An Eventful Few Days in Columbia, Missouri
[guest post by JVW]
On Saturday’s college football thread we have been discussing the interesting situation at the University of Missouri involving student protesters, the football team, and upper-administration. For a brief recap, after a series of alleged racial incidents on campus, an activist group called Concerned Students 1950 (named for the year that Mizzou first admitted black undergraduate students) demanded the resignation of the university president along with other measures to combat what they see as an intolerable racial climate. Earlier today, that president, Tim Wolfe, and the university chancellor, R. Bowen Loftin [corrected spelling: thanks Diffus], both resigned from their positions.
The football team had become involved when players with ties to Concerned Students 1950 convinced somewhere between 30 and 35 players to boycott the rest of the season, effective immediately. They were ultimately joined in the boycott by the coaching staff, which probably signaled to the administration that the battle was lost. The involvement of the team, a mostly-successful program in the most competitive college football conference in the nation, almost certainly brought increased media coverage and aided the protesters immeasurably, though cynics point out that the Tigers (current record of four wins and five losses) probably wouldn’t be considering a boycott if there were 9-0 or even 8-1.
This afternoon, Concerned Students 1950 and its allies gathered on a campus lawn to demonstrate, which they immediately declared to be a “safe space” where media were not welcome, despite the fact that they were gathering on public property. In a rather remarkable (and not in a good way) video, students and faculty members, including Assistant Professor of Mass Media Melissa Click, attempt to bully student reporters from covering the gathering:
Twitchy has a round-up of reactions to the irony of a school with a prestigious journalism department blocking student journalists from exercising their First Amendment rights. In a positive development, a Mizzou journalism professor, Katherine Reed, has publicly shamed her colleague, though it’s hard to imagine a feckless administration treating this with anything other than the mildest of rebukes.
Meanwhile, Concerned Students 1950 issued the usual puerile list of demands, including mandatory diversity training for student and staff designed and implemented by their organization, a doubling of black faculty members, and the usual laundry list of impractical demands from grievance groups. The new interim chancellor has already pledged to hire a chief diversity officer for the university (you’re paying for it, Missouri taxpayers!), so no doubt further caving by cowed academic bureaucrats is in the tea leaves.
It’s easy to criticize and blame the students for their adolescent whining and grievance-mongering, but like college students throughout history they are content to get away with exactly what they are allowed to get away with. The interesting question will be whether the governor and legislature are willing to step in and restore a sense of sanity, but given today’s press release from Governor Jay Nixon, a Democrat, it is pretty unlikely. One is left to wonder if some aspiring Missouri politician might take a page from the Ronald Reagan playbook and campaign against “that mess in Columbia.” If so, I would imagine there could be a very receptive audience in the Show-Me State.
– JVW
Between this and what Dana is reporting from Yale, it’s been quite a week in higher education hasn’t it?
JVW (15cb71) — 11/9/2015 @ 8:15 pmthe reference to hayakawa, reminded me of this,
http://libertyunyielding.com/2015/11/09/missouri-malcontents-the-presidents-what-reagan-would-do-and-what-the-taxpayer-should-do/
narciso (ee1f88) — 11/9/2015 @ 8:23 pmRepeating my comment from the other thread
Listening to NPR on the way home, the temper tantrums there [at UMo] seem to be more rational than might appear at first sight. The racism seems to have been a handy excuse to stage a coup against Wolfe, who has generated substantial discontent among everyone there with a messed up austerity budget that raised tuition, downgraded student health care, and did away with the university press, but (this is the messed up part) managed to include plans for a substantial ($2 or 3 million) renovation/expansion of the football stadium.
Or at least, if the football players were throwing a tantrum, that is why everyone ekse there was happy to throw Wolfe to the wolves.
kishnevi (28fa9f) — 11/9/2015 @ 8:34 pmI remain fascinated by surveys that have shown after major acts of terrorism in the name of Allah, in the name of jihad, in Europe, that a fairly large majority of people in that part of the world became more sympathetic towards Islam and Islamism. Perhaps a variation of Stockholm Syndrome?
I observe the endless examples of the lunacy of liberalism — which is intertwined with political correctness going off the deep end — and continue to wait for a good portion of this society to wake up and get a clue. But if liberalism is sort of like a contagious mental illness, then it’s a disease that keeps on spreading. If the Islamfascists are aware of this peculiar dynamic, they deserve to be laughing their butts off at us and seeing images of the proverbial sitting duck.
Mark (f713e4) — 11/9/2015 @ 8:37 pmNeed to correct a name spelling: R. Bowen Loftin.
