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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.

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

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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.

MU releases year-long Title IX data on student sex discrimination, assault

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Columbia Missourian | Sept 17, 2015

COLUMBIA — More than 300 reports of sex discrimination were made to MU’s Title IX Office from August 2014 to July of this year, and eight students were disciplined for violating campus sex discrimination policies, according to a report released Thursday by MU.

It is the first review of sex discrimination data — including sexual assault and harassment — compiled by the Title IX Office. It will act as a baseline to measure the frequency and types of sex discrimination involving students on and off campus. The Title IX Office will use this information in future prevention of sex discrimination and protection of university students.

“We have an opportunity and an obligation to use the information the Title IX Office collects to improve campus culture and reduce sex discrimination at MU,” said Ellen Eardley, MU Title IX administrator,in a news release that accompanies the 30-page report.

The office received 332 reports between Aug. 1, 2014, and July 31. However, some reports made during this annual reporting period were of incidents that occurred before Aug. 1, 2014.

“Sometimes we’re getting reports of incidents that occurred five or six years ago,” Eardley said in an interview.

The report comes in a national climate of growing concern about the prevalence of sex discrimination at colleges and universities. One in five women is sexually assaulted during her college years, according to a National Institute of Justice report, which is used by the Office for Civil Rights.

Among other changes in how sexual misconduct is addressed, the University of Missouri System recently announced a preventive training, Not Anymore, which students are required to complete before applying for classes this spring. The training is video-based and reviews topics such as sexual assault, consent, dating and domestic violence, stalking and bystander intervention.

By the numbers

Reports involving 328 students who said they experienced sex discrimination in some form were made to the office. Four involved more than one incident, for a total of 332 incidents. In its report, the Title IX Office states there were 374 alleged policy violations because sometimes one incident reported by a student violated multiple MU discrimination policies.

Complainants is the term used for alleged victims of the university’s anti-discrimination policies. Respondents are those accused of violating those policies.

The office regards sex discrimination as that based on sex, gender, pregnancy, gender identity, gender expression and sexual orientation. Incidents such as sexual assault, harassment and stalking are subcategories of these.

Sexual misconduct — including rape and other sexual assault, exposing one’s genitals and sexual exploitation — was the most highly reported type of incident, at 33.2 percent.

Of the 124 counts of sexual misconduct reported to the office, 50 percent were incidents of rape (identified in the report as nonconsensual sexual intercourse) and 20.2 percent were other types of sexual assault, such as touching someone’s genitals without permission.

Students also reported 85 incidents of sexual harassment, 49 incidents of dating and intimate partner violence and 31 incidents of stalking.

Reports and incidents were not divided by gender in the report. The omission was not intentional, Eardley said.

“I could say that predominantly respondents were male and complainants were female,” she said.

Investigations

Just over 9 percent of incidents were followed up with an investigation.

The Title IX Office pursues an investigation when a student files a formal request with the office. Out of the 332 reports, students filed formal complaints 31 times.

Seven students were suspended as the result of Title IX investigations, and one student was given “discretionary sanctions,” which is not defined in the report. Four students were found not responsible for violating the nondiscrimination policies.

Other cases were settled through conflict resolution or were still open at the end of the reporting period.

A student can be disciplined for an incident of sex discrimination by the university if what the report called a reasonable person could, based on the evidence, find the accused person responsible for violating MU’s discrimination policy.

The number of students disciplined for sex discrimination is low in comparison to the number of reports made but is not low when compared to the number of investigations conducted. About one in four investigations led to disciplinary action.

A number of factors could have influenced why only 31 students decided to make formal complaints, said Salama Gallimore, lead Title IX investigator for MU. Students often pursue accommodations — such as help with classes or mental health treatment — instead of an investigation because they want to move forward rather than take action against someone, Gallimore said.

The student is not required to make a formal complaint, but the university can pursue action without the complainant’s permission when it’s in the interest of safety for all students, the report stated. In these cases, the student does not have to participate in the investigation.

“It’s their choice how they participate in that process,” Eardley said, “so they could say, ‘We’re done talking.’”

The university took independent action twice in the latest annual reporting period, so the Title IX Office conducted 33 investigations over that time.

Who reports incidents

The Title IX Office received most of its reports from university employees about MU students, according to the report. They were predominantly made by the Department of Residential Life, faculty members, course instructors, academic advisers and the MU Police Department.

“(Faculty and staff) don’t need to feel like they have to provide the support themselves — they may not have the expertise to provide the support themselves,” Eardley said. “So they can feel assured that they’re getting students to a place on campus that can help provide those options to them.”

The Title IX Office received the highest number of reports during October, and most of the incidents reported in October were alleged to have occurred that month. Gallimore said this was probably because a lot of drinking occurs around then for Homecoming, football games, Halloween parties and other events.

“We know that alcohol is a tool that’s used by predators so it becomes a lot easier to separate people from their friends, and people are obviously more uninhibited or may feel comfortable in a situation that’s not comfortable or safe,” Gallimore said.

Future of Title IX reporting

The MU Title IX Office was established for student victims of sex discrimination, Eardley said. This first report was intended to address students’ experiences with sex discrimination and not those of faculty and staff.

“It’s a process,” Eardley said of the overall development of consistent processes for dealing with sex discrimination on campus.

“I work on a regular basis with several places on campus that have historically addressed faculty and staff issues including Human Resources, the MU Equity Office and the Provost’s Office,” she said. “We’re continuing to work on those issues together. Certainly when reports of sex discrimination get to my office, regardless of who’s impacted by it, I address it and get involved in it.”

Eardley and Danica Wolf, coordinator for the Relationship and Sexual Violence Prevention Center, which works closely with the Title IX Office, said they expected the number of reports to increase in coming years, after students — and faculty and staff, who are now mandatory reporters — become more aware of the Title IX procedures.

“One of the signs of a good prevention program is that the numbers go up,” Wolf said. “I think that it can hopefully increase confidence in how their story will be handled when and if they do choose to report.”

Black Caucus: Activating Guard stirring anxiety

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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.