The most powerful force of social justice at the University of Missouri over the last few years has arisen from an unlikely source; it’s intercollegiate football team. While many student groups and organizations has taken up one cause or another, as college students are wont to do, the Missouri Tigers football team have leveraged their popularity to advance causes of justice on a national scale.
On Saturday evening, several black student-athletes from the Mizzou football program announced via social media that they were joining in a campus protest centered on a young graduate student staging a hunger strike until the university system president was removed. Jonathon Butler has been on his hunger strike for five days. Butler says he came home to his dorm on October 24th to find “someone used their own feces to smear a swastika on a communal bathroom wall in a brand new residence hall.” He says he has not gotten a satisfactory response from the school’s administration and thus took this action. Saturday night, he gained the support of the school’s most visible students; the Tigers’ football team. These players weren’t merely voicing their moral support of the cause; they vowed to not participate in any football related activities until the system president was removed.
Mizzou Football Again Social Warriors
Earlier today head coach Gary Pinkel sent out a team photo and message on Twitter:
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
The reaction to this group action shot across social media outlets at warp speed. Deadspin immediately picked up the story and ESPN soon followed. Sitting at a paltry 4-5 this season, the football team drew far more national attention than they had for anything they’d one on the field. And this wasn’t the first time.
On February 9, 2014 Mizzou defensive end Michael Sam in a joint interview with ESPN, the New York Times, and Outsports, came out as gay. In his interview, he reported that he had come out to his Missouri teammates in August 2013, just prior to their first SEC East title and Cotton Bowl Championship run. Over the course of season, no one on the 100-plus man roster betrayed Sam’s confidence and embraced him as a talented and dedicated team leader. Missouri enjoyed a shining moment as a beacon of inclusion in a sport known more for archaic views on sexuality.
Since that time, a different type of battle for inclusion has been taking place on the Missouri campus. An atmosphere of racial tension has been festering on campus. Below is an abbreviated timeline of events…
• Ongoing incidents of racial slurs targeting black students both in person and via social media were reported to campus administrators.
• 9/12/15 – After experiencing a personal attack for being both black and gay, and upset about the lack of campus action to alleviate similar incidents, Missouri student-body president Payton Head posted a response on Facebook about the lack of inclusion on Mizzou’s campus. The post is picked up by the local newspaper.
• 9/16/15 – The Washington Post picks up the Payton Head story and takes the story national. Protests begin to emerge on campus.
• 9/24/15 – Pressure mounts on Mizzou Chancellor Bowen Loftin for his perceived lack of response to racist incidents. The hashtag #Loftincantexplain begins to trend on Twitter.
• 9/7/15 – A campus statue of Thomas Jefferson is covered in Post-it notes reading “racist”, “rapist”, and “hypocrite”.
• 10/8/15 – Chancellor Loftin institutes mandatory diversity training for faculty/staff/students beginning January 2016, and creates the position of Vice Chancellor for Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity.
• 10/10/15 – Student protesters dubbing themselves “Concerned Student 1950” a reference to the year Mizzou was integrated, stop the Mizzou homecoming parade in front of University system president Tim Wolfe. Police usher the protesters out of the street and Wolfe does not engage with students.
• 10/24/15 – A swastika is drawn in human feces in a campus residence hall bathroom.
• 11/2/15 – Graduate student Jonathan Butler begins a hunger strike which he vows to end only when President Wolfe is removed or when he dies.
• 11/7/15 – Members of the Mizzou Football team post a photograph standing alongside Butler vowing not to play football until his demands are met.
The actions of the football players did something that even a desperate student threatening his own life for his cause couldn’t do. They brought national attention to their plight on a previously unimaginable scale.
The conversation about issues of race is raging around Columbia, Missouri and certainly not everyone agrees with the actions of the student-protesters but once again the focal point about serious systematic injustices is the University of Missouri, and once again the catalyst is the football team.
Student-athletes have a great deal of demand on their time. Scholastic requirements, physical toll, million-dollar salaries at stake, and being constantly in the public’s eye is a lot to ask of any college student. Even if one doesn’t agree with their actions, you would have to be incredibly callous to discount the courage it takes to risk your athletic future, scholarships, and reputation, to make a stand for a cause you believe in. Most professional athletes shy away from taking a social stand that might controversy. Unpaid college student-athletes will very likely have a very short time in the spotlight, and thus their power to effect change, is fleeting, For them to act so decisively with so much at risk, should give all of us hope for their generation.
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