Diffus (4a5ca6) — 11/9/2015 @ 8:37 pmbut (this is the messed up part) managed to include plans for a substantial ($2 or 3 million) renovation/expansion of the football stadium.
That’s when the football players and coaching staff took his measure and the measure of their support from the football backers.
nk (dbc370) — 11/9/2015 @ 8:38 pmthat is an interesting insight, kish, why did they not use those grievances, instead of these other figments,
narciso (ee1f88) — 11/9/2015 @ 8:40 pmButler, the fasting grad student, in fact said the heslth care business was his original grievance. I think it possible the SJWs were throwing a tantrum, and Wolfe had alienated so many people that no one was willing to defend him.
At the least, it provided a handy excuse to force Wolfe out.
kishnevi (28fa9f) — 11/9/2015 @ 8:55 pmnk@6
kishnevi (28fa9f) — 11/9/2015 @ 8:57 pmNPR phrased it differently, but the report there pretty much agreed with your assessment.
The videos tell a story, young fascists on the march. Enjoy the fruits of your labor, leftwing douchebag academia…
https://t.co/kTG0dIuK3p
Colonel Haiku (7dcbff) — 11/9/2015 @ 9:07 pmLet me disagree with you a bit, kishnevi. Now that Mizzou is a member of the SEC, the revenue from football and basketball is pouring in. Unlike the way the Democrats have cheapened the word by making it code for “hog wild spending,” spending $3 million to upgrade the football stadium truly is an investment which will pay dividends down the road. Academics (leftwing ones, of course, as if there were other types) always grouse about money being spent on athletics, but I kind of doubt that the English Department is bringing in $31 million. Nobody complains when the Chemistry Department lands a major grant and uses it to build new labs, so why should football revenue going to improve the football program be any different?
JVW (15cb71) — 11/9/2015 @ 9:10 pmGreat video! I like the part at the end when the new lady comes in and yells that she needs some “muscle” to get the reporter out of there.
Why are the protesters so afraid of reporters? Aren’t they all on the same side?
AZ Bob (34bb80) — 11/9/2015 @ 10:45 pmThat lady has been identified as a journalism professor. Now I am really confused.
AZ Bob (34bb80) — 11/9/2015 @ 10:51 pm“Hey, who wants to help me get this reporter out of here,” the media professor then hysterically exclaimed to the assembled mob. “I need some muscle over here!”
That is classic.
AZ Bob (34bb80) — 11/9/2015 @ 10:53 pmBut what does she teach? Here is the university website description:
“Her research interests center on popular culture texts and audiences, particularly texts and audiences disdained in mainstream culture. Her work in this area is guided by audience studies, theories of gender and sexuality, and media literacy. Current research projects involve 50 Shades of Grey readers, the impact of social media in fans’ relationship with Lady Gaga, masculinity and male fans, messages about class and food in reality television programming, and messages about work in children’s television programs.”
AZ Bob (34bb80) — 11/9/2015 @ 10:57 pmSchadenfreude!
AZ Bob (34bb80) — 11/9/2015 @ 10:58 pmI saw a blog post somewhere earlier tonight where some bigwig in the journalism department is pretty mad at this Click woman for her actions. Seeing as how she is listed as an “assistant professor” — meaning she has not yet received tenure — I wouldn’t bet the house on her tenure review going very well. I’m guessing that the university parts ways with her post haste. This is apparently her seventh year in the department, so her tenure application would probably have been wrapped up this year. Whoops, bad timing!
JVW (15cb71) — 11/9/2015 @ 11:02 pmHe should have kept it this way.
He sounded like some whiny mangina when he started taking about feeling unsafe due to nonviolent actions by private individuals.
Michael Ejercito (d74b61) — 11/9/2015 @ 11:03 pmHere are the undergrad courses she regularly teaches:
The Fall Television Schedule (HONORS 1030H)
Contemporary Issues in Mass Communication (COMM 3636)
Television Criticism (COMM 4618)
Visual Literacy (COMM 4975)
Forgive me if I express the fact that based upon course titles alone I am rather unimpressed with the intellectual rigor of the Mizzou Communications Department.
JVW (15cb71) — 11/9/2015 @ 11:09 pmHe sounded like some whiny mangina when he started taking about feeling unsafe due to nonviolent actions by private individuals.
Even though they have mostly been the subject of fawning media coverage, I think these students are starting to correctly sense a backlash to their heavy-handed actions, and so they will want to change the subject so that it is less about their feelings and desire for safe spaces, and more about everyday issues like health care costs, lack of resources, and few minority role models on the faculty.
