University of Missouri President Tim Wolfe has announced his resignation over his handling of a string of racist incidents on the college’s Columbia campus.
Wolfe said resigning is “the right thing to do,” during a press conference Monday morning. You can watch his announcement above.
Pressure mounted on Wolfe on Sunday after the school’s football team announced it would be boycotting all football-related activities until he stepped down or was fired. A graduate student, Jonathan Butler, had been on a hunger strike since November 2, also calling for Wolfe to be removed from office.
The students were angry with how Wolfe and the university responded to a series of racist incidents that began in September.
The controversy began in September when Payton Head, the Students Association President, said he was called a “n****r” by a group of men in a pickup truck while on campus.
On October 5, a drunk student went onto a stage where the Legion of Black Collegians was rehearsing a homecoming skit and screamed racial epithets, the Kansas City Star reports. On October 10, during the school’s homecoming parade, a group of students, called Concerned Student 1950 (a reference to the year black students were first admitted to the 176-year-old university), surrounded Wolfe’s car and demanded he speak with them. Wolfe had police remove them from the parade route, the newspaper reports.
On October 24, a student “scrawled a swastika in human feces on the floor and wall of a dormitory,” according to the Star. Jonathan Butler, a graduate student among the Concerned Student 1950 group, then went on a hunger strike. On Sunday, the football team announced it would not be taking part in any football-related activities until Wolfe resigns or is removed.
