Keeping with the positive waves for Arc. 35% decline in enrollment. The free market speaks.


Long After Protests, Students Shun the University of Missouri
By ANEMONA HARTOCOLLIS JULY 9, 2017

COLUMBIA, Mo. — In the fall of 2015, a grassy quadrangle at the center of the University of Missouri became known nationwide as the command center of an escalating protest.

Students complaining of official inaction in the face of racial bigotry joined forces with a graduate student on a hunger strike. Within weeks, with the aid of the football team, they had forced the university system president and the campus chancellor to resign.

It was a moment of triumph for the protesting students. But it has been a disaster for the university.

Freshman enrollment at the Columbia campus, the system’s flagship, has fallen by more than 35 percent in the two years since.

The university administration acknowledges that the main reason is a backlash from the events of 2015, as the campus has been shunned by students and families put off by, depending on their viewpoint, a culture of racism or one where protesters run amok.

Before the protests, the university, fondly known as Mizzou, was experiencing steady growth and building new dormitories. Now, with budget cuts due to lost tuition and a decline in state funding, the university is temporarily closing seven dormitories and cutting more than 400 positions, including those of some nontenured faculty members, through layoffs and by leaving open jobs unfilled.

Few areas have been spared: The library is even begging for books.

“The general consensus was that it was because of the aftermath of what happened in November 2015,” said Mun Choi, the new system president, referring to the climax of the demonstrations. “There were students from both in state and out of state that just did not apply, or those who did apply but decided not to attend.”

The protests inspired movements at other colleges. Since then fights over overt and subconscious racial slights, as well as battles over free speech, have broken out at Middlebury College in Vermont, the University of California, Berkeley, and The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash. Missouri’s experience shows how a conflict, if not deftly handled, can stain a college’s reputation long after the conflict has died down.

Students of all races have shunned Missouri, but the drop in freshman enrollment last fall was strikingly higher among blacks, at 42 percent, than among whites, at 21 percent. (A racial breakdown was not yet available for this fall’s freshman class.)

Black students were already a small minority. They made up 10 percent of the freshman class in 2012, a proportion that fell to just 6 percent last fall. Whitney Matewe, a black student from McKinney, Tex., who will be a senior in the fall, said that after the protests, her parents asked if she wanted to transfer, but she decided to stay because she is in Missouri’s prestigious journalism school. But, she said, she understands why black students might not apply to a campus where they are all but invisible. A friend’s boyfriend obliviously told her she looked like Aunt Jemima, and she was dismayed that her friend did not object.

“Being ‘the other’ in every classroom and every situation is exhausting,” she said. By sheer numbers, the drop in white students has caused the greatest damage, since they make up a majority of those on campus.

Tyler Morris, a white student from St. Louis, said he was afraid of being stereotyped as a bigot if he went to Missouri. So he decided to go to Missouri Valley College, “just down the road” in Marshall.

“The discrimination wasn’t against white people, but I didn’t want to be that person who I guess was stereotyped because I was white,” he said.

College counselors said that Missouri might have a hard time recovering from protests because its reputation was largely regional. “Why would a student from New Jersey go to the University of Missouri instead of Rutgers or Penn State?” said Steven Roy Goodman, an independent college admissions counselor in Washington.

Even in-state students for whom Mizzou is a family tradition are choosing to go elsewhere, including public universities in neighboring states, like Illinois and Arkansas, which offer preferential tuition or scholarships to Missouri students.

Aly Zuhler’s mother and cousins went to Missouri, and her mother would have liked for her to go there as well, she said. But Ms. Zuhler, who is Jewish and grew up in suburban St. Louis, said she could not stomach going to a place where blacks and Jews might feel unwelcome.

When she heard that a swastika had been smeared in feces on a dormitory bathroom at Missouri, she decided not to apply. She enrolled instead at Truman State University in Kirksville, Mo., where she will be a sophomore this coming year. “Looking for colleges is intimidating just by itself,” she said. “Adding anti-Semitism on top of that was just too much.”

A plant sciences professor, Craig Roberts, said that Missouri was suffering not because it was more racist than other places, but because the rage that had been repressed on other campuses burst into the open.

“It was sparked at Mizzou by Ferguson,” Mr. Roberts said.

Ferguson, Mo., of course, is where the killing of an unarmed young black man, Michael Brown, by a police officer in 2014 became a national symbol of tension between the police and minority communities. Ferguson, just a two-hour drive away, was still a fresh memory in September 2015, when Payton Head, the student association president, posted on Facebook that people riding in the back of a pickup truck had continuously screamed racial slurs at him.

The post went viral and the outcry escalated through what has become known in the protest world as “intersectionality,” grievances that gain potency by being bundled together. There were demonstrations against racism, and to support Planned Parenthood, which was under attack by state lawmakers.

Days later a drunken white student jumped onstage during a rehearsal by an African-American group and used a racial slur.

This was followed by the failure of the university president, Timothy M. Wolfe, to get out of his car to speak with demonstrators during the homecoming parade in October, drawing accusations of indifference. Then the swastika appeared.