JVW (15cb71) — 11/9/2015 @ 11:12 pmThis is the guy who publicly criticized Ms. Click. I guess he isn’t really a bigwig, just an associate professor (though with tenure — a key distinction). Here’s the woman who shamed Ms. Click on Twitter. Again, an associate professor with tenure. I still think Ms. Click is in some serious trouble and shouldn’t count on the tenure review going very well.
JVW (15cb71) — 11/9/2015 @ 11:21 pmHard to believe there is a fall television schedule anymore, much less the need to study it.
papertiger (c2d6da) — 11/9/2015 @ 11:26 pmWith 300 or so stations new programming comes and goes at whim, without regard for a season.
Something is in the air. It really is. Evil is more and more willing to have its absurdities exposed in the brightest light. This time, it went at the absolute heart and core of “JOURNALISM.” I have yet to see a defense by ANY MS types of the fascist communications prof who asked for “muscle” to be used against the student photo journalist. Another corner has been turned, y’all. The shame and embarrassment by the J-School alums is real. The brown shirts could not have picked a worse victim to advance their cause.
Generally, the overwhelming majority of “the folks” see what is happening as the wackos are taking over the asylums. They see that the circle is becoming complete, back to tyrannical totalitarianism. They are finally recognizing that the Statist Left’s tactics are insincere – they care only for results – their tantrums MUST be not just tolerated, but venerated!
Not anymore.
Something is in the air.
Ed from SFV (3400a5) — 11/9/2015 @ 11:36 pmapologies…”by any MSM types.”
Ed from SFV (3400a5) — 11/9/2015 @ 11:37 pmThat video was very… educational.
Brad (4f896f) — 11/10/2015 @ 12:02 amTo me the bigger problem is what is going to happen to them in the real world.
seeRpea (074922) — 11/10/2015 @ 1:54 amLookout fellow Pontificators.
mg (31009b) — 11/10/2015 @ 2:10 amhttp://www.liveleak.com/view?i=8ce_1447076932
multi culture is not for me.
mg (31009b) — 11/10/2015 @ 2:15 amhttp://theconservativetreehouse.com/2011/05/14/in-honor-of-french-reader-understanding-the-rivkin-project/
I will go down swinging like Marvelous Marvin Hagler, unlike the sissy europeons.
mg (31009b) — 11/10/2015 @ 2:30 amwell an interesting artefact, but it doesn’t discuss France’s influence in Western Africa, or the Middle East, Gaullists are more likely to be nationalists then the Socialists, but they are as likely to be Arabists, Sarkozy was the exception,
narciso (ee1f88) — 11/10/2015 @ 2:33 amhttp://overpassesforamerica.com/?p=19007
mg (31009b) — 11/10/2015 @ 2:37 amAmerican leaders have let the people down courting bags of filth like soros.
Yes, europEONS
mg (31009b) — 11/10/2015 @ 2:39 amunemployable mizzou trash is trashy
and unemployable
happyfeet (831175) — 11/10/2015 @ 2:48 amSide geek note: I am quite pleased with my new Toshiba Chromebook, done with Bill Gates for $300, looking like I’m sporting a $1500 MacBook.
I vote Boomers the “Worstest Generation”, not so much cause we pissed away America’s fortune but we left these hapless Orcs as our legacy.
DNF (ffe548) — 11/10/2015 @ 3:26 am27. All is not well, in fact, all is totally hosed.
DNF (755a85) — 11/10/2015 @ 3:32 amHF what the unemployable do in that case is target the functional parts of society.
papertiger (c2d6da) — 11/10/2015 @ 3:40 amYou think any of these girls would scruple from false accusations of sexual harassment?
There has to be a way to pin this on Bill Cosby.
papertiger (c2d6da) — 11/10/2015 @ 3:44 amthis is the senator what represents the mizzou trash in washington Mr. tiger:
Claire McCaskill Pushes False Rape Story About Donald Trump
happyfeet (831175) — 11/10/2015 @ 3:46 amThe strange thing is, I’m not that smart. They are just consistently that evil.
papertiger (c2d6da) — 11/10/2015 @ 3:50 amclaire bear, is a remind the ‘show me state’ has been falling down on the job,
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/academia-saul-bellow-dangling-man/
this dystopia, was seen briefly in the rantings of jericho x, a cutrate precursor of the somelives matter movement in ‘strange days’ of course it was set in a Boschian LA,
narciso (ee1f88) — 11/10/2015 @ 3:52 amapologies for getting the deranged demagogue’s name wrong,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWE28EyE4hA
narciso (ee1f88) — 11/10/2015 @ 3:56 amAcademia’s chickens have come home to roost.
