Surely, you have read and heard about the resignation of the President of the University of Missouri, Tim Wolfe, amidst protests over racial incidents at that institution. Clearly, the decision of the football team – players and coaches – to abstain from any football activities (practice and scheduled games) had a lot to do with forcing that resignation. The team has properly received accolades for their action here. In his statement announcing his resignation, President Wolfe urged the university folks to “stop yelling at each other and start listening and quit intimidating each other.” Whether or not you like President Wolfe, those words represent good advice.
There is an adage:
Fools rush in where wise men fear to tread.
I am going to be a fool today and pose some questions regarding the pragmatic outcome(s) of this forced resignation. Let me set the stage for just a moment:
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A quick glance at Google Maps tells me that Columbia, MO is only about 100 miles from Ferguson, MO. I know nothing about that part of the country from personal experience but I do know and appreciate that there is real – and not imagined – racial tension in Ferguson. The proximity of the University of Missouri to Ferguson has to add to any racial sensitivities on campus.
Reports on this subject refer to a history of “racial incidents” on campus that have not been addressed to the satisfaction of the protesters. I do not know what those earlier racial incidents were; therefore, I have no way to judge their severity. It is not possible to imagine a racial incident that would fall in the “good” category; nonetheless, there are varying degrees of “bad incidents” and I have no way to categorize how bad the earlier incidents may have been.
I did see an interview with the student government president – a black male – on one of the news programs; he indicated that at a campus meeting, he had been the target of “racial epithets” including the “N-word”. I read reports that someone smeared a swastika on the wall in a dormitory using human feces. That act is disgusting on so many levels that I will not even try to understand what the perpetrator might have been thinking. That less than artistic expression came soon after campus protesters blocked President Wolfe’s car in the Homecoming Weekend Parade in protest of the “earlier incidents”.
In none of the reporting have I seen any indication that anyone involved in the protest thinks that President Wolfe was involved in any of the “earlier incidents” nor that he was the “fecal artist” who decorated the dormitory. Therefore, I guess I do not understand the vehement focus on his resignation as the prime objective of these protests. Now that he is no longer associated with the university, does that mean that the persons who confronted the student government president with racial epithets are gone? Has the “fecal artist” moved on to another campus somewhere?
Unless someone can demonstrate that President Wolfe was one of those miscreants or that he has been harboring those miscreants and shielding them from identification and punishment, those miscreants are still somewhere within the university community – unless of course these incidents have been perpetrated by outsiders from the start. I am currently about 800 miles east of Columbia, MO; from this vantage point, it seems to me that the “really bad guys” have not been “smoked out” of their caves.
The protesters got what they have been demanding. Now what?
Many news outlets have raced to proclaim that there is a new day dawning on campus here and that this is only the beginning of positive change on campuses around the country. Before I get caught up in that euphoria, let me point out that many of these news outlets are the same ones that proclaimed the joy of Arab Spring four or five years ago as a movement that would usher in a whole slew of democracies in North Africa and the Middle East. That was wishful thinking that never came close to reality; frankly, until I see what the newly created environment is at Missouri and how that newly created environment minimizes any racial incidents on the campus, I will merely hope that all the change at Missouri is for the positive.
Politicians at the state and national level have jumped into the fray proclaiming – obviously – that they are the side of everything that is right and good. I have not heard any of them intimate that they have any information regarding who is responsible for the acts on campus that they decry so prolifically. Frankly, they sound to me as if they are merely opportunists grabbing at a chance for face time in order to take a “proper position” on an issue they really do not have any knowledge of or involvement with. Call me a cynic if you wish but I would think a lot more highly of these politicians if they took to the microphone with declarations of facts and specific actions they are taking to make specific changes here. All I have heard to date is platitudinous pabulum…
Having experienced in the past mandatory diversity sensitivity training sessions, let me say that I am skeptical that any such activity will do anything meaningful to humanize the thought processes of the “fecal artist”. Real change, significant change, permanent change is not likely to emerge from diversity training sessions that end with the participants singing Cumbaya. Such diversity training sessions will not hurt anything but if they are the totality of the change ushered in by the change in leadership at the university, then the protest outcomes will likely be cosmetic and not meaningful.
The onus is on the protesters now. No one is going to start a “movement” to get any of the protesters to drop out of school. However, now that they have had their say, one needs to change the focus of accountability.
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Who is responsible for the racial incidents on campus and what is the new university culture going to do about those folks?
Who is “the fecal artist” and what is to be done to/with him/her?
