University of Missouri Associate Professor Stephanie Shonekan said that the killing of Michael Brown was the most recent catalyst to protests that led to the resignation of University of Missouri system President Tim Wolfe and “students realized that what they’ve been feeling here is linked to what happened just down the road” on Monday’s broadcast of CNN’s “Wolf.”
When asked how things at the school got so bad, Shonekan responded, “You know, this is — what we saw with the football team and we’ve seen this semester is just not — another few episodes in a long line of events that happened over the last — I’ve been here for about four-and-a-half years, and there has been tension in all of that time. I think that with the football players, it just brought it to national attention, which is wonderful, but students have been passionate about this for a long time, and I think most recently that the catalyst was last year when Michael Brown was killed in Ferguson. Our students realized that what they’ve been feeling here is linked to what happened just down the road, and so they started agitating for change on campus. I should mention the agitation has all been very peaceful. It’s been very thoughtful, and well done by a group of leaders, who have been very intentional in getting action done.”
Shonekan also said, in reaction to the resignation, “I’m elated. I am thrilled that the students are heard. I think that this is one step in what will probably be a pretty long journey. But this is all a good thing, in the sense that it is signalling to our students that they mean a lot to us, that their thoughts and their concerns are concerns to us as well.”
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