University of Missouri president Tim Wolfe has resigned from his position after numerous protests against him and the school had sprung up as a result of racial tensions at the university. There had been a number of incidences of slurs being thrown around and racially-based insults being slung at the black student body by the rest of the students. The university has an overwhelmingly majority white student body, one that did not experience much in the way of punishment or blowback from their actions.
The students rallied around the #ConcernedStudent1950 hashtag on Twitter, and the football team announced its intentions to join the protest via coach Gary Pinkel’s official, verified account.
The Mizzou Family stands as one. We are united. We are behind our players. #ConcernedStudent1950 GP pic.twitter.com/fMHbPPTTKl
— Coach Gary Pinkel (@GaryPinkel) November 8, 2015
Over the weekend, 30 black members of the university’s football team announced that they would be staging a walkout and boycott of football practices unless Wolfe stepped down. This was apparently the straw that broke the camel’s back, as the team had joined the protest on Saturday, staged a sit-in on Sunday, and now, by Monday, the president ended up resigning.
Wolfe addressed the student body, saying:
I take full responsibility for the actions that have occurred. I have asked everybody to use my resignation to heal. Let’s focus in changing what we can change today and in the future, not what we can’t change in the past.
Obviously it’s too early to tell whether things will change at the school, but one thing is for certain: with new leadership comes new policy, and seriously, one shouldn’t mess with college football (apparently).
(via ESPN, image via Flickr/CAFNR)
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