October 13, 2016May 13, 2020Leave a comment

MU graduation gap between black, white students rooted in money, academics and climate

Columbia Missourian | 12 May 2016

COLUMBIA — Of the 5,702 full-time MU freshman who stepped onto Columbia’s campus in August 2008, fewer than half — 46 percent, according to a database from MU — graduated within four years.

Nationally, this is not unusual. Students transfer or drop out. They change majors once, twice or three times. They have double majors that take more time.

The six-year graduation rate is a better indicator of how many undergraduates complete their bachelor’s degrees: 69 percent graduate within six years, as reported by Common Data Set released by MU.

But when that number is broken down by race, it gets complicated. The six-year graduation rate for white students is 71 percent. For black students, that number drops to 57 percent — a difference of 14 points, according to numbers from the National Center for Education Statistics for the entering class of 2008.

This graduation gap is evident not only at MU. It’s a national issue, one with complex causes including not having enough money to pay for college, not enough peer and faculty support and a sense that they don’t belong.

First-generation students

One of the main reasons for the gap at MU is lack of financial resources, according to Donell Young, director of Academic Retention Services.

It’s true that nationally, African Americans are disproportionately affected by poverty. The 2014 poverty rate for black Americans was 26.2 percent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Only 10.1 percent of white Americans lived under the poverty line that year, or an income of $24,230 for a family of four.

Not only that, but 49 percent of black students were first-generation college students in 2007-08, according to a report from the Institute of Higher Education Policy.

Loans and scholarships are available, but navigating the related paperwork — especially when the student is the first person in the family to go to college — can be a roadblock.

Ronecia Duke came to MU from her hometown of Springfield as a freshman in August 2009. After a yearlong break to be with her family when her grandmother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease then switching to online classes when she learned she was pregnant, Duke graduated in December with a bachelor’s degree in sociology and communications.

Duke was also a first-generation college student.

“If you don’t have any prior knowledge of the whole adventure of going to college and what it entails, you can kind of get overwhelmed, I guess,” she said. “You don’t have anyone in your immediate family going to your orientation, dealing with a course schedule, meeting with academic advisers, taking out loans.”

Beyond academics

Another contributor to the graduation gap between black and white undergraduates is lack of adequate academic preparation for college, Young and others said. Research published last year from the Center for Law and Social Policy found that high-minority schools often don’t have access to the rigorous coursework that equips students for college.

That’s part of the reason Jaylen Johnson, who came to MU to study business in 2014, decided to transfer to a community college in his home city of Chicago in January.

“I don’t think that my high school prepared me for a college as large as MU,” Johnson said. “I wasn’t as successful or focused as I should have been.”

But Darnell Cole, an associate professor of education at the University of Southern California who studies race and ethnicity in higher education, said it’s more complicated than assigning responsibility to the school districts from which students come.

“If you think about it, a lot of your white students don’t come from very good high schools, but they’re able to persist,” Cole said. “And one of the reasons they are able to do that is because they find enough peer support, faculty support and support among their campus services.”

Johnson’s reasons for leaving MU went beyond his feeling that he wasn’t sufficiently prepared. A first-generation college student, he said his family didn’t always know how to handle the paperwork and pressures related to his attending a big university. He found large classes tough because of their size, he said. Speaking to professors during office hours was intimidating.

Duke, who spent just over six years working to earn her degree, also noticed an atmosphere of separation when she came to MU.

At the MU Student Center, she saw “pockets of black people” sitting together rather than being integrated with the rest of the student body. She said that once, when she went with a large group to a fraternity party, the party hosts let the black women in — but not the black men.

And then there was the day in 2010 that cotton balls were strewn in front of the Gaines-Oldham Black Culture Center, a reminder of black slavery.

“I remember getting up that day and I was walking past the plaza, and I remember seeing those cotton balls,” Duke said. “I’ll never forget that.”

Hiring black faculty

It’s hard to see yourself successful when you don’t see anyone else who looks like you reaching success, Cole said. “So what we call representational diversity or structural diversity or demographic diversity is critical,” he said.

In other words, black faculty help black students prosper. “In many cases, institutions have become more diverse, but faculty haven’t,” Estela Bensimon, professor and co-director of the University of Southern California Center for Urban Education, said.

This is true at MU. From the fall of 2006 to the fall of 2015, the undergraduate black student population rose to 8 percent from 6 percent ; the number of black faculty stayed virtually stagnant in the same time period, at 2.8 percent.

White students made up 84 percent of the student body in 2005; now, that’s dropped to 78 percent. Although the number of white faculty has dropped, it hasn’t been by the same margin. Ten years ago, MU faculty was 78.8 percent white; now, it’s 74.8 percent white.

One widely cited reason for the lack of black faculty on U.S. college campuses is what’s called the pipeline problem. If not many black students attend college, and even fewer graduate, and even fewer earn master’s or doctoral degrees, it becomes a circular problem. There simply aren’t as many black Ph.D.s to be hired as faculty members.

Cole pushes back against this thinking. There are enough black doctoral degree candidates looking for jobs who could significantly increase minority faculty at colleges, Cole said, except in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) fields.

Universities should “look at hiring practices, where they advertise for faculty positions, who’s on faculty search committees, who’s deciding what research is important, and what fits within university structure,” Cole said. “These are all decision points that reduce the opportunities that African Americans have (to) join the faculty.”

Recently, MU’s Division of Inclusion, Diversity and Equity required training for people involved in faculty hiring. Another one of of MU’s challenges, though, is its inability to retain black faculty members.

Non-black faculty have a responsibility to black students, too, Cole said. Just because there are low numbers of black faculty on campus, “it doesn’t exclude people who are not African American from providing those support networks for students for being mentors or providing environments that are supportive.”

Exploring data

It’s not enough to hire more black faculty, though, Bensimon said. Institutions of higher education must look at their practices and procedures, too.

One way to do that: Scrutinize the data.

Data can help administrators identify barriers that hold back black and other marginalized students — which they can do, for example, by spotting which courses might have disproportionately high rates of failure for these students.

“We have to really investigate right now what is causing the gap,” Bensimon said. “Do students drop out after the first year? Is it that they get to their junior year and run out of financial aid?”

At MU, the retention rate in 2015 for first-year African-American students was 82.9 percent; for white students, it was 87.8 percent, according to MU’s Office of Enrollment Management and Office of Institutional Research.

The offices collect and publish spreadsheets filled with data about students and faculty.

The office of undergraduate studies also tracks data for students who are not graduating from MU but who do not enroll in the next semester, said Jim Spain, vice provost for undergraduate studies.

