Shepherded Sheep Attack Wolfe

Instincts are a journalist’s best friend. In the absence of concrete information sometimes all a reporter has is his/her instincts borne of curiosity, developed by training and honed by experience.

My instincts say the kids at Missouri were pointed toward the right, vulnerable target. A quick, simple perusal of former Mizzou president Tim Wolfe’s Wikipedia page provides the first clues why the Black Lives Matter offshoot – Concerned Student 1950 – had little trouble unseating him.  

Wolfe, a Mizzou grad with a lone bachelor’s degree, possessed no real understanding of academic culture. He was the second consecutive businessman – former Sprint CEO Gary Forsee was the first – to lead Missouri. Forsee served three tumultuous years before resigning. Wolfe survived for nearly four. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch editorial board ripped Missouri’s curators for hiring Wolfe, a former vice president at IBM and division president at Novell Americas. Warren Erdman, chairman of the curators, plucked Wolfe out of the unemployment line.

“The guy they hired has no academic experience. How is he supposed to know how to run a university?” complained Mizzou English professor Karen Piper in the Post-Dispatch story published in December of 2011.

Faculty also complained about the secrecy of the hiring process.

“They kept it so secret. People who I would have thought would know something didn’t know anything,” griped math professor Stephen Montgomery-Smith in the Post-Dispatch in 2011.

“I find it kind of disturbing that faculty weren’t involved. I never heard of any finalists, even,” added Piper in the same story.

Erdman, a former staffer for Senator Kit Bond and career political maneuverer/quasi lobbyist, planted the presidency idea in Wolfe’s mind during a shared bus ride in August of 2011. Wolfe had never considered it. But this is how good-old-boy political jobs get passed around – the back of some smoky room or vehicle – and Wolfe is a good old boy with deep roots in Columbia. His parents taught at Mizzou. He quarterbacked the 1975 Rock Bridge High state championship football team. An avid hunter, Wolfe owns hunting and fishing licenses in four different states. He’s not your typical, hoity-toity educator.  

That explains how in 2015, just a 90-minute drive from ground zero (Ferguson) of Black Lives Matter, Wolfe could ignore the concerns of the school’s black, gay, homecoming king and student body president, Payton Head. A sophisticated academic would recognize which way the wind is currently blowing and how little wind it takes to blow a man off a tree limb as high and shaky as the branch marked “unpopular president of a state school.” A savvy educator would connect the dots between Concerned Student 1950 and Black Lives Matter, take a gander at the smoke still hovering 100 miles to the east and understand the significance of teenage versions of DeRay Mckesson matriculating to little old Mizzou.

Wolfe’s experienced and clever enemies certainly saw the easily ignited possibilities.  

This all started because Head reached out to the president’s office, upset when a passerby in a truck called him a n***** and Wolfe did not respond. Everything mushroomed from there. The student newspaper sent up a flare, writing about the original incident. A school president works for the students and must be responsive to their needs, even the ones that seem trivial.  

Missouri head football coach Gary Pinkel, an experienced university employee, realized that and supported his players who joined the protest of Wolfe. Pinkel, unlike Wolfe, earned his job. Erdman handed Wolfe his.

Pinkel likely had additional, self-serving motivation. His football team is mired in a four-game losing streak, having scored three, six, three and 13 points in the slide. His freshman savior QB, Drew Lock, has completed 41 percent of his passes during the stretch. Players within the locker room want to see third-stringer Marvin Zanders get snaps behind center. Zanders is black. His lack of playing time is a divisive issue inside the Mizzou locker room, according to a source, and a symptom of larger concerns related to the treatment of black players.

Pinkel has never shown a reluctance to play a black QB. Brad Smith and James Franklin starred in Pinkel’s system. But the highly recruited Lock is a home-state hero, hailing from Lee’s Summit, a Kansas City suburb. Lock’s grandfather and dad both played at Mizzou.

Missouri head coach Gary Pinkel (right) stood by his players in their boycott.

Pinkel’s solidarity with his players during the threatened boycott signals his desire to tamp down unrest within his locker room. (On Sunday and Monday, I requested a response from/interview with Pinkel, a coach I respect from my time in Kansas City, but he declined.) Pinkel runs the major football program closest to Ferguson, Mo. He’s operating a Division I program in one of the nation’s most complicated racial environments for young people. He needs a level of administrative support Mizzou’s clueless, good-old-boy president was slow to provide.    

My instincts say Wolfe’s non-responsiveness was pervasive throughout the campus and left other employees feeling improperly supported in a volatile environment. Career businessmen are not as in tune with the whims of young people as career educators. Millennials – particularly the subset of left-wing, non-tolerant “safe-spacers” – are a special breed. Too many of them have been babysat by Xbox and iPad, shown affection by Air Jordan and Burberry and given a life philosophy through sermons preached on their Beats by Dre.

They’ve been ignored and neglected. It should come as no surprise Concerned Student 1950 demanded additional access to mental health professionals and the hiring of more black professors. They’re starved for attention and role models.

Young people – of all colors and economic levels – are not nurtured the way they used to be. They’re far more sensitive and vulnerable than previous generations. What rolled off our shoulders crushes them. They see themselves as unwilling to take shit. We see them as soft and unprepared for a world that has never once been fair or concerned with individual feelings.  

An unqualified IBM salesman didn’t stand a chance at Mizzou in 2015. Things you don’t earn, you don’t respect. Wolfe’s lack of respect damaged his support from faculty, staff and the politicians who irresponsibly put him in place. Everyone – including Republicans and Democrats – jumped ship on Wolfe as soon as the students and athletes presented the opportunity.

Kids aren’t stupid, and Wolfe’s enemies made no secret of their disdain for him, as some of his faculty opponents orchestrated the human shield that surrounded the kids doing the protesting. Wolfe was easy prey.  

Concerned Student 1950 and the football players will receive the credit and the derision for Wolfe’s removal. My gut says they were just pawns in a much bigger game. They’re dancing in the streets in celebration of a victory their manipulators really won.

Photo credits: Brian Davidson/Getty Images (top); Michael B. Thomas/Getty Images (bottom)