Stephen Macklin (2ed585) — 11/10/2015 @ 3:58 amYou think any of these girls would scruple from false accusations of sexual harassment?
What girls? Are the cheerleaders on strike, too? Do you think any of those football players would scruple from a little date rape knowing that the coaches and fans will have their backs? See e.g. http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/ncaab/2014/08/18/patrick-swilling-tulsa-sexual-assault-lawsuit-title-ix/14104075/
nk (dbc370) — 11/10/2015 @ 3:59 amthe cray cray is strong in them,
http://www.bustle.com/articles/122583-the-mizzou-student-activists-behind-the-protests-that-overhauled-the-university-administration
narciso (ee1f88) — 11/10/2015 @ 4:01 ami think a small number of the mizzou trash football thugs *might* forego a little date rape if they were sober at the time the opportunity presented itself
happyfeet (831175) — 11/10/2015 @ 4:02 amseriously is that any more demented then mckisson, well not much more,
narciso (ee1f88) — 11/10/2015 @ 4:26 amDoes anyone here seriously doubt that the alleged racist incidents are not as they appear to be? No one gave a darn about the SJW whining about free healthcare till he and others decided that “racism” was the real boogeyman. Then they got the football players to jump on the wagon and the moronic media to give them angelic coverage while not mentioning how absurd their claims were.
I hope the school (and any other like it) collapses under its own stupidity.
Let the SJW rot destroy them all.
NJRob (a07d2e) — 11/10/2015 @ 7:03 amAfter Ferguson teen Michael Brown was shot by a police officer in August 2014, black students protesting the incident claimed the hostility against them became even worse.
If they think that hostility was bad, wait until they see what this brings.
Mike K (90dfdc) — 11/10/2015 @ 7:09 amNumber 47,
Do you suspect as I do, that the fasting grad student had something to do with the poo-created swastika? These “racist incidents are usually hoaxes anyway. Why does anyone take these idiotic claims at face value?
DN (84d11d) — 11/10/2015 @ 7:14 amWhat girls? Are the cheerleaders on strike, too?
I’m talking about the Stepford Wives in the video, pushing the award winning journalism student off the grounds of the award winning journalism school.
WTF are they teaching these little
snowflakes, the future CNN spokesholes of America, instead of the 1st amendment?See the girl at the 25 second mark looking directly into the camera. She looks like one of those deadites from the Evil Dead series. I’d have dropped the camera and pulled out the chainsaw right at that point.
Would have pled self defense at the trial.
papertiger (c2d6da) — 11/10/2015 @ 7:33 amR.I.P. Allen Toussaint, legendary New Orleans-based musician & songwriter
Icy (5b33f5) — 11/10/2015 @ 7:34 amMr Tiger wrote:
Well, maybe, but I figure it’s all George Bush’s fault.
The snarky Dana (f6a568) — 11/10/2015 @ 7:44 amMissouri – 6 million people – 5 last names Is that hurtful?
Phaedrus CJ (c94714) — 11/10/2015 @ 10:30 am1950 Mizzou integrates. That puts it ahead of the curve. Puts it ahead of the Democratic party.
Puts it ahead of Thurgood Marshall and judicial arm twisting. Puts it ahead of Rosa Parks and MLK
Another claim which doesn’t pan out, that Mizzou was built with slave labor. Not possible. The whole school was gutted by fire in 1892, the only surviving bits being six marble columns that are retained as a sentimental sort of decoration for the new buildings.
Before that there was only one building, Academic Hall, burnt to a crisp in what must have been one of the earliest electrical fires.
So just about every other thing these future journalists of America said turns out to be bullsheet.
papertiger (c2d6da) — 11/10/2015 @ 12:49 pmSeems even though I know the media is not to be trusted, i do not remember it enough.
I’ve read elsewhere now that there are many players and asst. coaches on the football team black and white who are not in agreement and are pretty upset about the nonsense.
Maybe there will be a boycott of the boycott.
MD in Philly (not in Philly at the moment) (deca84) — 11/10/2015 @ 12:51 pmI really hope my daughter wants to go to Hillside, and that it hasn’t become so elite by then that she can still get in. The number of schools that still value true intellectual honesty are very few these days.
Though I guess one can look for schools where there are individual professors and their colleagues that are outstanding. I don’t know how many classes one could take from Robbie George as an undergrad at Princeton or Sowell at Stanford, for example.