This office found the reasons MU students leave are in line with national trends: finances, difficulty in academics and no sense of belonging.

Closing the gap

Given the complexity of the problem, the large and looming question is: What is MU going to do about it?

MU has established several race initiatives over the past half year, but quite a bit of that responsibility to keep students at MU — and black students, in particular — falls to the Academic Retention Services office.

“Ideally, I’d love to eliminate the gap,” said Young, who also has an appointment as assistant vice chancellor with the Division of Inclusion, Diversity and Equity. “But it’s going to take a lot of hard work.”

Young took over in July 2015, and since then he’s formed anadvisory board with five subcommittees to evaluate programs to help students. They are:

Peer mentoring, meant to empower older students to guide newer ones.
An academic faculty involvement subcommittee, tasked with encouraging faculty to help students find success.
A financial awareness subcommittee to help students with financial literacy, especially those who may not have families who can help out.
A committee to evaluate the Summer Transition program, which invites 35 minority students to campus before their freshman year to take classes and learn how to navigate college before the fall semester hits. This fall, Academic Retention Services has created a Freshman Interest Group for Summer Transition participants.
And finally, student success committee, which focuses on what Young calls the “holistic experience” — looking outside the classroom to make MU a more welcoming environment to minority students.

Young plans to establish changes suggested by the advisory board by spring semester of 2017. But Academic Retention Services has already begun working with the fellowships office and the Honors College to put initiatives in place, including pairing junior and senior mentors with freshmen and sophomore mentees and hosting workshops for students who are close to meeting — but don’t quite reach — Honors College requirements.

“We’ve had conversations with students who said that if it wasn’t for their relationship with their mentor, that they would’ve transferred,” Young said, though since the program is so new, Academic Retention Services doesn’t have enough data to make any definitive conclusions.

Challenges aside, students do succeed. Johnson hopes to get back on track academically at his community college and return to MU in spring 2017. Duke, bouncing her 6-month-old baby, Naysa, on her lap, said she will take the LSAT this June with the hope of going to law school in the near future.

Journey for Justice march pushes toward Jefferson City after resistance

January 19, 2016May 13, 2020Leave a comment

Columbia Missourian | Dec 5, 2014

OSAGE COUNTY — Thursday’s march through central Missouri was much calmer — albeit with mixed reactions from spectators — than the racial slurs, Confederate flag waving and gunshot that Journey for Justice marchers faced the day before as they walked through the village of Rosebud. (Read our previous coverage of that counterprotest here.)

The NAACP sponsored 135-mile march from Ferguson to the Governor’s Mansion in Jefferson City began Saturday in response to a grand jury’s decision not to indict Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson in the fatal shooting of black teenager Michael Brown last week.

When the marchers walked through Linn on Thursday, they occasionally passed people holding cardboard signs in support of Wilson.

But a few miles later on U.S. 50, the reactions of motorists were more mixed as they honked their car horns while passing the marchers.

One driver leaned out of his window and snapped pictures as he shouted, “I admire you!”

Another man yelled, “Support Darren Wilson!” as he drove by.

The marchers Thursday said the journey has come to represent much more than one shooting. The systemic problems concerning race and the American justice system have only been amplified by the recent attention given to police shootings of black men, they said.

“It’s larger than Ferguson, it’s a nationwide issue,” said the Rev. W.T. Edmonson, a Jefferson City pastor who was marching Thursday. “There are systemic issues regarding this policing … You have police killing young black men all over the country. But these marches are not against the police … There is a need for discipline and good policing and accountability. That’s what we’re calling for!”

The most recent case to ignite tensions is that of Eric Garner, a Staten Island man confronted on suspicion of selling single cigarettes who died after a New York police officer put him in a chokehold in July. On Wednesday night, a grand jury acquitted the police officer even though the incident was recorded on camera. Protests broke out in the city after the decision was released.

President Obama is asking Congress for millions of dollars to equip police officers with body cameras in an effort to increase accountability. But following the Garner case, some people who have advocated for systemic change in law enforcement are now questioning the effectiveness of body cameras.

“The body cameras wouldn’t be bad,” said Mustafaa Rose, a Lincoln University student. “But from what is clearly been shown, it wouldn’t make a difference because (police are) still getting away with it.”

Despite the overcast skies, aching feet and sporadic hostile signs and shouts, spirits remained high among the marchers Thursday.

Phill Dage, a busker from Detroit, looked over the frozen Missouri fields adorned by the silhouettes of bare trees.

“Beautiful country here,” he said.

Dage spent much of the march singing protest songs and playing his bongo drum alongside his friend Randy Chabot, also from Detroit, as well as another marcher who played maraca and tambourine, Alexander Ross from Fayetteville, Arkansas.

“In protests, I think music is a very powerful form of resistance,” Dage said. “Music has that mysterious way of bringing us together. And if we can sing together, it’s going to be very hard to argue and to look at the other person in a negative way.”

Rasheed Ali also traveled far to join the march. Wearing a bright orange vest and responding only to “Ali!,” he sprinted up and down the line of marchers with a video camera, determined to record each participant.

Back home in South Carolina, Ali flips houses —“maybe two a year”— and sells books at Christian conferences in order to fund his trips to various protests across the nation.

When he saw people with anti-Michael Brown signs in Linn, he hugged them.

“It blew a lot of people’s minds,” Ali said. “I love being the one to break down barriers, because they want to talk, and I want to hear what they have to say. That don’t mean people can’t disagree and get along.”

Other marchers claimed a closer home.

About half-dozen student leaders from Lincoln University joined the march Thursday.

Kendall Wright, a leader of Lincoln University’s LGBT group and a political science major, said he decided to change his career path from foreign policy to law or national politics after hearing about the recent national events concerning police violence.

“It makes me want to be more involved with politics here in this nation because I want to know the laws more in depth and enforce those laws,” Wright said. “I want to be able to tell individuals, ‘Hey, we have certain rights.’”

At around 3:15 p.m. Thursday, protesters stopped marching and loaded the bus that had been following them down the highway. They headed to Quinn Chapel in Jefferson City, where they ate dinner, chatted and stayed the night in sleeping bags.

On Friday morning, marchers will pick up where they left off on Highway 50. They expect to reach the Governor’s Mansion in Jefferson City by 1 p.m.

Quest for justice drives MU hunger striker to grab ‘things by the root’

January 19, 2016May 26, 2020Leave a comment

Columbia Missourian | Nov 10, 2015

COLUMBIA — When Jonathan Butler announced he would not eat until University of Missouri System President Tim Wolfe left office, he included in his letter a quote from author and civil rights activist Maya Angelou:

“I agreed a long time ago, I would not live at any cost. If I am moved or forced away from what I think is the right thing, I will not do it.”