A movement, Concerned Student 1950, commemorating the year the first black student was admitted to the university, grew out of the protests and set up a tent city. On Nov. 2, a graduate student, Jonathan Butler, began a hunger strike, spurred by the complaints of racial animosity and official inaction, as well as a cut in graduate student health care funding.

Over the weekend of Nov. 7, the football team, led by its black players, said it would not practice or play unless Mr. Wolfe resigned. It was the last straw. On Nov. 9, Mr. Wolfe resigned as system president, and the chancellor of the Columbia campus, R. Bowen Loftin, also announced he was stepping down. Mr. Butler ended his hunger strike.

As the protests continued to boil, demonstrators tried to block the news media from the encampment, and Melissa Click, a communications professor, called for “some muscle” to oust a student taking a video of the confrontation.

In the minds of many, her outburst and the resignations became symbols of a hair-trigger protest culture lacking any adult control.

The university received a barrage of emails from alumni and families, some of which were published by National Review and Heat Street, a conservative news site.

In one, the parents of a junior wrote that while they did not underestimate the extent of bigotry in the world, “the way to effect change is NOT by resorting to the type of mob rule that’s become apparent over the past few days.”

The university, they added, had shown a “complete lack of leadership,” and their two younger children had “all but eliminated Mizzou from their college list.”

The email was forwarded to Ellen de Graffenreid, vice chancellor for marketing and communications, with a brief note saying, “I’m sure you already know this but you have a P.R. nightmare on your hands.” Ms. de Graffenreid, in turn, forwarded it to other administrators with a note saying, “This is pretty representative of the middle of the road people we are losing.”

While freshman enrollment has plummeted, students already at Missouri have not transferred out in large numbers — a sign, administrators said, that the protests looked worse from the outside. Christian Basi, a spokesman, said the university was formulating a marketing campaign to correct what he called “misperceptions” about the extent of the unrest.

Missouri also has appointed a chief diversity officer; promised to double the percentage of minority faculty members by 2020 and recruit more minority postdoctoral fellows; and is requiring diversity training for faculty and staff members and incoming students.

The tent city has been restored to a well-manicured emerald field of grass, but all around campus, signs of the university’s suffering are evident.

The library is asking for donations to buy 400 books that it wants, including a $5,250 copy of “Complete and Truly Outstanding Works by Homer.”

To soften the financial blow, some vacant dorm rooms — spartan suites of two rooms of two single beds, sharing a bathroom and with no TV, are being rented for $120 a night for events like homecoming, the fall family visit and the football game against Auburn University, a Southern rival.

For the Aug. 21 solar eclipse, Columbia is lucky to be one of the prime viewing locations where the sun will be completely obscured by the moon. As of early July, 35 rooms were still available for the event.

Some faculty members are still hoping that the situation can be turned around.

“I think we squandered a rare opportunity that we had to be a local, regional, national, global leader in terms of showing how a university can deal with its problems, including related to race relations,” Berkley Hudson, a journalism professor, said.

The protests could have been turned into an asset — a chance to celebrate diversity. “We still can,” he said.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0...tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur

That makes me feel like....

So, if I read the article correctly, the Mizzou problem is because the university still isn't diverse enough?

Yeah, right. That has to be it. Good thing they hired a chief diversity officer. Sounds like a move straight from Stalin.

quote:

Originally posted by jljones:
So, if I read the article correctly, the Mizzou problem is because the university still isn't diverse enough?

Yeah, right. That has to be it.

Didn't you get the memo?

Also that ESPN ratings for NFL football fell drastically because of "Trump and the election"?

2017 has been a great year so far

all this winning is starting to cause me to wheeze a bit - can't keep up...

don't stop...go on without me, I'll be fine

quote:

Originally posted by feersum dreadnaught:
Keeping with the positive waves for Arc. 35% decline in enrollment. The free market speaks...


Long After Protests, Students Shun the University of Missouri
By ANEMONA HARTOCOLLIS JULY 9, 2017....For the Aug. 21 solar eclipse, Columbia is lucky to be one of the prime viewing locations where the sun will be completely obscured by the moon. As of early July, 35 rooms were still available for the event....

Not all is lost, they can make money every time there is a solar eclipse over Missouri.

"As the protests continued to boil, demonstrators tried to block the news media from the encampment, and Melissa Click, a communications professor, called for “some muscle” to oust a student taking a video of the confrontation"

The fact that facualty were out of control is probably the biggest issue they have.

If I was a Black person living in this racist country called the USA, I'd just get the heck out of here! After all, from what I've learned in the government paid-for schools, the racism is not curable. It's just a part of the genetic code of White people to be racist, so there's nothing that can be done.

Yep - I'd move. The first thing I'd have to do is choose a country to move to. Since racism is in the genetic make up of evil White people, I guess the smart thing to do would be to move to a country where there are little to no White people. I'm probably thinking of a country in the interior of the African continent. How about Ethiopia? I think I'll go to Ethiopia!

The first thing I'll do is write to the government of Ethiopia and ask them to send me the forms so that I can have my government paid-for cell phones, EBT cards, welfare, Aid for Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), medical programs, and all the other free money programs all set and ready to go when I arrive.

