Missouri Lieutenant Governor Denounces University Protests
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Peter Kinder, the Lieutenant Governor of Missouri, responded to protests and demonstrations over episodes of racism that led to the resignation of Tim Wolfe, the President of the University of Missouri.
Kinder told Chris Stigall on Talk Radio 1210 WPHT that he expects similar protests to spread to colleges across the country.
"I will tell you why people in the Northeast and all over the country should be concerned about what's unfolded recently on the campus of the University of Missouri and it is this: it's coming to a campus near you. This is part of a national movement. Some of the protesters were probably well motivated, but some of the other protesters are very much connected and bound up in and members of the Black Lives Matter movement...and when they saw a chance to rope some members of the football team into the protests, demanding the resignation of the President, that is a tactic that's going to be tried on campuses. It just happened to be the first time they tried it was at Missouri."
He disagreed with the actions of Missouri's football coach, Gary Pinkel, who issued support for protesters and members of his football team that promised a boycott if the Wolfe remained in his post.
"I would have preferred a little bit tougher stand by him and I would have preferred an approach that called those football players bluff. They're on scholarship. This was a disgraceful episode in the history of the University of Missouri, if you ask me.There's another article out of the Atlantic that said the economics of college football, in fact, how much of a pay day college football is, with the game looming with BYU this weekend, that it was the economics that forced the resignation of the President. If that's true, we've arrived at a very sad state in higher education."
Kinder called the protests at the school an extension of the uprisings in Ferguson from 2014.
"This may be understood at Ferguson on the campus of the University of Missouri. Weak leadership to no leadership at all and a disgrace to our state, and very serious damage to our reputation, but the University of Missouri and the state is full of fine people and we're going to bounce back."