Butler reads a lot. He reads Angelou, Toni Morrison, Stokely Carmichael, Frantz Fanon.

These authors, among others, are why Butler considers himself a radical. This isn’t to say he’s a political extremist, but he thinks about radicalism as “grabbing things by the root.” When Butler is called the n-word while walking through campus, he doesn’t rebuke the heckler. He wonders how and what: How, in 2015, can this occur on campus? What conditions at MU create this environment?

These questions drove Butler to embark on a hunger strike until the top official in the UM System was gone.

Wednesday evening, at the end of day three of consuming only water, his stride was slow and his steps heavy as he walked toward Jesse Hall. But after sitting down and sipping from his water bottle, he spoke quickly, eager to share his favorite books and authors.

“I’m still reading it actually,” he said about Ta-Nehisi Coates’ “Between the World and Me.” “Hopefully, crossing my fingers, I get to finish that book.” He said it in a joking way, but the implication then — that he wouldn’t survive his protest — was grim.

Now, after the Missouri football team announced a boycott in solidarity with his hunger strike and Wolfe announced his resignation, Butler, 25, has all the time he needs to finish the book.

This notion of “grabbing things by the root” was a catalyst for his drastic measure to oust Wolfe from his position.

Butler has experienced racism at MU, he said. Days after Missouri Students Association President Payton Head wrote a widely shared Facebook post in September about being called racist slurs , Butler was called the n-word while walking through Greektown. He felt these hecklers considered him less than human, as if they were still abiding by the “Three-Fifths Compromise,” an 18th century clause in the U.S. Constitution that stated slaves were three-fifths of a person.

This feeling of “less than” solidified when Wolfe and other university leaders did not publicly respond to MU’s culture of racism. If the institution was dismissing Butler’s humanity, he thought, fine. He would put his own humanity on the line.

Cafeteria politics

Although Butler didn’t start reading the radical authors until his senior year while studying business at MU, he recalls being surrounded by literature when he stayed with his grandfather in New York City.

His grandfather was a public defense lawyer in the Brooklyn neighborhood Bedford-Stuyvesant — “Bedstuy … in the heart of what you consider the hood,” Butler said. There, 7-year-old Butler saw his grandfather help the poorest of the poor.

“He comes from a very religious background, and he was very heartfelt on showing compassion for people … and love towards God,” Butler said. “There’s protesting, there’s policy, there’s community engagement. So when you talk about that community engagement piece, I really got that at a young age.”

When Butler wasn’t at his grandfather’s, he grew up with two older sisters in Omaha.

“Tortuous,” he recalled. “They loved picking on me because for the longest time I was the short, chubby brother.”

Two years into his time at Omaha Central High School, where he wrestled, played football and ran track and field, the city’s school district lines were redrawn. Butler observed how money could dictate social and racial dynamics.

“The school needed some money so they did some redistricting, and, with that, it brought in a lot of white students,” he said.

Omaha Central High got repairs and a new football stadium. But along with these resources came a deepening divide between white students and students of color, Butler said. During lunchtime, white students gathered in the octagon-shaped courtyard with a glass ceiling. Black and Latino students ate in the cafeteria. It was the classic high school lunchroom, which had foldout tables and doubled as a gymnasium.

“It was that phenomenon — that’s where we felt safe, that’s where we felt at home,” Butler said. “People would bring their speakers, their CD players. We would play music. It was always this great time.”

Activism

The more Butler read, the more radical he became. For him, that meant making people aware of institutional systems that dole out power to a lucky few while taking it away from others.

“The Pedagogy of the Oppressed,” a book by Paulo Freire, made Butler rethink these systems and reach for freedom — “freedom of mind, physical freedom, freedom from systems,” he said.

And freedom of mind leads to consciousness, which comes from education, he said.

Butler arrived at MU in 2008 to study engineering. He switched his major to psychology, then sociology, then graduated with a bachelor’s degree in business. He recalled being on campus in 2010 when cotton balls were scattered in front of MU’s Gaines/Oldham Black Culture Center.

Butler took a little time off school and worked for the university before starting a master’s degree in educational leadership and policy analysis last year. As he began graduate school, the eyes of the world turned to Ferguson, Missouri, after black teenager Michael Brown was shot by Darren Wilson, a white police officer.

Butler headed to Ferguson to protest. He saw law enforcement officers approach protesters in what he assumed were SWAT trucks. He saw them toss tear gas cans into the crowd. He felt it, too.

“When they started popping the first tear gas, there was a taste I couldn’t get out of my mouth,” Butler told the Missourian in August 2014. “My nose started running. I just started itching. It was so overpowering that I started to get a headache.”

Fourteen months later, after participating in numerous demonstrations to reform the racial climate at MU, Butler had a peculiar sense of deja vu.

On Oct. 10, he and 10 other student activists, who called themselves Concerned Student 1950 after the year when the first black graduate student was admitted to the university, stopped Wolfe’s convertible during MU’s Homecoming parade.

Their demonstration was meant to educate bystanders about MU’s history of oppression.

“In 1839, the University of Missouri was established as a flagship institution west of the Mississippi River,” began Reuben Faloughi, a member of Concerned Student 1950 and also an MU graduate student. “This institution was for white men only — only white men! And it was built on the backs of black people!”

“Ashé!” the protesters chanted, using the Yoruba word for power. “We have nothing to lose but our chains!”

A number of people in the crowd shouted back MU’s signature chant, “M-I-Z!” and “Z-O-U!” Some bystanders tried to block Wolfe’s car from the activists. Wolfe did not leave his car, and he did not respond to the students. His driver revved the car’s engine, and the car bumped into Butler.

After law enforcement officers came to break up the demonstration, the student activists embraced. Some cried.

This sense of emotional support felt between the original 11 members of Concerned Student 1950 has only intensified since the parade. The group sent Wolfe a list of demands, including a comprehensive racial awareness and inclusion curriculum, an increase in black faculty and staff and more funding for MU’s mental health center. When Wolfe met with Concerned Student 1950 members, he did not agree to any of them.

The movement family

Butler was not satisfied. He thought about things he had often thought about: radicalism, humanity and confronting things at the root. He consulted with his physician and his pastor. He updated his will, decided to become an organ donor and signed a “Do Not Resuscitate” order.

He thought about God, too.

Butler spoke passionately, quickly, varying his sentences with repetition and fragments to make his point. But when it came to talking about God, he paused and took a deep breath.

