What Student Activists Should Take Away From Mizzou

The University of Missouri is having a historic fall semester of immense social change. A series of student and faculty demonstrations against systematic racism at the university just forced their president to step down. Happening at the same time, graduate students protested health care cuts the university had made. This resulted in the unionization of graduate workers and direct action taken by the faculty council to fix it. The momentum built by the student efforts is influencing colleges across state boarders including in my home state, Kansas. Kansans and Missourians have a rivalry that dates back to Bleeding Kansas, when towns burned over the slavery debate. Missourians and citizens of the then Kansas-Nebraska territory battled over whether or not slavery would be part of the Kansas economy. The Kansan abolitionists… Read more »