GOP senator on Mizzou: ‘Racism has no place in our society’

Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) said Monday that he hopes the University of Missouri becomes a role model for dealing with racial tensions.

“Racism has no place in our society,” he tweeted. 

{mosads}“It is my hope that the students, faculty, campus leadership and the University of Missouri System will have an open and meaningful dialogue that will become an example for the UM System campuses, the state and the country,” the Missouri lawmaker added.

University of Missouri System President Tim Wolfe resigned Monday morning amid controversy over the college’s handling of minority concerns.

“To my friends and my supporters that have been so gracious and have sent so many emails and texts and calls of support, I understand that you might be frustrated as well,” he said during a press conference on CBSN that morning.

“So, the question really is, why did we get to this very difficult situation?” Wolfe asked. “It is my belief that we stopped listening to each other. We didn’t respond or react.”

The Kansas City Star reported Monday that the Missouri Students Association sent a letter calling for Wolfe’s exit to the Missouri System Board of Curators Sunday evening. That organization represents 27,000 undergraduates at the school’s Columbia campus, the news publication said.

The letter criticized Wolfe’s handling of rising “tension and inequality with no systemic support” since the shooting of a black teenager by a white police officer in nearby Ferguson, Mo., last year. Michael Brown died following a confrontation with Officer Darren Wilson during the incident in August 2014.

Fox News reported Monday that faculty members are staging classroom walkouts over the next day in protest of the school’s work on racial issues.

More than two dozen football players, meanwhile, announced last weekend that they were not playing for the school unless Wolfe resigned.

African-American students have repeatedly pressured UM administrators over racially-insensitive incidents at the school’s campus, including the shouting of racial slurs.