“There’s this faith that if I walk on concrete, I’m not going to sink into a hole and fall through the ground,” Butler said. “So there’s that faith that we already have in everyday life, but it’s just a blind faith in a greater sense. God created me. He created these systems. He created this world. And to trust him through it all — that whatever is going to happen is going to happen.”

“Jesus was a radical, too,” he added.

Yet Butler did not tell his friends — his movement family, as he calls them — until the Sunday night before he began his hunger strike. They were shocked that he was willing to give up his life to protest Wolfe. But not 24 hours later, they had set up a few tents on Mel Carnahan Quadrangle and were determined to stay until Wolfe was out of office.

As the week went on, passers-by visited with support in the form of food, tarps, even a dog to pet. Some students stopped by to learn about the movement. More and more supporters brought tents and joined the campout. They formed a community, gossiping about why Missouri quarterback Maty Mauk had been suspended and complaining about seeing drunk parents at bars downtown. They prayed.

A few days in, students dedicated an entire tent to storing food. The camp grew. The movement community swelled.

Butler stopped by from time to time, but he spent the majority of his week in class, working or in meetings.

“Some people want to meet for just 15 minutes to talk and just pray,” Butler said. “Some of them have been hour-long meetings because they’re really trying to clear up what got me to this point.”

Without food, by day four, his friends helped him meet his appointments by acting as human crutches. Standing up required his significant concentration.

His movement family protected him, too. On Monday morning, after Wolfe announced his resignation, they surrounded him by the tents at Carnahan Quad, shielding him from the barrage of reporters and curious onlookers.

Students hugged each other. They danced. They jumped up and down. Butler, in a dark cap and sweatshirt, was in the middle of it all, held up on each side by a friend. They chanted the chorus to Kendrick Lamar’s “Alright.”

Many strings remain loose, including whether real race relations reform will come to MU or whether the president’s successor will be different than Wolfe in the eyes of the movement community.

From Butler’s perspective, though, he took the important step from reading about radicalism to making it his own. He spun the wheels of change at MU.

ANSWERED: Common questions about Jonathan Butler’s hunger strike

January 19, 2016May 13, 2020Leave a comment

Columbia Missourian | Nov 8, 2015

COLUMBIA — After multiple incidents of racism at MU and a lack of response from UM System leadership, MU graduate student Jonathan Butler embarked on a hunger strike to catalyze change. Here are some answers to common questions about Butler’s protest:

1. What does Butler hope to accomplish with his hunger strike?

In a Nov. 2 letter announcing the hunger strike, Butler asked the UM System Board of Curators to fire UM System President Tim Wolfe. The curators, the system’s governing body, has the power to remove Wolfe from his position. Butler did not send a letter to Wolfe asking him to resign.

2. Why does Butler want Wolfe out?

Because of Wolfe’s inaction in response to a “slew of racist, sexist, homophobic, etc., incidents that have dynamically disrupted the learning experience at the University of Missouri,” according to Butler’s letter.

Butler and other student activists stopped Wolfe’s car during the Homecoming Parade on Oct. 10 while they condemned MU’s history of racism.

Wolfe did not respond to the group’s concerns while he was in the car. His driver revved the convertible’s engine, and the car bumped into Butler. Some bystanders at the parade heckled Butler and the activists.

The Homecoming Parade incident represents larger issues with racism at the UM System, Butler said.

He said Wolfe has the power to create change within the four-campus system, but that Wolfe has remained silent about racism that makes students of color feel unsafe and unwelcome. Wolfe has only spoken out when students have pressed him, Butler said.

“When you look at something like Tim Wolfe — when you look at the way the system is set up — what Tim Wolfe is representing at this moment is this corrupt system that doesn’t value the lives of marginalized students,” Butler said in an interview.

In the 23 days between the Homecoming Parade and Nov. 2, when Butler began his hunger strike, “(Wolfe) had all the time in the world to come up with a statement to actually say that he cares about black students, to come up with something, and he failed to do so,” Butler said.

Butler has denounced incidents of black students being called racist slurs, among other acts of discrimination targeting minorities.

In early September, Missouri Students Association President Payton Head was called the n-word behind a fraternity house in Greektown. Members of the Legion of Black Collegians were called the same slur during an event at MU’s Traditions Plaza in early October. And, on Oct. 24, a swastika drawn with human feces was found in an MU residence hall.

“He’s never responded to Payton Head and that situation, didn’t respond to the LBC incident, didn’t respond to the incident with the swastika in the residence hall.

“That’s not what leadership is. We look at his physical job description, (which is to) provide a safe learning environment for students. He’s not fulfilling that part of the duty.”

3. Why is Butler not demanding a policy change or targeting MU Chancellor R. Bowen Loftin?

There are two parts to the answer, Butler said.

“One, is that you have to look at all the student organizations and people who are already asking for similar things like that (policy changes), so I don’t think it’s necessary to reinvent the wheel when there’s already students protesting, advocating to get measures like those put into place.”

The second reason is that for all of Loftin’s flaws, Butler said, the chancellor is more sincere in his responses and willing to listen to students.

“Being in a meeting with Tim Wolfe … he doesn’t acknowledge our humanity, he doesn’t acknowledge that we exist, we’re nothing to him. When you have a leadership like that, that’s treating marginalized students like that, that’s not the type of leader we need.”

4. Has Wolfe responded?

After Wolfe met with Butler on Friday, five days after the hunger strike began, Wolfe issued an apology in a news release.

“I regret my reaction at the MU Homecoming Parade when the Concerned Student 1950 group approached my car. I am sorry, and my apology is long overdue,” according to the statement.

“My behavior seemed like I did not care. That was not my intention. I was caught off guard in that moment. Nonetheless, had I gotten out of the car to acknowledge the students and talk with them perhaps we wouldn’t be where we are today.”

Butler and other student activists have been skeptical about the sincerity of Wolfe’s statements in the past. They are impatient with Wolfe’s calls for dialogue, and they want action.

Wolfe released another statement Sunday afternoon.

“We want to find the best way to get everyone around the table and create the safe space for a meaningful conversation that promotes change,” the statement read. “We will share next steps as soon as they are confirmed.”

“Extremely unsatisfied,” Butler tweeted after the statement came out. “He still has no true plan for change. We deserve a leader who actually cares.”

5. Have the curators responded?

The curators have issued no public response.

Curators David Steelman and Phillip Snowden had no comment Nov. 2 after Butler’s hunger strike started. None of the other curators have responded to requests for comment.

