Editorial: Mizzou football team right to reject ‘sorry’ university inaction

A swastika drawn with human feces on a Missouri University dorm wall is a loud and clear message of heinous bigotry. 

This hate act warrants a swift response of zero tolerance and outrage, not the vague acceptance Timothy Wolfe, the University of Missouri president, gave the campus. Rightfully, the students are outraged. 

On Saturday, the Legion of Black Collegians, the black student government, posted a photograph to Twitter of more than 30 black football players linking arms with Jonathan Butler, a graduate student staging a hunger strike in protest of the racial discrimination running rampant on their campus.

An accompanying message described the football players’ refusal to participate in any football related activities until Wolfe resigned or the university removed him over his negligence of marginalized students’ experiences. 

Wolfe said in a statement on Thursday, “Racism does exist at our university and it is unacceptable.”

“It is a long-standing, systemic problem which daily affects our family of students, faculty and staff. I am sorry this is the case. I truly want all members of our university community to feel included, valued and safe.”

But “sorry” is not enough. It is one thing to want an inclusive campus, it is another to boldly fight for it. The Missouri football players’ reaction sets a precedent for how universities should handle racial discourse.

The football players were not targeted or involved in the racial conflict on the University of Missouri campus, but that doesn’t matter. As a part of the university’s community, the pain felt by several students on their campus is pain felt by all.

“The athletes of color on the University of Missouri football team truly believe ‘injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere’,” accompanied the photograph tweeted by the Legion of Black Collegians.

The football players, with the support of their coaches, speak from a position of power and influence for all marginalized students. Given their playing goals and the scholarships they wield, they take a phenomenal but worthwhile risk by refusing to play and protesting the administration.

Race relations at the University of Missouri have long been strained. According to a 2006 Survey of the Racial Climate at the University of Missouri’s Kansas City campus, 58.4 percent of African American students and 25.5 percent of non-African American students strongly disagreed, or disagreed that the campus was free from racial conflict.

Prior to the scrawled swastika, students had thrown cotton balls around Mizzou’s Black Culture Center, abused Payton Head, the Missouri Students Association president and an African American, as he walked home and shouted racial slurs at members of the Legion of Black Collegians rehearsing for a play in a campus plaza. Clearly, a critical response was long overdue.

By linking racial discourse to sports, the players broaden the conversation to a community that does not simply consist of students of the university, but also the fan base and national audience behind University of Missouri sports.

On Monday, the football players will discuss their boycott. We encourage you to listen and consider the severity of their message and the need for response. Like these players, we must all reject the public relations-friendly, passive acceptance of ingrained problems. Someone drew a swastika with excrement.

The student body needs to hear the administration institute a zero tolerance policy, not tell them they are “sorry.”