No surprise here: Mizzou enrollment drops

As Gomer Pyle would say, "Surprise surprise."

Fewer students are applying to my alma mater, the University of Missouri Columbia, as a result of actions by a group of student protesters, the football team, and administration and faculty members involved in a series of race-related incidents this past fall. 

To recap: In September, the university’s African-American student body president posted on Facebook that people in a pick-up truck yelled a racial slur at him. In October, an inebriated white student disrupted a group of African-American students, calling themselves Concerned Students 1950, as they were preparing for homecoming, prompting the university’s chancellor to order mandatory diversity training for students and faculty members. Shortly thereafter Concerned Students 1950 blocked a car carrying the university’s president as he was riding in the homecoming parade, claiming the administration’s response to racism was inadequate. Later that month a shit swastika was found in a dormitory bathroom stall. An African-American student in his eighth year at the unsafe-for-minorities university went on a hunger strike, demanding the school’s president and chancellor resign.

None of this received much attention outside of Missouri. It wasn’t until early November, when the university’s football team announced it was refusing to play unless the administrators resigned, that the story went national.

The day a group of faculty members announced they, too, were striking, the administrators threw in their towels. As the Concerned Students group was celebrating its victory on campus property, a faculty member, Melissa Click, an advisor at the university’s journalism school, blocked a student journalist from covering the celebration, claiming the students needed a safe space to heal. Click called for “muscle” to remove the reporter, a direct violation of the First Amendment that guarantees press freedom. A video of the confrontation between Ms. Click and the student journalist was posted on youtube, where it was viewed by millions.

The next day, the dean of the journalism school rescinded Ms. Click’s appointment and removed her from the J-school’s website, taking pains to point out she was actually on the faculty of the Department of Communications whose chair responded by issuing a series of PC statements including this gem: "We reiterate our commitment as communication scholars to the transformative power of dialogue; we believe words shape our realities and that engaging multiple perspectives is vital."

Ms. Click, whose current research projects funded in part by Missouri taxpayers include a study about 50 Shades of Grey readers and the impact of social media on fans' relationship with Lady Gaga, remains on the university's payroll and faculty members have petitioned administrators not to dismiss her. The university says it is unable to comment on faculty-related matters. 

In late November, unrelated to the protests but in another affront to the university’s reputation, a professor from Libya was arrested for beating a 14-year-old female relative for failing to wear a hajib to a local high school.

Though it has yet to be reported by the Columbia Missourian or NBC affiliate KOMU-TV, both of which are operated by the formerly-acclaimed J-school, or by the Columbia Tribune, a daily newspaper that doesn’t hesitate to suppress news that reflects unfavorably on the university around which the town's economy and its advertising base is built, Columbia's ABC affiliate last week obtained an internal university memo revealing that applications from:

- High ability students (those with ACT scores of 30 or more) have decreased by 7.7 percent.

- African-Americans and graduate students both have gone down by 19 percent.

- Out-of-state students have decreased by 948 and non-resident deposits have dropped by 25 percent versus two years ago.

Does this mean there will be fewer students at Missouri next fall? Not at all. It simply means the university, in order to maintain enrollment numbers, will need to admit undergrads with lower test scores and graduate students with less impressive credentials. In short, the University is going to be forced to enroll dumber students. One of Concerned Students 1950's demands was for a more diverse university. Ironically, the University of Missouri going forward will be less diverse in terms of the abilities, ethnicity and geographic origins of its students. It remains to be seen how many current students will transfer to other colleges come next fall but I’m wagering a substantial number will be leaving. What student in his or her right mind would want to be seeking a job with a newly-issued diploma from Poop Swastika U?

As the protests were coming to a head, the university had just launched a massive fundraising campaign entitled “Our Time to Lead,” the brainchild of the deposed chancellor. Common sense would have dictated the campaign be placed on hold but no, the rollout continued. I received a mailing the other day inviting me to an event for Florida alumni and have received several other mailings asking for contributions to help the University of Missouri “lead.”

