AN ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS OF Emma L. Larkins for the degree of Master of Arts in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies presented on August 26, 2019. Title: “The Struggle Continues”: An Analysis of the Concerned Student 1950 Demands at the University of Missouri Abstract approved: ______________________________________________________ Ronald L. Mize In the fall 2015, students at the University of Missouri embarked upon an extended series of protests aimed at calling out the University’s failure to address recent racist incidents against Black students and a larger oppressive campus culture. The protests prompted the creation of a student group led largely by Black students, Concerned Student 1950. This thesis analyses the set of eight demands issued by Concerned Student 1950 to the MU administration with the aim of transforming the campus culture for marginalized students. Using a Critical Discourse Analysis framework, the study aims to understand the historical conditions at the state and university level which contributed to the campus environment in 2015 to which the student activists’ demands sought to address and hoped to change. My analysis finds that when examined through the lens of Critical Race Theory, it becomes evident that the “often silenced history of racism and discrimination” that the students write about in the context of Mizzou is in direct relationship to the history of the state of Missouri. © Copyright by Emma L. Larkins August 26, 2019 All Rights Reserved “The Struggle Continues”: An Analysis of the Concerned Student 1950 Demands at the University of Missouri by Emma L. Larkins A THESIS submitted to Oregon State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Presented August 26, 2019 Commencement June 2020 Master of Arts thesis of Emma L. Larkins presented on August 26, 2019. APPROVED: Major Professor, representing Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Director of the School of Language, Culture, and Society Dean of the Graduate School I understand that my thesis will become part of the permanent collection of Oregon State University libraries. My signature below authorizes release of my thesis to any reader upon request. Emma L. Larkins, Author ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am mindful that while this project falls under my name, it could not have been possible without the support of a number of individuals. I am thankful for the quiet leadership of Dr. Ron Mize, my chair, who helped make this project possible and personally fulfilling. Thank you for keeping me in the lines. Thank you also to my committee members: Dr. Janet Lee, Kryn Freehling-Burton, and Dr. Janet Nishihara for your insight, encouragement, and compassion. I am grateful to the WGSS faculty, my MA cohort, and classmates and friends who have graciously let me think out loud about this project – I have learned so much from the WGSS community and am endlessly inspired by each member of it. Thank you to my family, closest friends, and my jaan for their support, grace, and patience with me. You are all my world and why I do what I do. TABLE OF CONTENTS Page 1 Introduction...……………………………………………………………………… 1 University of Missouri Student Demographics in 2015……………………… 3 Concerned Student 1950 and a Timeline of Events……………………………4 Research Questions………………………………………………………….. 16 Organization of the Chapters………………………………………………… 17 2 Theory and Literature Review……………………………………………………. 19 Critical Race Theory: History and Tenets…………………………………… 19 Student Activism in U.S. Higher Education…………………………………. 24 3 Missouri’s Historical and Legal Context…………………………………………. 29 State Origins: The Founding of Missouri……………………………………. 29 Establishment of the University of Missouri………………………………….34 Trials of Desegregation………………………………………………………. 35 Ferguson and #BLM Movement………………………………………………38 4 Methodology.……………………………………………………………………... 44 Overview of CDA……………………………………………………………. 44 Data Sources…………………………………………………………………. 47 Analysis……………………………………………………………………… 47 Researcher’s Positionality…………………………………………………… 48 5 Analysis…………………………………………………………………………… 51 “The Struggle Continues”: Close Reading of the Concerned Student 1950 Letter 51 We Demand: Concerned Student 1950’s List of Demands…………………. 55 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page After the Demands……………………………………………………….. 66 6 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………... 70 Bibliography ……………………………………………………………………….. 73 Appendix ………………………………………………………………………….... 82 1 Chapter 1: Introduction Introduction to the project Student activism is deeply imbricated in higher education; student-led movements have existed nearly as long as higher education itself. A rise in national demonstrations and protests against police brutality led in particular by Black Lives Matter, inspired a resurgence of student- led activism on college campuses across the United States beginning in 2014. Student activists led efforts demanding institutional accountability around racist incidents, memorials, and campus environments for students of color. Student activists drew upon traditional methods of civil disobedience such as marches, sit ins, boycotts, hunger strikes, and more to demand change and brought national attention to their efforts through the strategic use of social media. The University of Missouri garnered national attention in 2015 due to the prolonged student efforts which included an eight-day hunger strike by one student leader and the football team’s boycott, all of which culminated in the resignation of two of the university’s highest-ranking administrators. Beyond the bounds of the Mizzou campus, the events at Mizzou had national reverberations. Students at over 100 universities across the Unites States built upon the template of the Mizzou student demands to make similar demands. On some campuses, demands were not made, but students began to speak out against racism and marginalization experienced on their campuses. In November 2015, I sat in Gill Colosseum on the Oregon State University (OSU) campus, one of the 500 other silent listeners taking in student stories of racialized micro aggressions, violence, and injustices experienced in classrooms and other campus spaces. All of us in the audience, OSU community members of some type, had received the invitation from the organizing students to sit down and listen, to really listen to their stories and understand what 2 students of color and those with marginalized identities experience. I was only five months out of my graduate program in higher education administration and still grappling with the transition from student to practitioner. Unlike the hypothetical conversations in a classroom of how to foster student dialogue and create spaces for student voices, the student organizers on their own were leading the change efforts that they needed. The event’s student organizers reiterated an important lesson around time and place and positionality; in this moment, students did not need my advocacy efforts or my interventions, they wanted me to sit down and listen. Prior to this moment, student activism was something firmly rooted in histories. The text from which I learned about the creation of higher education introduced Harvard students’ 1766 butter revolt in the same chapter as the formation of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in the 1960s. The urgency of the Student of Color Speak Out brought student-led activism firmly into the present for me, beginning my ongoing interest in the relationship between universities and student activists and what it looks like to be in solidarity with students while also a part of (and recipient of benefits from) the university infrastructure. At the time of the Speak Out, I had been closely following accounts of student protests at the University of Missouri (MU or Mizzou) related to on-campus racism but did not initially put the OSU and MU events in relationship to one another. The OSU Speak Out and subsequent demands were part of a nationwide trend of students at over 100 campuses building from the MU protests to engage in conversations about racism on their own campuses. The widespread use of social media made it easy for students to share, in real time, the realities of the climate on their campuses and connect with others who may have similar experiences. The hashtag #StandWithMizzou exemplifies this dynamic; the thread documents messages and images of 3 college students across the nation organizing, marching, standing and sitting in, raising their fists in solidarity with the Mizzou activists. Experiencing OSU students connecting with a message being led from Missouri prompted me to begin asking questions related to student organizing, the relationship between historical narratives and the present, and administrative responses to demands for change – lines of questioning that led me to take up this project. This study aims to disrupt the notion that the Mizzou protests emerged from a single isolated event; rather, the contemporary conditions that prompted the protests are connected to the larger history of racial injustice at the university and state level. Though this study focuses entirely upon Mizzou and the list of demands, the process of constructing ties between the historical context and the present provides a model that could be applied to other campuses and activist movements. University of Missouri Student Demographics in 2015 The University of Missouri (MU or Mizzou) is located in Columbia, Missouri. Mizzou is one of four universities that comprise the University of Missouri System (UM) and is governed at this state-wide