Monday, July 10, 2017

Shunning the University of Missouri

How bad is it at the University of Missouri?

It’s so bad that the New York Times has noticed. It’s not just that the news is fit to print. The story is now too big to ignore.

The story began in 2015 when the University was embroiled in student protests against racism.

The Times opens its extensive story:

In the fall of 2015, a grassy quadrangle at the center of the University of Missouri became known nationwide as the command center of an escalating protest.

Students complaining of official inaction in the face of racial bigotry joined forces with a graduate student on a hunger strike. Within weeks, with the aid of the football team, they had forced the university system president and the campus chancellor to resign.

It was a moment of triumph for the protesting students. But it has been a disaster for the university.

It’s called a pyrrhic victory. It shows the downside of trying to use protest and violence, threats and intimidation to advance a cultural program. Or better, to redefine the university mission away from education and toward cultural warfare.

What exactly did empowered leftist students accomplish?

Freshman enrollment at the Columbia campus, the system’s flagship, has fallen by more than 35 percent in the two years since.

The university administration acknowledges that the main reason is a backlash from the events of 2015, as the campus has been shunned by students and families put off by, depending on their viewpoint, a culture of racism or one where protesters run amok.

Before the protests, the university, fondly known as Mizzou, was experiencing steady growth and building new dormitories. Now, with budget cuts due to lost tuition and a decline in state funding, the university is temporarily closing seven dormitories and cutting more than 400 positions, including those of some nontenured faculty members, through layoffs and by leaving open jobs unfilled.

Parents and alumni have had it with Mizzou. They are boycotting the school, cutting it out of their wills and sending their children elsewhere. Reputation matters and the University has seen its reputation destroyed. It is not the only university that has suffered this indignity, but the shunning is certainly a step toward sanity. And toward universities becoming places where people could learn, not be indoctrinated in the dogmas of political correctness.

Of course, we all still remember Melissa Click. The sometime professor called for “some muscle” to shut down a student journalist:

As the protests continued to boil, demonstrators tried to block the news media from the encampment, and Melissa Click, a communications professor, called for “some muscle” to oust a student taking a video of the confrontation.

The Times reports:

In the minds of many, her outburst and the resignations became symbols of a hair-trigger protest culture lacking any adult control.

The university received a barrage of emails from alumni and families, some of which were published by National Review and Heat Street, a conservative news site.

In one, the parents of a junior wrote that while they did not underestimate the extent of bigotry in the world, “the way to effect change is NOT by resorting to the type of mob rule that’s become apparent over the past few days.”

To be fair, the Times is promoting the idea that some parents and alumni and students have been shunning the university because it has so much racism. This does not pass the plausibility test.

Yet, the university is responding to the public relations disaster by hiring more diversity officers and more minority faculty.

It’s called doubling down on stupid. One is left with the impression that it deserves its fate.

6 comments:

trigger warning said...

I hear Jane Sanders, a noted college turnaround professional, is looking for work.

:-D

Ignatius Acton Chesterton OCD said...

I'm getting the sense that the post-WWII college/university model -- financial and ideological -- is going down. And none too soon. They have no one to blame but themselves. The university if one of the few remaining vestiges of feudalism remaining in the world, and it is an echo chamber of radical fringe thinking... usually in a time warp that's 4 generations behind the times.

I am also left puzzled by the parent's comment that they "did not underestimate the extent of bigotry in the world." How is it that we claim to have come so far with prejudice and racism, yet the university-educated seem to think that it is so pervasive? It's like a throwaway concession to show how other sophisticated and worldly they are, and then finishing with very sensible comments about how change comes about and the dangers of "mob rule." I wish people were able to make their points without the disclaimers that empower these radicals to believe and do whatever they wish in the name of fighting the alphabet soup of social ills they claim they are valiantly combating. Again, it's an echo chamber.

Wouldn't you love to be sitting in those Mizzou administration meetings going over the enrollment numbers? All the denial, disbelief, and self-righteousness about the decision to give into the "protesters"?

Sam L. said...

I've read that state legislators have cut Mizzou's funding. I hope it's mostly from administration.

JK Brown said...

I was reading a post at Inside Higher Ed on the decline in foreign student enrollment. Of course the author had to go on and on about Trump, but did also cite that the unis don't advertise for such students enough.

It occurred to me, that the schools are advertising, but not in a complimentary way with Youtube videos, such as the one dubbed 'Library Man' where an Asian student points out to some SJWs with a bullhorn that the place was a library. These videos tell the serious student, those who will pursue the difficult studies in STEM, that American universities are not serious about creating an environment conducive to study and learning.

Not long ago, the shushing of the librarian was the symbol of a place for serious study, now we see students in the library using bullhorns or running rampant through the tables assaulting the "nerds" who are actually trying to study.

Missouri will only be the first or many, I suspect.

AesopFan said...

JK Brown said.....

It occurred to me, that the schools are advertising, but not in a complimentary way with Youtube videos, such as the one dubbed 'Library Man' where an Asian student points out to some SJWs with a bullhorn that the place was a library. These videos tell the serious student, those who will pursue the difficult studies in STEM, that American universities are not serious about creating an environment conducive to study and learning.

* * *
Excellent points.

Linda Fox said...

I'm SHOCKED, SHOCKED that a university that prides itself on its traditions and culture of Southernness (which definitely includes politeness and civility) is off-put by those groups that hate - openly, vocally, those that disagree with them, and threaten violence.

Beats me why the parents don't want to pay to have their viewpoint characterized as vile, and have their children threatened for not going along with it.

Must be racism.