At 7:20 p.m. on Nov. 8 the curators announced they would meet at 10 a.m. on Monday, Nov. 9, for an executive session. The board will have a brief public session followed by a closed session. Then, it will reconvene the public meeting.

6. Why a hunger strike? Why not another type of protest?

Nothing else has worked, Butler said.

“The number one question, concern I’ve gotten from everyone is … please don’t do this, we value you your life, there has to be another method,” he said. “The question I ask right back is ‘what method?'”

“If you look at the past two years, and all that students have done, black students, brown students, students of color and marginalized students have been fighting and protesting and writing letters and doing all these things over several years,” Butler said.

“Then you see what happens with graduate students, which is a primarily white demographic, and within seven days, you get a response. And a pretty significant response, a pretty significant public, national response.

“We, as students of color, marginalized students, we still can’t get an answer years later. It takes these drastic measures for us to be taken seriously, for us to actually be considered humans,” Butler said.

7. Is Butler serious about his hunger strike?

Yes. Butler has not eaten since the morning of Nov. 2, when he had breakfast before 9 a.m.

He updated his will before the strike, he said. Butler spoke with his physician and his pastor before making his decision. He confirmed Thursday that he signed a “do not resuscitate” order, which instructs doctors not to perform CPR.

8. When did he begin the strike, and when will he end it?

Butler began the strike at 9 a.m. on Nov. 2. He said that he will continue until Wolfe is out of office or until his own life is over.

9. What does the hunger strike have to do with Concerned Student 1950?

Butler is a part of Concerned Student 1950, a group of black student activists that first came into public eye when they protested Wolfe at the Homecoming Parade. The group was named after the year Gus T. Ridgel, the first black graduate student at MU, was admitted to the university.

The original group had 11 members, but in an Oct. 20 letter to MU, the members wrote that Concerned Student 1950 “represents every Black student admitted to the University of Missouri since (1950) and their sentiments regarding race-related affairs affecting their lives at a predominantly white institution.”

10. Does Concerned Student 1950 have the same demands as Butler?

Concerned Student 1950 is pushing for the removal of Tim Wolfe from office, but the group has several other demands.

According to previous Missourian reporting, the demands include:

Enforcement of mandatory racial awareness and inclusion curriculum for all faculty, staff and students, controlled by a board of color.
An increase in the percentage of black faculty and staff to 10 percent by the 2017-18 academic year, and the development by May 1 of a 10-year plan to promote a safer, more inclusive campus.
An increase in funding to hire more mental health professionals for the MU Counseling Center, particularly those of color, and more staff for the social justice centers on campus.

11. Why are there tents on Mel Carnahan Quadrangle?

Students from Concerned Student 1950 as well as other activists and allies are camping out in solidarity with Butler until Wolfe is no longer the system’s president.

12. Is Butler camping out, too?

No. Butler has stopped by the camp out, but he’s not sleeping in the tents.

13. Is anybody else taking part in the hunger strike?

Some students are fasting in solidarity with Butler, but they’re only fasting one day at a time, according to previous Missourian reporting.

14. What happened Friday in a confrontation between Wolfe and student activists?

Wolfe was in Kansas City on Friday night to speak at a fundraiser.Student activists from MU traveled to Kansas City and met up with students from the University of Missouri-Kansas City. The students met Wolfe by the Kauffman Center and asked him to define systematic racism.

“It’s — systematic oppression is because you don’t believe that you have the equal opportunity for success — ” Wolfe said in a video of the incident.

The students were unimpressed with his answer.

“Did you just blame us for systematic oppression, Tim Wolfe? Did you just blame black students —” one student responded before the video cut off.

15. Is the entire football team involved in a boycott?

On Saturday night, black members of the MU football team tweeted a photo in support of Butler. They announced that they would not participate in any football related activities until Wolfe was gone from his position.

Sixty of the 124 football players are black, but it was unclear Saturday night exactly how many of them were boycotting.

On Sunday morning, coach Gary Pinkel and white football team members announced they supported black players. Pinkel tweeted, “The Mizzou Family stands as one. We are united. We are behind our players. #ConcernedStudent1950 GP.”

Pinkel released a statement Sunday evening saying that there was no practice Sunday.

“After meeting with the team this morning, it is clear they do not plan to return to practice until Jonathan resumes eating,” Pinkel said in the statement.

MU student embarks on hunger strike, demands Wolfe’s removal from office

January 10, 2016May 13, 2020Leave a comment

Columbia Missourian | Nov 2, 2015

COLUMBIA — Jonathan Butler, an MU graduate student and campus activist, began a hunger strike at 9 a.m. Monday as a protest against Tim Wolfe remaining president of the University of Missouri System.

“During this hunger strike, I will not consume any food or nutritional sustenance at the expense of my health until either Tim Wolfe is removed from office or my internal organs fail and my life is lost,” Butler wrote in a letter sent to the UM System Board of Curators.

Butler, a master’s student in educational leadership and policy analysis, is protesting “a slew of racist, sexist, homophobic, etc., incidents that have dynamically disrupted the learning experience” at MU. His letter referenced incidents of black students being called racist slurs, the sudden removal of graduate student health insurance subsidies in August, MU’s cancellation of Planned Parenthood contracts and the swastika drawn with human feces found in an MU residence hall on Oct. 24.

“(S)tudents are not able to achieve their full academic potential because of the inequalities and obstacles they face,” Butler wrote. “In each of these scenarios, Mr. Wolfe had ample opportunity to create policies and reform that could shift the culture of Mizzou in a positive direction but in each scenario he failed to do so.”

The letter was sent to curators at 8:29 a.m. Monday. The curators, who are the governing body of the four-campus system, have the power to fire Wolfe. Butler also published the letter on Twitter shortly after 10 a.m.

Curators Phillip Snowden and David Steelman had no comment. The other six curators did not respond to phone calls requesting comment as of 7:30 p.m. Monday.

Wolfe issued a statement by email through UM System spokesman John Fougere shortly after 5 p.m. It read:

“It is extremely concerning when any of our students puts their health and safety in harm’s way. I sincerely hope that Mr. Butler will consider a different method of advocating for this cause. I respect his right to protest and admire the courage it takes to speak up.

“I believe that the best course of action is an ongoing dialogue about the racial climate on our four UM System campuses. Immediately after my initial meeting with the ConcernedStudent1950 group on October 26th, I invited Jonathan to meet again so we can build a deeper relationship and open a frank conversation about the group’s frustrations and experiences. I remain hopeful that they will accept my invitation.