I was tempted to reply,“ No, it’s not your time to lead. It’s your time to shut the fuck up and concentrate on fixing what’s broken” but that would have been a waste of time and/or a stamp and/or bandwidth. There do not seem to be many people left at the University of Missouri with enough sense to understand what I would have been saying.

And, apparently, there will be even fewer of them in the future.

America's worst-named team mascot

Truman, the Tiger, in front of the columns
on the campus of the University of Missouri - Columbia.

Life is unpredictable, but some things you can count on.

Every morning the sun will rise in the east.

Every two or three years Microsoft will introduce a new version of Windows.

And year after year, the Missouri Tigers football team will break the hearts of its long-suffering fans.

As they did again last night.

Mizzou, my alma mater, which has a long and distinguished history of slaying giants then losing the little games everyone expects them to win easily, last year joined the Southeastern Conference, which many consider the toughest in the nation. The Tigers were off to their best start since 1960, winning their first seven games, a feat that propelled them to the top of the SEC East and landed them on the cover of Sports Illustrated.

Against their better judgment, fans got their hopes up, thinking that this time things might turn out differently – Mizzou might actually have a shot at the BCS national championship or, at the very least, finishing near the top of the heap.

But the Tigers lost last night to South Carolina when a field goal attempt during the second overtime bounced off the goalpost.

I contend the reason Mizzou consistently fails to rise to the top has nothing to do with shortcomings on the parts of its team members or coaches. It has everything to do with the name of its mascot, the most inappropriately-named mascot in college sports, a name that’s an affront to what a university should stand for – education. Specifically, educating students to respect and revere greatness.

Missouri has had, for decades, a Tiger mascot – a student dressed up in a tiger suit who runs around the stadium, whipping fans into a frenzy. In the early '80s, the mascot started behaving lewdly, taking his tail from between his legs and stroking it, as if masturbating, whenever Mizzou scored.

The University, which wanted to project a family-friendly image, in 1984 decided to introduce a new, improved mascot, a happier, more upbeat, PG-rated Tiger, and held a contest in which students were invited to submit names. The name the committee selected? Truman, the last name of Missouri’s most famous native son, who also happens to be – and this isn’t just my opinion, many historians agree – one of greatest presidents this country has ever had.

Of all the presidents who followed Washington, few, if any, had to make decisions as tough as Truman did. Among other decisions for which he is remembered, Truman made the gut-wrenching decision to drop the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki that brought WWII to an end. The war in Europe was over at that point, but Japan, even though it was clear there was no way it was going to win, had vowed its soldiers were prepared to fight hand-to-hand combat with our troops in the event America invaded, which it was going to have to do in order to vanquish the lunatic military regime that ruled the country. Truman, who hadn’t even known of the bomb's existence when he had become president a few months earlier following FDR’s death, made that decision on his own.

While some effete college professors like to claim Truman was an uneducated Missouri rube who dropped the bomb to extract revenge and make himself look good, millions of soldiers, sailors and airmen who were stationed in the Pacific and knew they were about to be sent to almost certain deaths thanked God for him every night, and those who are still among us still do.

And how does the state of Missouri honor its most famous son?

By naming a fuzzy mascot after him whose job is to ride into the stadium on a fire struck and run around being cute, urging fans to scream MIZ-ZOU.

Imagine the Universities of Virginia, Illinois, Kansas or Massachusetts naming their mascots, respectively, Washington, Lincoln, Eisenhower or Kennedy after native sons who became presidents. For that matter, imagine the University of Georgia naming its bulldog “Carter” after Georgia’s only president, the worst of modern times. Unthinkable?

Not to Missouri. Fans think Truman the Tiger is adorable; state leaders and university administrators fail to see they aren’t honoring but making a mockery of one of the greatest men in American history.  

And somewhere up in the skies high above Memorial Stadium in Columbia, Missouri, someone is pissed and has vowed not to let the Tigers go all the way to the top until the University changes the name of its mascot to something appropriate. 

And until that happens, some things will remain predictable.

The Mississippi and Missouri Rivers will, every so often, overflow their banks.

There will be a heat wave next summer.

And the Missouri Tigers football team will never amount to a pile of what Harry Truman liked to call “hooey.”