I will tell all of my friends to make sure I have their email addresses so that I can tell them how much better it is living in Ethiopia.

Who knows? Maybe after I move, there will be a huge flood of African-Americans who will want to move to Ethiopia with me to escape the evil tyranny of White racism!

quote:

On Nov. 2, a graduate student, Jonathan Butler, began a hunger strike, spurred by the complaints of racial animosity and official inaction, as well as a cut in graduate student health care funding.

Over the weekend of Nov. 7, the football team, led by its black players, said it would not practice or play unless Mr. Wolfe resigned. It was the last straw. On Nov. 9, Mr. Wolfe resigned as system president, and the chancellor of the Columbia campus, R. Bowen Loftin, also announced he was stepping down. Mr. Butler ended his hunger strike.

I remember that week. I remember thinking "who cares?" about Jonathan Butler's hunger strike. We can't force people to eat.

But Timothy Wolfe needed to show some back bone... and he didn't. He should have addressed the protestors firmly from the beginning. He should have said that racism will not be tolerated, but neither will racial intimidation of white people. Then, when the football team, led by its black players, said it would not practice or play unless Mr. Wolfe resigned.... he should have told them that if they don't practice or play that is their choice, but if they are there on a football scholarship and they don't practice or play they are off the team and the scholarship is over and they will owe full tuition if they wish to stay at the University. Instead, the coach (Gary Pinkel’s salary was over $4 million a year, making him the highest paid employee of the State) and he both caved to their demands. Stupid.
Mizzou's football team may never be the same.

I wouldn't send a child to a place that won't protect everyone, and from the top the administration simply wouldn't stand up to the thugs.

quote:

Originally posted by jljones:
So, if I read the article correctly, the Mizzou problem is because the university still isn't diverse enough?

Yeah, right. That has to be it. Good thing they hired a chief diversity officer. Sounds like a move straight from Stalin.

I was thinking along the same lines. Let us take a huge liberal flop and turn it into a plus.
I always thought the protests and claims of racism led to whites refusing to go there.
The article is somewhat misleading.
The fact that minority enrollment is down 42% and white enrollment down 21%, but then it says that since whites make up the largest percent of students, white enrollment is down by the larger amount.

Free market speaks pretty clearly.

Mizzoo-rons

What about all the other schools that had protests? How is their enrollment? Maybe they're not as racist as Mizzou.

Consequences: Making knuckleheads squirm since year one...

quote:

The library is asking for donations to buy 400 books that it wants, including a $5,250 copy of “Complete and Truly Outstanding Works by Homer.”

I'll let them have my copy of Totally Bitchin' Sonnets by Shakespeare for 2 Gs flat!!

"The library is even begging for books."

I'll donate a copy of Unintended Consequences!

quote:

Originally posted by synthplayer:
If I was a Black person living in this racist country called the USA, I'd just get the heck out of here! ...The first thing I'd have to do is choose a country to move to. ... I think I'll go to Ethiopia!

The first thing I'll do is write to the government of Ethiopia and ask them to send me the forms so that I can have my government paid-for cell phones, EBT cards, welfare, Aid for Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), medical programs, and all the other free money programs all set and ready to go when I arrive....

I think Kaepernik(sp?) recently went to Ghana, part of his "hate America" campaign. I wonder if he was seeking reparations from those in Ghana, as they were some of those who sold Black Africans to become slaves in the New World.

The author of that article has the improbable name of Anemona Hartocollis, a NYT writer. It began spelling out the enrollment decline and the reverberations caused by it. It soon devolved into more liberal bullshit. I was sorry I read it.

quote:

Originally posted by feersum dreadnaught:

Aly Zuhler’s mother and cousins went to Missouri, and her mother would have liked for her to go there as well, she said. But Ms. Zuhler, who is Jewish and grew up in suburban St. Louis, said she could not stomach going to a place where blacks and Jews might feel unwelcome.

When she heard that a swastika had been smeared in feces on a dormitory bathroom at Missouri, she decided not to apply. She enrolled instead at Truman State University in Kirksville, Mo., where she will be a sophomore this coming year. “Looking for colleges is intimidating just by itself,” she said. “Adding anti-Semitism on top of that was just too much.”

I graduated from Truman State University for undergrad in 2002. It is Missouri's only private liberal arts university and is also their only "highly selective" admissions one. There was always a small faction of a couple of dozen people protesting something (US going to war in Afghanistan and Iraq, Patriot Act, Gitmo, etc.) The most widespread protest was when the Board of Governors armed the campus police, who had the same arresting powers as State Troopers. A symbolic student vote was held, which was somewhere around 80% against. The BOG pretty much said "that's nice, the G23s are already on order, you don't have to thank us for protecting you from those with nefarious intentions." Absent athletic participants, it is predominantly white, with a greater percentage being female. It sits in a town of 17,000 (which includes the TSU and Osteopathic university). That town is about as conservative as you can get though. I wish this special snowflake the best of luck. At least TSU side-stepped this shit show 90 miles south.

That loon professor Click was hired at Gonzaga. She'll be clacking at her shenanigans again soon...