“This meeting with the ConcernedStudent1950 group is one example of our engagement at the UM System level on this complex, societal issue. I have met with our chancellors, campus diversity officers, students and faculty about the scope of the problem, so that collectively we may address these issues that are pervasive and systemic in our society. We must always continue our efforts to affect change at our UM System campuses.”

Butler is part of Concerned Student 1950, the student group that stopped Wolfe’s car during the Homecoming Parade on Oct. 10. After Wolfe did not respond to students’ concerns while he was in the car, the group published a list of demands, including asking for a handwritten apology from Wolfe and his removal from office.

Wolfe met privately with members of Concerned Student 1950 on Oct. 26, but he did not agree to any of the group’s demands. Butler confirmed that he did receive an email from Wolfe the next day, but because he asked Wolfe that all correspondence go through the Concerned Student 1950 group email address, he was waiting for Wolfe to email the group before he would respond.

Butler said he is demanding Wolfe’s removal from office because he’s failed to respond to marginalized students’ concerns with sincerity or concrete action.

“I’m critical of Chancellor Loftin because he does play a crucial role in what happens on campus, but in the meetings I’ve seen with him, he’s actually more willing to understand how systems of oppression, how racism and all these things work,” Butler said in an interview. “Being in a meeting with Tim Wolfe … he doesn’t acknowledge our humanity, he doesn’t acknowledge that we exist; we’re nothing to him.”

In his letter, Butler wrote that he has “no ill will or thoughts of harm towards Mr. Wolfe.” Instead, he thinks it’s urgent to make MU “a more safe, welcoming and inclusive environment for all identities and backgrounds.”

MU also released a statement through MU spokesman Christian Basi: “Chancellor Loftin continues to be willing to meet with representatives from student groups, including ConcernedStudent1950.

Additionally, Chancellor Loftin and his staff will continue to meet with student leaders, faculty and staff, as we take steps to acknowledge our past, create a more inclusive campus and build a better future at Mizzou.

“Chancellor Loftin and his administrative staff are concerned about the health and well-being of Mr. Butler, as we are with all of our students. We respect Mr. Butler’s right to protest in this manner, but sincerely hope he will not suffer from his actions. We offer many resources to support students’ health and wellbeing, all of which are available to Mr. Butler.

“Chancellor Loftin and all of his staff sincerely want to work with Mr. Butler toward a better understanding of our differences and hope he will reconsider his actions, which could have damaging repercussions to his health. We stand ready to continue an open dialogue.”

During his hunger strike, Butler will continue to attend class and work at his job as a co-facilitator for a Peace Corps prep program. He will also host study halls about systems of oppression such as racism and sexism on MU’s central campus beginning Tuesday, but the final details of those study halls have not yet been announced.

Butler has been a vocal student protester, condemning racism at MU since last year’s post-Ferguson demonstrations. Butler is also a member of the MU Faculty Council’s race relations committee, which has the “purpose of addressing widespread unawareness of racial insensitivity on campus,” according to a Faculty Council report from March.

Butler made the decision to go on a hunger strike a couple of days after the Homecoming Parade.

“A hunger strike specifically speaks to the nature of the beast that we’re dealing with when we talk about systemic issues, because it deals with humanity,” Butler said. “I think what I want people to come away with, if nothing else, (is) to understand that I’m so committed to making things better here at the university … that I’m literally willing to give up my humanity to see some injustices stop.”

Over the past few weeks, he’s been preparing for the strike: Butler updated his will and spoke to his physician.

After researching how the human body reacts to hunger strike, Butler gradually lessened his food intake in the past two weeks. He will still drink water during his strike.

Butler said he has also prepared himself spiritually. Before making the decision, he spoke to his pastor and prayed.

“[A]s the collective body of UM curators considers my request and decides on what your next steps will be do not consider that my life is in your hands because my life is in God’s hands,” Butler wrote in his letter.

Hunger strikes are a form of non-violent protest used by activists such as labor movement leader Cesar Chavez, who did not eat for 24 days in 1972. More recently, a few students at Tufts University in Boston participated in a five-day hunger strike to protest the university’s decision to lay off 20 janitors.

When a human body doesn’t receive calories from food, after a few days it begins breaking down fat to produce energy,according to an article published in the scholarly journal Nutrition and Clinical Practice.

During prolonged periods of time without food, the human body breaks down muscles and vital organs for energy and protein, consuming itself in order to survive. People of normal weight can last two to three months without food, according to the journal article.

At about 7:30 a.m. Monday, Butler met with a group of friends — he calls them his movement family — at Waffle House. He ordered two waffles with maple syrup and eggs. He only ate half a waffle before his strike began. After breakfast, he and his friends prayed.

“There is a more than 90 percent chance that I won’t survive this, and that’s why I’ve taken such precautions that I have,” Butler said. “If I do lose my life through this process, I think it only promotes the message stronger … that this is worth fighting for.”

Missouri Black Caucus responds to Ferguson protesters’ demand for change

January 10, 2016May 13, 2020Leave a comment

Jefferson City News Tribune | Nov 26, 2014

When state Rep. Courtney Allen Curtis heard the St. Louis County grand jury had decided not to indict white police officer Darren Wilson in the fatal shooting of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown, he was standing outside the Ferguson Police Department among a crowd of disappointed protesters.

The crowd heard “four supposed shots that were fired” after Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCulloch made the announcement Monday night, Curtis, D-Ferguson, said.

He watched as protesters began to move toward the police. Some chanted and urged peaceful protest. Others began overturning a police vehicle, looting, rioting and setting fire to businesses. Several were hit with tear gas. In the end, 61 were arrested throughout the night.

Curtis said the protesters were expressing mounting frustration with a legal system infused with institutionalized racism. His constituents are demanding change, he said, and legislators in Missouri’s Black Caucus are determined to deliver it in the upcoming legislative session.

“People protest in different ways for a variety of different reasons,” Curtis said, explaining why some in the crowd resorted to violence. “The non-violence movement brought some change, but that change wasn’t permanent. … So if you make a bigger spectacle of it, then it will bring more attention and force change.”

Rep. Brandon Ellington, chair of the Black Caucus, didn’t condone the rioting, either, but he tried to explain why the protesters turned to arson and looting.

“When you’ve got people who are feeling overtly oppressed, then they act out with the only means they can,” Ellington, D-Kansas City, said.

Caucus members were as disappointed as their constituents by the grand jury’s decision, but they were not surprised.

“However, I am extremely surprised with the prosecutor’s tone,” Ellington said about McCulloch.

Ellington was especially taken aback that McCulloch cast blame on the media and witnesses, instead having “no blame for the officer that was involved in the shooting.”

