Free Republic

The University of Missouri has announced it is closing its Diversity, Equity and Inclusion office — a decision made at a campus that, nearly a decade ago, saw students pioneer how racial activists can protest on campuses to force sweeping policy changes in the modern era. Shuttering the DEI office is being blamed on pressure from Republican lawmakers and described as a preemptive decision to ward off any new laws, University of Missouri System President Mun Choi told reporters at a news conference. Many lawmakers in red states have passed legislation over the last two years curbing DEI programs at...

Strain disappeared on March 8 after being kicked out of Luke’s 32 Bridge Food + Drink in downtown Nashville while on a trip with his fraternity. University of Missouri student Riley Strain's body has been found in the Cumberland River Friday morning, the Metropolitan Nashville Police announced. "The body of Riley Strain was recovered from the Cumberland River in West Nashville this morning, approximately 8 miles from downtown," the department wrote on X. "No foul play-related trauma was observed. An autopsy is pending." Police received a call around 7:28 a.m. from a worker at a nearby business who discovered Strain's...

The family of missing student Riley Strain says it has been shown unreleased surveillance video that captured him walking fast or “jogging” in the opposite direction of his hotel. Chris Whiteid, Strain’s stepfather, and Chris Dingman, a friend acting as the family spokesman, revealed that Metro Nashville Police on Sunday showed them the last known video of the University of Missouri student from the night of his disappearance. “We got to see him walking,” Whiteid told NewsNation in an interview that aired Thursday. “We got to see him kind of at a fast pace walk, almost a jog. And it...

Two TikTokers taking part in the search for missing college student Riley Strain — livestreaming their search efforts for followers — found his credit card near the Cumberland River in Nashville. Two TikTok users, @nobodyleftbehind13 and @annaclendening, were sharing their search as it unfolded live with followers when they stumbled across the missing Mizzou student’s credit card. “S—. I found his credit card,” one user can be heard saying in a video that was later shared to @rileylively’s account, Fox News Digital reported. Another user filming the search chimes in, “You found his credit card? We found his credit card....

Dale Brigham, a nutrition professor at the University of Missouri, implored his students not to cave in to “bullies” when he said an exam scheduled for today would proceed. He was apparently talking about the fear among black students owing to threats posted on Yik Yak yesterday. Brigham’s alleged indifference to his students’ fears led them to savage him on social media, some in incredibly crude terms, and now Brigham has resigned, he confirmed to local station KOMU: “I am just trying to do what I think is best for our students and the university as an institution,” Brigham said...

Conservative author and commentator Michael Knowles was assaulted by a protester while giving a lecture at the University of Missouri-Kansas City campus on behalf of Young Americans for Freedom. The Thursday event was called “A Night with Michael Knowles," and the topic of the lecture was "men are not women." Knowles was lamenting the identity politics peddled by many progressives, which he says has cheapened higher education. There is a course being taught right now at an American university on angry white men. When I look at who's angry, I'm not so sure," said Knowles, 29, a Yale University graduate....

COLUMBIA, Mo. — If a man asks a woman out on a date, and he is taller than her, can that be considered "sexual harassment"? According to a former University of Missouri vice chancellor, the answer is yes. Court documents filed by a black male student (John Doe) at Mizzou quote testimony by the former official, but the university calls Doe's claims "inaccurate" and "out of context". Doe was suspended from the University of Missouri for four years due to findings from a Title IX case is suing the school for racial and sexual discrimination. School officials ruled that Doe...

Twelve months before the U.S. presidential election, U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Jarred Prier got a taste of Russia’s covert efforts in American political affairs without recognizing the flavor.It was November 11, 2015. Prier was in Washington browsing Twitter for news about his alma mater, the University of Missouri, where racial protesters had just succeeded in ousting the university system’s president.#PrayForMizzou was trending. Backlash against the protesters had escalated fears of violence on campus. Intrigued, Prier began pouring over tweets supportive of Mizzou protesters. Activists on the ground were sharing minute-by-minute updates of campus, where encamped protesters had claimed the...

After student protests rocked the campus of the University of Missouri in 2015, student enrollment has dropped significantly. The student protests became national news, as a college professor named Melissa Click shoved a student journalist who sought access to cover the protests on racism. "Enrollment at the University of Missouri continued a decline that began after campus protests in November 2015, with this fall's enrollment the lowest since 2008," the Associated Press reported last week. "Official numbers released Wednesday show the university attracted 20,870 students this fall, down 12.9 percent since a record set in 2015." "Missouri did slightly better...

