Every seat was filled in the Bayou City room Tuesday as students, alumni, faculty and staff met with the Black Student Union at their town hall meeting to discuss the manifestation of student activism and recent events unfolding at the University of Missouri.
“Look around you. There are many organizations and events black students can get involved in, from BSU, the NAACP, Collegiate 100 and the Black Caucus,” BSU president Jayln Gordon said. “The faces I see coming out to parties should be the same faces seeking opportunities in black activism.”
Black organizations and student body members at Mizzou encountered racial slurs and discrimination by their colleagues on numerous occasions that ignited retaliation and demand for change, ultimately resulting in the resignation of Chancellor R. Bowen Loftin, followed by President Tim Wolfe.
Loftin and Wolfe’s stonewall approach did not sit well with the black community at the University, causing faculty to walk out, students to participate in hunger strikes and a majority of the football team’s refusal to play.
“This didn’t happen overnight,” Mizzou alumna Lauren Houston said.
“Racism was an issue when I began attending the University of Missouri in 2007. Being ignored and countless unanswered emails is what led up to this.”
This event generated the discussion of whether UH needs to be more pro-active in its black community on campus. Only 3.7 percent of faculty at our University are black, versus the 66.3 percent of whom are white. While it’s obvious to see diversity in the student body on campus, diversity among our faculty and staff is lacking, according to one student at the meeting.
“We need black mentors to guide us,” business sophomore and secretary of Collegiate 100 Miles Coleman said. “I want to be able to come to this University and feel like somebody cares about my well-being rather than seeing me as a dollar sign.”
Students and faculty made it clear that the invitation is always open for anyone wanting come to the BSU office for guidance. If students wish to see an increase in black faculty, they have to be the ones to come together and address the issue to administration.
“There’s no room to point the finger if you are not actively looking for these opportunities and mentors,” health senior and president of Zeta Phi Beta Brooke Sullivan said. “It’s not about wearing a shirt just to say your apart of something — it’s about what you do once the shirt is on.”
The events that transpired at Mizzou will not be the first or the last time an incident like this will occur, but with the support of organizations like BSU and others across the nation, UH students at the meeting said they hope the struggle to end systematic oppression can only progress.
Oh please…
Topic of Discussion: How to have Missouri style chaos on UH … without having to fake it.
No, that wasn’t the topic of discussion at all. We discussed unity here at UH and ways we can illicit change as black students. The University at Missouri merely served as an example of what students on other campuses are doing to enact change.
If you have more opinions you would like to share, I suggest you follow The Black Student Union’s Instagram and Twitter page @bsu_uh so you can stay up to date on our next conversation so your opinions can reflect what was actually discussed at our event.
A responsible reply Jalyn. But as for change … hopefully its not Barack Obama’s Socialist change. I would like to see a return of many “U Street” neighborhoods, but your peoples reliance on Democrats have ham-stringed many of them with the ease of the dole. Their self-respect and imitative have been stolen by leftist brainwashing, welfare and racism. And now with the acceptance of millions of illegal immigrants, the Black Voice is dying a quick death. Blacks as a whole crying “Racism” at every minor incident, and it has quite frankly numbed our senses to the point that it’s just another car alarm going off, and we just ignore it. And the racism being noticed by the leftist media is happening in Socialists Democrat havens of Mizzou, Baltimore, Cleveland, etc., where you can’t find a Republican with a magnifying glass. The Gun Control movement concentrates on high profile cases like Umpqua, etc., yet virtually ignores Chicago, and Baltimore, where guns are banned, yet dozens are shot every weekend, including toddlers. Many Blacks live on what I’ve heard called “The Plantation of Intellectual Slavery,” where only the SocDem leaders have the right to think, and their followers have no rights, and just do what their fuhrers say. If you don’t, you are labeled a Justice Thomas or Secretary Rice. Republicans are constantly barraged by race, but the facts are, they are more diverse than Democrats in many ways. A Republican can be hounded out of a campaign with one word “macaca,” but the Democrats can have a Senator who was once a KKK Grand Kleagle, Sen. Robert Byrd. One fact that makes me very sad is abortion. More Black kids are aborted in NYC than born. Planned Parenthood’s founder Margaret Sanger, was a White Supremacist. And didn’t Hillary Clinton just receive one of her awards. Ever wonder why the Black population never rises about 13-14%, Margaret is the reason, along with Mac 10’s, etc.
Just another ignorant outsider elbowing his way into a UH comment section. Be gone, Troll. Find another comment section to try to hijack.
Evidently GunFreeUH … is not FreeSpeechUH … if someone utters non-Approved SocDem Speech … it somehow invades the “safe space” of their peanut-sized brain, and you would think a riot has broken out.
“Evidently” all you have to work with in order to be obnoxious and butt into a conversations about things on the UH campus is your free-speech rights, which is lame. Nice to know you have no respect for staying out of issues that don’t impact you. Social justice and racism on the UH campus effect students, faculty, staff, alumni, parents and UH supporters FIRST and the general population SECOND. It impacts commenters in Daily Cougar articles dead last. Get in line, buttinski.