After Revolt From Football Team, University Of Missouri President Leaves Over Race Complaints

COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP) -- The president of the University of Missouri system resigned Monday with the football team and others on campus in open revolt over his handling of racial tensions at the school.

President Tim Wolfe, a former business executive with no previous experience in academic leadership, took "full responsibility for the frustration" students had expressed and said their complaints were "clear" and "real."

He made the announcement at the start of what had been expected to be a lengthy closed-door meeting of the school's governing board.

The complaints came to a head a day earlier, when at least 30 black football players announced that they would not play until the president was gone. One student went on a weeklong hunger strike.

"This is not the way change comes about," Wolfe said, alluding to recent protests, in a halting statement that was simultaneously apologetic, clumsy and defiant. "We stopped listening to each other."

He urged students, faculty and staff to use the resignation "to heal and start talking again to make the changes necessary."

A poor audio feed for the one board member who was attending the meeting via conference call left Wolfe standing awkwardly at the podium for nearly three minutes after reading only one sentence.

For months, black student groups have complained of racial slurs and other slights on the overwhelmingly white flagship campus of the state's four-college system. Frustrations flared during a homecoming parade Oct. 10 when black protesters blocked Wolfe's car, and he did not get out and talk to them. They were removed by police.

Black members of the football team joined the outcry on Saturday night. By Sunday, a campus sit-in had grown in size, graduate student groups planned walkouts and politicians began to weigh in.

Until Monday, Wolfe did not indicate that he had any intention of stepping down. He agreed in a statement issued Sunday that "change is needed" and said the university was working to draw up a plan by April to promote diversity and tolerance.

Students and educators teachers in Columbia hugged and chanted after the announcement.

Katelyn Brown, a white sophomore from Liberty, said she wasn't necessarily aware of chronic racism at the school, but she applauded the efforts of black students groups.

"I personally don't see it a lot, but I'm a middle-class white girl," she said. "I stand with the people experiencing this." She credited social media with propelling the protests, saying it "gives people a platform to unite."

Head football coach Gary Pinkel expressed solidarity with players on Twitter, posting a picture of the team and coaches locking arms. The tweet said: "The Mizzou Family stands as one. We are united. We are behind our players."

A statement issued by Pinkel and Missouri athletic director Mack Rhoades linked the return of the protesting football players to the end of a hunger strike by a black graduate student who began the effort Nov. 2 and has vowed to not eat until Wolfe is gone.

"Our focus right now is on the health of Jonathan Butler, the concerns of our student-athletes and working with our community to address this serious issue," the statement said.

After Wolfe's announcement, Butler said in a tweet that his strike was over.

The protests began after the student government president, who is black, said in September that people in a passing pickup truck shouted racial slurs at him. In early October, members of a black student organization said slurs were hurled at them by an apparently drunken white student.

Also, a swastika drawn in feces was found recently in a dormitory bathroom.

Many of the protests have been led by an organization called Concerned Student 1950, which gets its name from the year the university accepted its first black student. Its members besieged Wolfe's car at the parade, and they have been conducting a sit-in on a campus plaza since last Monday.

Two trucks flying Confederate flags drove past the site Sunday, a move many saw as an attempt at intimidation. At least 150 students gathered at the plaza Sunday night to pray, sing and read Bible verses, a larger crowd than on previous days. Many planned to camp there overnight, despite temperatures that had dropped into the upper 30s.

Also joining in the protest effort were two graduate student groups that called for walkouts Monday and Tuesday and the student government at the Columbia campus, the Missouri Students Association.

The association said in a letter Sunday to the system's governing body that there had been "an increase in tension and inequality with no systemic support" since last year's fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, which is about 120 miles east of Columbia.

Brown, an unarmed black 18-year-old, was shot and killed by a white police officer during a struggle, and his death helped spawn the "Black Lives Matter" movement rebuking police treatment of minorities.

The association said Wolfe heads a university leadership that "has undeniably failed us and the students that we represent."

"He has not only enabled a culture of racism since the start of his tenure in 2012, but blatantly ignored and disrespected the concerns of students," the group wrote.

Concerned Student 1950 has demanded, among other things, that Wolfe "acknowledge his white male privilege," that he is immediately removed, and that the school adopt a mandatory racial-awareness program and hire more black faculty and staff.

The school's undergraduate population is 79 percent white and 8 percent black. The state is about 83 percent white and nearly 12 percent black.

Wolfe, 57, is a former software executive and Missouri business school graduate whose father taught at the university. He was hired as president in 2011, succeeding another former executive with no experience in academia.

Copyright 2015 The Associated Press.