The taxpayer-funded University of Missouri is offering segregated weekly meetings “for students, staff and faculty of color” to discuss “racial identity,” “skills for surviving and resisting hate” and their “experiences as a person of color at a Predominately White Institution.” The University of Missouri’s College of Education sponsors the segregated meetings, which are slated to occur every Friday afternoon in the public school’s Multicultural Center. Students who attend will “process race-related macro and microaggressions” and “heal as a community,” a poster adverting the segregated therapy sessions explains. (RELATED: Christmas Vacation Is The Newest ‘Microaggression’) The Mizzou group is called “Healing...

Enrollment is down more than 2,000. The campus has had to take seven dormitories out of service.

Timothy Vaughn dutifully cheered the University of Missouri for a decade, sitting in the stands with his swag, two hot dogs and a Diet Coke. He estimates he attended between 60 and 85 athletic events every year—football and basketball games and even tennis matches and gymnastics meets. But after the infamous protests of fall 2015, Missouri lost this die-hard fan.

Officials at the University of Missouri’s flagship campus in Columbia have finally rid themselves of the administrator and the professor who physically and verbally attacked student journalists during the eruption of Black Lives Matter protests that rocked the school’s campus in November 2015. The firing of both taxpayer-funded employees — mass communication professor Melissa Click and senior associate director for Greek life Janna Basler — took 20 months. Basler, the Greek life director, shoved up against a lone student photographer Tim Tai as he attempted to capture images for a local newspaper. Scuttlebutt about Basler’s employment status began earlier this...

The 2015 protests that rocked the University of Missouri campus and eventually led to the ouster of the school’s president “has been a disaster for the university.” That’s the conclusion of the NY Times which published a story yesterday on declining enrollment at Mizzou. 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...

The University of Missouri’s social media accounts and its threat-warning system face an uncertain future after the university laid off its entire staff responsible for their upkeep as part of a cost-cutting measure. Leaders of financially troubled Mizzou may also end up serving as their own spokespeople, should the UM System’s flagship institution go through another public relations nightmare like its racial protests from a year and a half ago.

The University of Missouri-Columbia is expecting at least a 14-percent decline in incoming freshmen this fall, resulting in its smallest class in nearly two decades. Administrators project that about 4,000 freshmen will enroll in August. That’s down by about 700 students from 2016 and significantly lower than in 2015, when more than 6,000 enrolled. The shrinking numbers have been tied at least partly to the protests on campus in 2015 that followed reports of racism on and near campus. The school issued a news release Friday afternoon that mentions the enrollment decline only indirectly. “A class of this size gives...

The public university that gave us Melissa “Muscle” Click – and announced open season on student journalists that try to cover social justice warriors – continues to suffer fallout from the November 2015 melee. The University of Missouri is shutting down three dorms next year because of low freshman enrollment. Technically they are being taken “offline” to see if enrollment bumps back up, and “most or all” staff will keep their jobs, Residential Life Director Frankie Minor said in an email. This is on top of four other dorms that were already scheduled to go “offline” because of plummeting enrollment....

The public university that gave us Melissa “Muscle” Click – and announced open season on student journalists that try to cover social justice warriors – continues to suffer fallout from the November 2015 melee. The University of Missouri is shutting down three dorms next year because of low freshman enrollment, The Maneater reports.

<p>The 2015 University of Missouri uprising is widely considered a watershed moment for campus protests, and the rhetorical (and in some cases physical) aggression has only increased with the rise of Donald Trump.</p> <p>In fact, just a few short days after the now-infamous incident in which Mizzou communications professor Melissa Click berated and assaulted a student journalist—calling for some “muscle” to forcibly remove him from campus—students at Dartmouth College raided their school library, chanting “Fuck you, you filthy white fucks” at their studious peers, and even pinning one girl up against a wall for failing to display sufficient enthusiasm in support of their cause.</p>

In the age of safe spaces and trigger warnings comes another new trend to the college repertoire: coloring books. This fall, campuses nationwide are offering coloring books to students to help them de-stress. At American University on Monday, its counseling center provided coloring sheets in honor of Healthy Campus Week, noting on its Facebook page that adult coloring books “can help with a number of emotional and mental health issues.” Conditions cited include obsessive-compulsive, eating, anxiety and depressive disorders, as well as anger management and substance abuse issues. “The time and focus that adult coloring takes helps the individual remove...