openly protest on campus, claiming that nothing was being done in response to Head’s original complaint. On Oct. 4, a drunk white student walked into a traditionally black social group on campus that was preparing for homecoming festivities and allegedly berated them with foul language and racial slurs. The next day, Loftin admitted that “racism was alive and well at Mizzou.” He ordered campus leaders to undergo diversity training, but was criticized for not going far enough by student leader Jonathon Butler. On Oct. 10, student leaders stopped the homecoming parade to publicly and openly question university president Tim Wolfe about the lack of response to the racial tension that was growing on campus. The car Wolfe was riding in attempted to move forward, tapping one of the protestors in the leg. Campus police cleared the scene. Two weeks later, another incident roiled the campus. Someone used feces to draw a swastika on the wall of a residence hall. Last week, Butler began a hunger strike saying “either Wolfe leaves office or I die.” Still, the African-American kids on campus felt like their cries for help went unheard. Then Sunday, that changed. Members of the Missouri Tiger football team, 32 in all, most of them African-American, posted a picture on Twitter saying that they were no longer going to participate in football practices and games until the grievances of the students on campus were addressed. THAT is when things started to happen. Two days later, Wolfe resigned and Loftin created a plan to phase himself into a lower-profile job on campus. For months, nothing happened. Then sports figures stepped in and stuff started moving … quickly. Coincidence? Nope. Like I said, I don’t live near the Missouri campus and what I described above is all anyone outside the boundaries of campus really knows. That being true, it makes Missouri look like a hot bed for racism and social injustice. And whether all eight of the demands by the student group called “1-9-5-0” (named for the year black students were first allowed to attend Missouri) are met is still yet to be seen. But THIS is true: their concerns WILL be heard. There is nothing more frustrating than speaking and feeling like no one is listening. In radio, you come to understand this fairly early on. On foggy, snowy days after you have just read the list of school delays –RING RING – “Uh, is Warsaw on a delay today?” Ugh… So imagine these kids – college kids who have a better grasp of when enough is enough – feeling like they had put light to a major problem on their campus and getting very little or no response. But the moment that turned the whole tide of this is that moment when members of the football team decided that it was time for them to put their ‘muscle’ to the matter. When I spoke at the Champions of Character Summit at Grace College earlier this month, I reminded those kids from Northern Lakes Conference schools that THEY are the leaders of the future. Sports cultivate leadership, and in some cases uncovers leadership in people who never knew they had it in them. The confidence these 30-plus student-athletes gained through sports competition gave them the courage and platform to say “WE can make a difference here” – and they did. If you’re a parent who is wondering if their child should give sports a shot, I would ask you these questions: • Do you want your child to grow up a confident child-turned-adult? • Do you want extra motivation for your child to achieve in the classroom? • Do you want your child to learn how to work with others? If you answered ‘yes’ to any of these, then you need to expose your kids to sports and let the chips of what sport they like or what they are good at fall where they may. Oh, and they might be asked to do something someday, like those football players at Missouri, that just might change the world.
