Matt Moreno and Danny Spewak / KCOU News / Feb. 28, 2010 / Get the radio story!
UPDATE: At a town hall meeting Monday, MU officials and students said race wasn’t dead on campus, and vowed to punish those guilty of putting hundreds of cotton balls outside the Black Culture Center on Friday.
But as of Monday, MU Police had no leads on who committed the apparent hate crime.
Hundreds of people packed the Black Culture Center to discuss the incident. While mostly peaceful, one student complained that Chancellor Brady Deaton’s e-mail about the incident wasn’t worded strongly enough. Others complained that it shouldn’t have taken an apparent hate crime to get the campus talking about racial issues.
MU Police Capt. Brian Weimer says a witness saw two men running from the scene around 2 a.m. Weimer said the police began to clean-up the area after taking pictures of the crime.
“It’s a damn shame. I thought we were past this,” said MU student Andre Brown as he looked at the Center’s cotton ball covered front lawn Friday.
Brown says the cotton balls are a reference to slavery.
Another student, Kyle Cheney, said this was not the first act of racism he’s experience while at the University of Missouri.
“My freshman year I was walking and two men shouted the n-word at me and kept driving”.
The Black Culture Center decided to leave the balls of cotton in the front lawn throughout the day so students could observe.
MU Chancellor Brady Deaton sent an email to campus Friday afternoon about the incident. He said the vandalism is a “despicable action” and urged anyone with information to contact the police.
Deaton mentioned in the email that the Legions of Black Collegians will hold a town hall meeting at 5 p.m. on Monday.
Last updated: 6:15 p.m. Mar. 2, 2010
