Chapter 15: Neighbors, Allies, and Partners in Inclusion: An HBCU and an SEC Land Grant Institution

Academic institutions tend to be large, hierarchical behemoths in which change sometimes occurs excruciatingly slowly. It often takes a crisis or a seismic event to affect a quick response in an academic setting. Such a seismic event occurred at the end of 2015 at the University of Missouri, when a graduate student, Jonathan Butler, stopped eating, demanding that the president of the university system, Tim Wolfe, step down because he and other school leaders had failed to act in dealing with racism on the overwhelmingly white Columbia campus. University leaders at Missouri were seemingly unmoved by an individual student’s hunger strike, but when several campus organizations including the football team joined Butler in protest and threatened not to play in an upcoming game, the behemoth moved quickly.