The black students at the University of Missouri were fed up with the university's President Tim Wolfe. There had been several racial incidents at the school and many black students, led by the organization called Concerned Students 1950, felt like Wolfe had not adequately responded, and so they demanded his resignation.
Everything changed when Jonathan Butler, a graduate student, said he would go on a hunger strike until Tim Wolfe resigned. A couple of days after Butler started his hunger strike, The Missouri University football team made the announcement that they would not play any more games until Wolfe resigned from his post as president. Wolfe would leave his post a couple of days later under intense pressure from the university. This pressure came from the possible effects of the football team forfeiting any of their upcoming games; the university would have been fined $1 million for every game that they missed. The Missouri athletic program could not have sustained losing a million dollars per week for the remaining weeks of the season.
After Wolfe resigned, I was overjoyed at how the black football players used their talents as a bargaining chip to get their demands met. But my jubilation over this victory for the black community at Missouri was immediately dampened by the response of many from the white student body. Many students used the anonymous messaging app Yik Yak to complain about how the black students, including the football players, had forced a good man to resign; they continued to complain that the black students hadn’t truly changed anything and only made the school worse. Some, like Michael Berry, host of a radio show in Texas, said the players should just shut up and play football and not worry about the racial climate at the school.
This, to me, is the underlying problem with many division one schools. These schools recruit black players and use them to make millions for their athletic programs and schools, but often don’t seem to worry about those black players as people. These universities cheer for the black players when they’re helping their schools to win championships and set records, but when the average black student at schools like Missouri needs the school, they are often left high and dry because they do not provide any benefit for the school. This is why it’s ridiculous to me when people tell the Missouri football team that they should just play and not worry about what’s happening to the black people at Missouri. The truth is that black athletes at Predominantly White Institutions (PWIs) should be the most vigilant when it comes to social issues, because the vast sums of money they bring into the school give them the power to affect school-wide policy and instigate change if necessary. The athletes are not just often the most powerful students of color, but more often than not, they are the only students with real power at a PWI. So, until students of color can gain the same amount of influence as athletes of color, athletes cannot be told to just shut up and play. We should be imploring them to speak as loudly as they can.
