The Chris Moeller Archives

A story of Tigers and a Wolfe

The University of Missouri should be deeply proud of its football team. Only a year ago, it was disclosed that Southeastern Conference co-defensive player of the year Michael Sam was “out” to his teammates throughout his senior year, and his homosexuality had been widely accepted by the team throughout. Now the Missouri Tigers are standing behind their African-American players-- and all African-Americans that attend school on the Columbia, Missouri campus-- enacting extraordinary change while they're at it.

Thirty-two African-American players Tweeted a message and photo this weekend calling on the university’s president, Tim Wolfe, to resign. The campus has been scarred this year by repeated incidents of racial taunting and intimidation, the most recent example of which was the discovery of a Swastika scrawled on a dormitory bathroom with human excrement. Activists on campus believe the school’s administration has had an insufficient response to the incidents. The team’s white football players and its coaching staff were pictured in a follow-up Tweet yesterday, adding their collective voice of support for African-American students and for their teammates. Today, the president did resign, effective immediately, along with the chancellor.

The University of Missouri at Columbia has a rather sordid history of racial intolerance, one I was not fully aware of until reading the recent news reports. (Score one for the Tigers players also in bringing about this widespread enlightenment). What I already knew is that UM, the oldest public university west of the Mississippi, did not admit its first black student until 1950. To contrast that, the first black student (George Washington Carver) at my alma mater, Iowa State-- a similarly-sized university in an adjoining state-- was enrolled in 1891. When Iowa State fielded its first black football player, Jack Trice, in 1923, the president of Missouri at that time wrote a letter to Iowa State’s president declaring that Trice would not be allowed on the field in Columbia. (The collision of ideals never came to pass as Trice died from injuries sustained on the field during his first game at the University of Minnesota.)

This is a truly revolutionary act by these athletes. They used their collective weight to great effect as the highest-profile students on campus. By refusing to suit up for practice and, potentially, for a major football game on Saturday against Bowl-bound Brigham Young (7-2), they put the school at risk to lose millions of dollars. NCAA football and basketball players quite famously provide the labor for a multi-billion dollar industry for which they get paid nothing. These men showed great courage, nevertheless, by jeopardizing their athletic scholarships for the good of their fellow students. They made it clear that they wanted the president dismissed not only over the issue of safety and acceptance for minority students on campus, but over other volatile issues there such as Wolfe's proposed cut in health benefits for graduate students.

What we’re seeing in Columbia is a reaction to a decision made in 2011 by the state's board of curators to appoint as university president a man with no experience in teaching or even in the field of educational administration. Wolfe was brought in "from the private sector" with the purpose of guiding the school through a difficult period of limited state funding-- read: his job to slash programs and salaries so taxes could stay low. When he signed on, Wolfe announced point-blank that he "would run the university like a tech company." The same thing is now being attempted at the University of Iowa thanks to a Republican governor in the state that came back to office in 2011 after 12 years removed from a previous tenure, returning as a paid henchman for the Koch Brothers political cult. At the U of I this fall, faculty and students have risen up in defiance of this blind decision by the chief executive and the state's board of regents. The two schools are at different points in their narratives, but have each been thrown into almost full-scale revolt at the campus level. There could have been no action by the football team in Missouri if there wasn't broad support behind them precipitated by campus activists. The two entities then feed each other.

President Wolfe was deaf to their demands. During Homecoming weekend earlier in the semester, his car had been confronted by protesters. His driver swiped past two of them, and Wolfe refused to intervene when university police used violence later against activists. A university spokesperson had announced last month that the school’s new initiative on campus tolerance wouldn’t be released until April, nearly half a year into the future, well after the Tigers' football season, and even the basketball season, had concluded. When asked about the concept of "systematic oppression," Wolfe described it as "when you don't believe (my italics) that you have the equal opportunity for success," suggesting that it was all in the protesters' heads.

Protest is what it’s going to take to get white America to take the concerns of black America seriously, on college campuses and off. Striking out at someone's pocketbook is a tried and true method also. We’re certainly beginning an unprecedented new era of college athletes standing up publicly for their principles and realizing, at long last, the extraordinary power they possess. The mindset of the plantation cannot hold.

Wolfe's resignation came about in lightning fashion. The possibilities are endless now that we know how quickly social change can take place when college athletes threaten not to play. (What's next? Fully-funded schools? Reasonable tuition? Opening the prisons? Just some minor suggestions.) Athletes and activists on college campuses do not exist on separate plains, despite the two separate social realities that get perpetuated by the schools. The failure of these institutions to compensate the athletes appropriately for their outsized financial contribution to the schools has left the athletes in the position, collectively, of having nothing more to lose. It often takes a while to manifest, but exploitation will inevitably lead to insurrection. Power to the people… power to the Tigers.

posted by CM @ 7:20 PM