MD in Philly (not in Philly at the moment) (deca84) — 11/10/2015 @ 12:55 pmHillsdale, sorry
MD in Philly (not in Philly at the moment) (deca84) — 11/10/2015 @ 12:56 pmyes, I do recall that
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2015/11/breaking-mizzou-journalism-faculty-vote-to-revoke-appointment-of-activist-professor-melissa-click/
properly understood she isn’t a professor, but a political officer or commissar,
narciso (ee1f88) — 11/10/2015 @ 12:56 pmThe interesting thing would be the strategy of opposing NCAA teams. All you need do is hire a heckler to apply foul language to chalk up a “W” against Mizzou
papertiger (c2d6da) — 11/10/2015 @ 12:56 pmOver at PowerLine there are many good links on the top of the page about the new intolerant tolerance and such.
MD in Philly (not in Philly at the moment) (deca84) — 11/10/2015 @ 1:00 pmthe committee on public safety, the cheka, and all it’s successors, the bloc committees, all servings of the same icecream.
narciso (ee1f88) — 11/10/2015 @ 1:05 pmWe’re ratcheting ever downward. I watched university administrations cower before the grandparents of these fools in the 60’s. The smell of tear gas in the campus center at MIT wafting down Massachusetts Avenue from riots some distance away was remarkably memorable. And MIT couldn’t wait to show that they could surrender too, by preemptively distancing the campus from the Draper Labs. No recognition that MIT had been a backwater prior to WWII, and the prominence the school enjoyed in the 60’s was largely due to the contribution of Norbert Weiner, Doc Draper, and other electrical engineers who gave the allies radar devices that were far superior to those employed by the Axis powers.
So the schools began abandoning their moral authority in the ’60s. They hired the rioters as faculty once they were released from jail, or returned from Canada, in the ’70s. The ’80s saw the universities as the “intellectual” center of the movement that preferred the Soviet Union to the U. S. under a Reagan administration. Further, as these new faculty achieved tenure, their increasingly strident demands were punctuated by resistance to virtually every initiative undertaken by Reagan. They were proven wrong on every single issue, but that didn’t matter.
Now these grizzly old fascists are in the ranks of the “emeritus” faculty, and their protégés have to earn their spurs by taking these failing institutions down another rung. But the universities slid downward in the intervening decades, so this next step downward brings them ever closer to oblivion. Which is to be encouraged as it would spare the next generation the expense and waste of time and energy attendant to pursuing degrees in “Communications”, “Gender Studies”, “Sociology”, “History” of the deconstructed sort, “Education”, etc.
BobStewartatHome (a52abe) — 11/10/2015 @ 1:55 pm“…a doubling of black faculty members”
Affirmative action students taught by affirmative action faculty. Now, there’s a waste of good time and money.
Jim (a9b7c7) — 11/10/2015 @ 1:58 pmAllen Toussaint… that’s a big loss, Icy.
One of his best songs, imho…
http://youtu.be/PE5Ve0y0m1Y
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 11/10/2015 @ 5:18 pmTurns out Click isn’t an Asst Prof in the Journo School , she is in the Arts and Sciences School.
(makes me wonder – who puts Arts and Sciences in the same college? They are totally different disciplines, or at least should be).
seeRpea (074922) — 11/10/2015 @ 5:50 pmWho was the “adult” blonde woman with sunglasses who pushed her way up front and began pushing the student journalist back with her body? It wasn’t Ms. Click. Does anyone know who she was? She should get some heat too as she was a bully. She was too old to be the typical naïve & foolish student.
K9Ranger (e41843) — 11/10/2015 @ 8:13 pmIf anyone cares, I found an article indicating she is Janna Basler, Assistant Director of Greek Life at the University of Missouri.
K9Ranger (e41843) — 11/11/2015 @ 6:55 am54. papertiger (c2d6da) — 11/10/2015 @ 12:49 pm
1950 Mizzou integrates. That puts it ahead of the curve.
Missouri was a border state that remained in the Union. Places like Iowa and Illinois and wisconsin “integrated” sooner.
Missouri should have been ahead of the curve.
So just about every other thing these future journalists of America said turns out to be bullsheet.
Probably including all the recent racial incidents that were the basis for the compalints of inaction.
Why should they happen? Is there some kind of a reason there should have been an outbreal of that, now?
I haven’t heard them described (although I wasn’t looking)
They could be as phony as the University of Virginia rape hoax, or most or all of the noose incidents.
Sammy Finkelman (3a0a59) — 11/11/2015 @ 7:28 amThanks K9.
njrob (1a47f7) — 11/11/2015 @ 3:57 pm