Missouri system gets interim chief

Retired black administrator selected to lead after protests

Michael Middleton takes his seat at a news conference Thursday at the Columbia campus after the University of Missouri board named him interim president of the university system.
Michael Middleton takes his seat at a news conference Thursday at the Columbia campus after the University of Missouri board named him interim president of the university system.

COLUMBIA, Mo. -- The University of Missouri's governing board on Thursday appointed a recently retired senior administrator from its Columbia campus to be the university system's interim president.

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AP/Columbia Daily Tribune

Michael Middleton speaks Thursday at a news conference after the University of Missouri Board of Curators named him interim president of the university system at University Hall in Columbia, Mo.

Michael Middleton, 68, takes over for Tim Wolfe, who resigned abruptly Monday after student-led protests over his administration's handling of racial complaints.

Middleton, who is black, retired as deputy chancellor of the Columbia campus in August and took on the role of deputy chancellor emeritus. He had been working part time with the campus's chancellor, R. Bowen Loftin, on a plan to increase inclusion and diversity at the school.

Loftin also announced Monday that he would be stepping down at the end of the year for a different role at the school. His and Wolfe's resignations came after 30 black members of the football team gave a big boost to the protest movement by vowing not to take part in team activities until Wolfe was gone.

MU Policy Now, a student group made up of graduate and professional students, had been pushing for Middleton's appointment.

"Given the recent turmoil, Deputy Chancellor Emeritus Middleton is a strong transitional figure," the group wrote in a letter of endorsement posted on its Facebook page and sent to curators. Several student organizations signed the recommendation letter, including the Legion of Black Collegians.

Middleton has a bachelor's degree from Missouri and became one of the first black graduates of the law school in 1971. He worked with the federal government in Washington and was a trial attorney in the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division before joining the university law faculty in 1985.

He also helped found the Legion of Black Collegians, a student group involved in the current protest, and he participated in previous campus protests for civil rights and against the Vietnam War.

He was interim vice provost for minority affairs and faculty development starting in 1997, and a year later was named deputy chancellor.

In that role, he was credited with turning women's studies and black studies programs into their own departments.

Meanwhile, a man accused of posting online threats to shoot blacks on the Columbia campus was expected to appear in court via a video link from jail, where he's being held.

Hunter Park, 19, a sophomore at the University of Missouri System campus in Rolla, is charged with making a terroristic threat, which is punishable by up to seven years in prison.

The threatening posts showed up Tuesday on the anonymous location-based messaging app Yik Yak, and led to some classes being canceled.

Campus police officer Dustin Heckmaster said in a probable-cause statement that YikYak willingly gave him the cellphone number that Tuesday's poster had used to create the account from which the threats originated. AT&T later told investigators that the number was Park's and that cellphone towers showed that the postings came from the Rolla area, the officer wrote.

University of Missouri-Columbia police records show the department had contact with Park in January, Heckmaster wrote without elaborating. Those records noted that Park was a student at Missouri University of Science and Technology in Rolla, where Heckmaster confronted Park early Wednesday in the computer-science major's dorm room.

Heckmaster wrote that Park admitted the posts were "inappropriate." Heckmaster said he asked if the threats amounted to "saber rattling," and Park responded, "pretty much."

When questioned specifically what he meant by the phrase, "Some of you are alright. Don't go to campus tomorrow," Park "smiled and stated, 'I was quoting something.'"

When asked why, Park said, "I don't know. I just ... deep interest," Heckmaster wrote.

Authorities also are investigating another threat on YikYak, this one leveled at the Rolla campus by someone saying, "I'm gonna shoot up this school." And police at the Columbia campus say someone spray-painted over part of a sign early Thursday at the black culture center. They were reviewing video surveillance from the area, a school spokesman said.

Months of protests culminated in a tumultuous week on the Columbia campus.

Back in September, the student government president reported that people shouted racial slurs at him from a passing pickup, galvanizing the protest movement. Last week, a graduate student went on a hunger strike to demand the resignation of Wolfe over his handling of racial complaints.

Then more than 30 members of the Missouri football team refused to practice or play in support of the hunger striker. Those developments came to a head Monday with the resignation of Wolfe and Loftin.

At schools across the country, leaders of student groups say the Missouri protests are emboldening them to take a harder line.

"It shows administrations that this is something that they need to take seriously," said Eshe Sherley, a senior at Yale University, where more than 1,000 people joined a march this week in solidarity with members of minority groups. "It also shows students that the work they're doing isn't in vain."

Black students at the University of Michigan, who make up only about 4 percent of the student body, have pressured the administration to increase diversity.

Students at more than 20 colleges have planned solidarity demonstrations this week, including at Harvard, Columbia and Syracuse universities. Students at Loyola University in Chicago and other schools are preparing a list of demands for their administrators.

Hundreds of students walked out of class Wednesday at Smith College in Northampton, Mass., and at New York's Ithaca College to protest racial injustice on campus and to support minority-group students across the country. Black alumni at Georgia Tech are crafting a letter warning the university president to stay committed to diversity.

Information for this article was contributed by Jim Suhr, Jim Salter, Rhonda Shafner and Collin Binkley of The Associated Press.

A Section on 11/13/2015

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