Members of the caucus have already begun to address their constituents’ disillusionment.

Even before Monday night’s news conference, Rep. Karla May, D-St. Louis and vice chair of the Black Caucus, and Rep. Sharon Pace, D-St. Louis, met with Ferguson Mayor James Knowles, City Manager John Shaw and City Councilman Mark Byrne to consider possible reforms.

The group discussed legislation that caucus members plan to pre-file Dec. 1, including bills that would require police officers to wear body cameras and to participate in psychological testing and diversity and sensitivity training, Pace said.

In addition, they talked about incorporating a restorative justice plan that would allow adults charged with minor violations to participate in community service rather than pay fines. That plan would include some of those arrested during the Ferguson protests.

“We got feedback from both sides, and I think the meeting went very well as far as (Ferguson city officials) being receptive to what we were discussing,” Pace said.

Caucus members are aware the bills won’t see swift and easy passage through the legislature.

“The question is, can we come up with something that the majority party can get along with? Because they’re largely from rural areas, so they don’t have the same concerns,” Curtis said. “There’s a lot of strategizing taking place, a lot of conversations being had.”

Ultimately, members of the caucus hope that whatever reform they can achieve will lead to greater stability and equality in Missouri.

“I just hope for peace,” state Sen. Maria Chappelle-Nadal, D-University City, said. She learned that rioters burned down an office where she teaches civic engagement classes twice a week in Ferguson.

What’s most important, Chappelle-Nadal said, is that Missouri implements “systematic change” that transforms “institutional prejudice, which is penetrated throughout state government and other institutions.”

Black Caucus: Activating Guard stirring anxiety

January 10, 2016May 13, 2020Leave a comment

Jefferson City News Tribune | Nov 19, 2014

Gov. Jay Nixon’s decision to declare a state of emergency and activate the National Guard has stirred anxiety surrounding anticipation of a grand jury’s verdict in the death of a Ferguson teen, the chairman of the Missouri Black Caucus said Tuesday.

The governor’s announcement Monday came ahead of the grand jury’s decision on whether to indict white police officer Darren Wilson, who killed unarmed black teenager Michael Brown in August in Ferguson. Since the shooting, demonstrators have taken to Ferguson streets, protesting police violence and Brown’s death.

During the fallout in August, police were criticized for using tear gas and military-grade equipment while some protestors turned to rioting. Nixon called upon the National Guard to quell the unrest.

On Monday, Nixon said he activated the Guard before the jury’s announcement in order to prepare for “any contingency that might arise.” He justified his decision with what he called “two pillars”: to keep the public safe and to protect constitutional rights.

“It (Nixon’s declaration) definitely increases anxiety, no ifs, ands or buts about it,” caucus leader Rep. Brandon Ellington said Tuesday. “It’s concerning because obviously even the governor feels that the police department in Ferguson is incapable of keeping the public peace and protecting people’s rights.”

Other members of the caucus said they are skeptical about whether the National Guard can protect public safety and constitutional rights.

State Sen. Maria Chappelle-Nadal represents Missouri’s 14th district, where Ferguson is located. Since Nixon’s announcement, she said she has received numerous phone calls, emails, tweets and Facebook messages from residents of the district in response to Nixon’s decision.

“According to my constituents, who I’ve been on the ground with since day one, they have absolutely zero faith in the governor because of the multiple mistakes he made in the whole aftermath after Mike Brown was killed by Darren Wilson,” Chappelle-Nadal said. “He (Nixon) is focusing on the unrest instead of focusing on the fact that people are hurting, and we have a problem when it comes to police brutality.”

Ellington said he wished the governor had taken a more diplomatic approach by engaging the community through conversation.

“Rioting and protests historically is the voice of the voiceless,” Ellington said. “People start rioting and protesting when people feel like their voices aren’t being heard. People feel like they don’t have any due process under the law.

“Sometimes you can alleviate the situation by actually talking to people, actually treating people with respect and decency,” he said.

On the day Nixon declared the state of emergency, the Black Caucus called for Ferguson to establish a restorative justice plan in response to the fines and arrests of protesters over the past three months.

Through restorative justice, those accused of crimes make restitution to society through community service or other productive functions rather than just serving a sentence or paying a fine.

“People have the right to protest. People have the right to voice their opinion. People have the right to peaceably assemble,” Ellington said, referring to the non-violent protestors and members of the press who have been arrested in Ferguson. “And the government should not deny people these rights … and if you give them fines for trying to exercise their constitutionally protected rights, that’s wrong.”

On Monday, the Black Caucus sent out letters to Ferguson city officials, including the mayor, city council members and the local prosecutor, asking them to meet with the Caucus regarding protesters’ fines. Ellington hopes they can come to a solution, perhaps by replacing fines with required community service.

According to Ellington, they have already received some positive reactions from city council members.

The Black Caucus is still discussing what legislation it plans to push in the upcoming legislative session. But Ellington is already determined to re-file House Bill 1699, which would require police to wear video cameras with their uniforms.

He filed the bill in the last legislative session, but it did not pass the House.

“With the wake of what happened in Ferguson, I think it is something that is extremely needed,” Ellington said. “Had we had that law in place, and the law enforcement officers were required to wear audio and video equipment, it wouldn’t be a question what happened.”

Ellington plans to file the bill Dec. 1, the first day legislators can pre-file bills for the upcoming session.

Columbia rally for Michael Brown aims civil rights message at new generation

January 10, 2016May 13, 2020Leave a comment

Columbia Missourian | Aug 22, 2014

COLUMBIA — In 1977, Princeton graduate student C.W. Dawson Jr. was pulled over in Trenton, N.J. The police officer told him that he matched the description of a robbery suspect. Dawson said that next thing he knew, he was thrown into the back of the police vehicle.

“I got stopped for D.W.B.,” Dawson said. “Driving while black.”

Fast-forward to 2010. Graduate student Dawson had earned a doctoral degree and was lecturing on social and political issues in philosophy at a conference in New York City.

“I get stopped, and I’m still fitting a description,” said Dawson, currently a minister with Dawson Journeys Ministry. “The point? It still goes on.”

On Thursday evening, Dawson was one of several speakers at an NAACP-sponsored rally outside the Boone County Courthouse. Nearly two weeks after Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson, people came together to demand justice, to assert their place in the decadeslong battle for civil rights and to show support for Brown’s family.

Rallygoers convened at 6 p.m. as volunteers passed out water bottles to battle the 90-degree heat. The diverse audience of several hundred filled up the amphitheater outside the courthouse, spilling onto the grass and surrounding ledges. College students stood with their bikes, and children climbed on statues. Many attendees held signs reading “End police brutality now” and “Cameras see more than color.” Police were absent from the scene.

