Student Black Lives Matter protesters loudly demanded that the country pay attention to them during massive demonstrations at the University of Missouri this November.
And it looks like those students — and the university officials that coddled them — have gotten their wish. Because lawmakers were paying attention, and they’re about to send a message.
State legislative leaders say funding for the University of Missouri is going to be cut.
“The perception is that there’s a lot of things that went wrong, and there’s going to be a price to pay,” Republican Senate President Pro Tem Ron Richard said Tuesday.
Recently, two Missouri legislators also proposed that universities revoke the scholarships of athletes if they go on strike.
That’s just one example of the backlash after members of the university’s football team threatened to strike and joined protests over the administration’s handling of racial tensions on campus. Top university officials, including university system President Tim Wolf, later resigned.
The Missouri protests prompted demonstrations of support at universities around the country, and the upheaval shocked and embarrassed some alumni, as well as members of the state legislature. With weeks before the 2016 state legislative session is scheduled to begin on Jan. 6, some lawmakers, most of them Republicans, say the university will face consequences for how leaders handled the protests.
The university “coddled the students and gave them everything they wanted,” said Republican Rep. Kurt Bahr, who co-sponsored the bill on student athletes’ scholarships. He said the university should have revoked football players’ scholarships if they didn’t practice or play.
The backlash comes at a time when the University of Missouri’s relationship with the Legislature already was tense. The school this past year faced criticism from some GOP lawmakers who questioned agreements between the Columbia campus and a local Planned Parenthood clinic that had offered medication-induced abortions. Republicans hold supermajorities in both chambers of the state legislature.
A major lever they could use to punish the state’s flagship university is money.
Funding for the University of Missouri is “going to take a haircut,” Senate leader Richard said.
About 15 percent of the system’s budget this fiscal year came from state appropriations.
The Associated Press contributed to this article
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