One potential outcome from this matter in a completely different dimension may be that college athletes in the revenue sports will recognize the influence they can have on university policies. This protest had been ongoing for a while but what brought it to a head was when a large fraction of the football team took sides in the protest and announced that they would boycott practices and games until the protesters’ demands had been met. According to reports, the cancelation of the game against BYU this week would have cost the Missouri Athletic Department $1M. The players should learn from that quick response to their stance that there is truth in the adage:
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Money talks; bulls[p]it walks…
Should the student-athletes choose to push this pawn a way down the path, they might see a different avenue toward payment for their athletic services. Instead of trying to get “employee status” by having a national labor union certified to represent players’ interests, perhaps the way to achieve that goal – if that is truly a goal the players want to achieve – is to wait for one of the major revenue events to commence and for the players at that moment to choose to withhold services. It would take Herculean coordination effort to make the following happen but imagine for just a moment the following scenario:
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It is a Sunday night in mid-March and the NCAA Men’s Basketball Selection Committee has just announced its seedings for March Madness.
The media is focused on who got snubbed and who got a seeding they did not deserve. Monday morning arrives and that frenzy of outrage is fully expressed.
Then, comes the announcement that the players on the 68 teams are not going to take the floor. There will be no games; there will be no television; more importantly, there will be no television revenues…
The University of Missouri faced a loss of $1M for failure to show up to play BYU. The NCAA Tournament generates close to $1B for the NCAA and its member institutions.
It is probably too large an undertaking to get 68 teams to agree to such a boycott to make my scenario even close to a reality. However, there are bowl games in football and even the College Football Playoff where the occurrence of the event involves the cooperation of far fewer players at far fewer institutions. Maybe, this is the most important lesson about effecting change that comes from the action(s) of the Missouri football team in this matter. Maybe this action will demonstrate the levers and the fulcrum that players can use to force negotiations on things they want to have happen.
And like the campus protesters who have won their point now, if the players choose to use those levers, are they ready to accept the consequences and the accountability that will come from their success?
I think the resignation of President Wolfe is not much more than a symbolic happenstance. Without concrete steps that actually change things for the better, it will be a footnote of history. I think the football players at Missouri demonstrated to athletes at other schools that perhaps it is time for the players to take heed.
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Money talks! Bulls[p]it walks!
But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………
Well put, sir!
Steve:
Thank you…
“Frankly, they sound to me as if they are merely opportunists grabbing at a chance for face time in order to take a “proper position” on an issue they really do not have any knowledge of or involvement with. ” Shocking!!!!
Excellent rant, Jack!
K
Kate:
Shocking, indeed!
Well done as usual. I seem to remember that you and I sat through several of the same sensitivity training session(s).
Price:
Yes, we did. Glad you enjoyed…
Well done as usual.
Very illuminating as usual, but not surprisingly I have a slightly different take on some of your observations. I don’t think that the onus is on the protesters to come up with solutions (though it helps if they have constructive ideas to advance). It is enough that they have pointed out the problem. Accountability is this case quite properly begins at the top and the resignation of the head of the university is a good place to start. But as you correctly note, that does not get to the underlying issue of who is responsible for these racial incidents and what can be done to improve the campus climate. i assume investigations are underway to identify the culprits, but I am more interested in the the difficult challenge of creating a campus climate that restores a sense of community and trust among students, faculty and administration. Missouri would benefit from considering what other colleges and universities have done when facing protests whether because of race, sexual harassment, or other concerns. I am aware of one university where a blue ribbon panel was convened to do an in-depth review of formal and informal channels of communication dealing with campus climate and make a series of recommendations for reform. These recommendations became the basis for quick action. There is no one action that will solve the problem, but it requires a continuing commitment on all fronts to listen, respond, and assure procedural justice through fair procedures and processes. There will always be controversies, but they should not fester until hunger strikes, protests and finally a major sports team has to join the fray before effective actions are taken. Those are a few quick thoughts.
Jim:
I think we are mostly in agreement here. If indeed the resignation of President Wolfe leads to the identification of the folks responsible for the “earlier racial incidents” and/or the folks who confront the student government leader with racial invective and/or my so-called “fecal artist”, that is progress. It is progress even if the resignation had nothing at all to do with these identifications. My problem is the linkage of this forced resignation to whatever comes along either as real progress or faux-progress in the next weeks/months. Real accountability demands real linkage so that causality can be determined.
Where we obviously differ here is on where the onus is. It used to be with the school administration as embodied by President Wolfe. Now he is no longer there and those who succeeded in removing him assume that onus. When the French overthrew the King in 1789, somebody else bore the onus of finding ways to provide the people with bread to eat. If not the coup leaders and actors, who else? Hence my question to the folks who won this confrontation:
Now what?
I believe the charge is that President Wolfe did nothing to “smoke out the bad guys”.
david egbert:
If he did nothing with regard to the situation there, his firing is a most proper outcome.
The Board of Trustees and the successor leadership have the opportunity and responsibility to fill the vacuum by reviewing the bidding and taking corrective action. They have the authority and resources.
Jim:
Since we agree the new president – and to a much lesser degree the Board of Trustees – have the authority and the resources to figure out what is wrong and how it needs to be corrected, I will await their actions to resolve this. At the moment the only person to have been “punished” in some way is ex-President Wolfe and I am willing to wager that he is not the one confronting the student government leader with racial epithets nor is he the “fecal artist”. These new folks with their authority and resources need to add to the list of “those punished”.