The evening began with chants of “What do we want? Justice! When do we want it? Now!” and what has become a common rally cry for Ferguson protesters: “Hands up, don’t shoot!”

Speakers demanded more transparency from St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCulloch into the investigation of Brown’s shooting. They also demanded that the officer who shot Brown be held responsible.

“Why are they doing this behind closed doors? Because when you do it in front of a grand jury, you don’t get to see anything,” said David Tyson Smith, attorney at Smith & Parnell LLC. “This officer should be arrested. There should be a public hearing.”

Speakers also called for McCulloch to step aside in favor of a special prosecutor.

Mary Ratliff, the NAACP Missouri State Conference president, compared the rally to protests during the 1960s.

“We are training our young people,” Ratliff said. “Many times, young people didn’t realize we had to fight for them to sit at the restaurant, fight for them to be able to go to the restrooms. This has let them know that the fight must go on. Every generation must fight.”

Like many ’60s-era protests, attendees joined together in song a few times during the course of the evening.

Near the beginning of the rally, Columbia resident Lucretia Murray led the crowd in the singing of the civil rights era hymn “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me ‘Round.”

“It was one that was sung hundreds and hundreds of times during the civil rights movement,” Murray said. “We’re fighting for some of the same things, and I was just talking to my children last night, and they were saying, ‘Well, didn’t Poppy and Grandma fight for these things already?’ Well, yes, and the fact of the matter is that it might be an ongoing battle for the rest of our lives.”

Timothy Gist, a senior at Columbia College and member of the MU NAACP, was one of many from the younger generation who attended the rally.

Gist, who is originally from St. Louis, believes that strength comes in numbers.

“I feel like if the people of Columbia apply the right amount of pressure on the people who have political power, you are able to add more pressure to law enforcement, to the prosecuting attorney,” Gist said.

Adolphus Pruitt, president of the St. Louis NAACP, has spoken to members of the Brown family on multiple occasions and said they were overwhelmed and thankful for the displays of support that have occurred nationwide over the past couple of weeks.

“They thought it was amazing that the rest of the country and these folks from all over the world are sympathizing to support their cause for justice in finding out what happened to their son,” Pruitt said. “They hope that this will prevent this happening to any other child in the future.”

Dawson found hope in the show of solidarity that brought different races, genders, religions and sexual orientations together in support of a common goal.

“We will put our hands up,” Dawson said. “Because it used to mean that we surrender. We hold our hands up to signify that we’re still here. We hold our hands up to let the world know that we are somebody, because you can imprison us, you can shoot at us, you can kill somebody; we hold our hands up to say no more.”

‘Hands Up, Don’t Shoot’ movement seen as rallying cry for change

November 17, 2015May 13, 2020Leave a comment

Columbia Missourian | Aug 18, 2014

Gov. Jay Nixon’s mandated curfew in Ferguson began at midnight Sunday, but Jonathan Butler’s curiosity got the better of him. After midnight Sunday, he stood under pouring rain, about 30 feet behind a group of protestors jeering at the line of police tasked with enforcing the curfew.

At 12:50 a.m., Butler saw bright lights approaching from the end of the street, which he assumed were SWAT trucks. Law enforcement officers gave a last warning for the protestors to disperse, but they stood their ground. A few protestors even moved closer to the police line, Butler said.

A few minutes later, police began throwing tear gas cans at the crowd, and other officers fired rubber bullets.

“When they started popping the first tear gas, there was a taste I couldn’t get out of my mouth,” Butler said. “My nose started running. I just started itching. It was so overpowering that I started to get a headache.”

Butler, an MU graduate student, arrived in Ferguson at about 10 a.m. Saturday to participate in peaceful protest following the fatal shooting of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson on Aug. 9. At 1:05 a.m. Sunday, he helped protestors and fellow onlookers find safety.

“I was trying to make sure people were OK,” Butler said. “And that’s what kind of amazed me because even though it was a bad situation, you still saw the people come together as a community. Even in that frenzy, there was a real communal aspect of everyone in Ferguson looking out for each other, and that was a unanimous thing the whole day.”

These feelings of support haven’t been contained to Ferguson. Demonstrations using the mantra “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” have spread throughout the country. The chant was inspired by Brown’s reaction to Wilson’s gunshots, according to eyewitness reports. After Butler returned to Columbia on Sunday, he hosted a #DontShoot photo challenge for MU at 1 p.m.

Several dozen students, staff and faculty as well as members of the community posed in front of the MU Columns. In one photo, they raised both of their hands in solidarity with Brown, and in another, they lifted their right fists. As the photos were taken, their unified chants of “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” echoed across Frances Quadrangle.

The #DontShoot photo challenge movement began at Howard University in Washington, D.C. Students raised their hands with the caption “Don’t shoot,” and the photo soon went viral on social media.

“The photo was very simple but very powerful,” Butler said. “It sent a big message that we’re in this together. We’re standing with you.”

MU senior DeShaunya Ware, another photo-challenge participant, shared Butler’s sentiment.

“I’m just here today because black lives are important,” Ware said. “And we’ve had a lot of losses, and I like to refer to them as the black sacrifice. Nobody deserves to have their life taken away from them. I’m here to show my support because I am Mike Brown.”

Despite incidents of violence after dark, daytime protesting in Ferguson has been peaceful, Ebonie Young said. Young, who graduated from MU in 2012, was in Ferguson on Sunday. She began her day at the site of the Ferguson QuikTrip that was burned down during riots on Aug. 10, where protestors gathered with chants of “Hands up, don’t shoot,” and “No justice, no peace.”

“It was such a welcoming atmosphere,” Young said. “There were people who were giving away chips, drinks and flowers. Every car that was passing was honking their horns. I felt like I stepped back in the 1960s for a second.”

To Butler, the chant harkens back to his experiences as a black man.

“I have been arrested and stopped by the police several times for what I would consider to be profiling,” he said. “In those instances, you fear for your life. Putting your hands up … it’s like saying, I’m unarmed, I don’t have anything against you, I’m a law-abiding citizen. Let’s look at the injustice in that system. Let’s change that.”

Young already sees change due to the movement. As an example, she used a petition being circulated on Change.org to outfit police officers with body cameras in order to hold them accountable. She nicknamed the petition the “Michael Brown Law.”

“Little old St. Louis made national coverage, and it’s opened up people’s eyes to a bigger movement,” Young said. “Change does not happen overnight. This is the beginning of something beautiful.”