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Politically Speaking: Taking stock at a tumultuous time for the University of Missouri system

Students gather on the University of Missouri campus to show support for Jonathan L. Butler, the 25-year-old graduate student who is holding a hunger strike on campus in Columbia, Missouri on November 7, 2015.
Bill Greenblatt I UPI
Students gather on the University of Missouri campus to show support for Jonathan L. Butler, the 25-year-old graduate student who is holding a hunger strike on campus.

On a special edition of the Politically Speaking podcast, St. Louis Public Radio reporters Jason Rosenbaum, Tim Lloyd and Kameel Stanley welcomed three journalists from Columbia-based KBIA to take stock of a series of events that rocked the University of Missouri system.

The national media descended upon Columbia last week after University of Missouri system President Tim Wolfe and University of Missouri-Columbia Chancellor Bowen Loftin resigned. These resignations occurred after a movement arose over how African-Americans were treated on campus – culminating with a seven-day hunger strike by graduate student Jonathan Butler.

But as noted by KBIA news director Ryan Famuliner and reporters Bram Sable-Smith and Rebecca Smith, this isn’t a story that appeared out of nowhere. It was, in many respects, a culmination of years – if not decades – of racial tensions at the University of Missouri-Columbia and within the city of Columbia.

So now that many in the national media packed up and went on to the next story, we decided it would be instructive to look at the bigger takeaways from past couple of weeks. Here are some key points we hit on during the show:

Follow Jason Rosenbaum on Twitter: @jrosenbaum

Follow Tim Lloyd on Twitter: @TimSLloyd

Follow Kameel Stanley on Twitter: @cornandpotatoes

Follow Ryan Famuliner on Twitter: @RyanFamuliner

Follow Bram Sable-Smith on Twitter: @besables

Follow Rebecca Smith on Twitter: @Becky_A_Smith

Music: “This Song Was Brought to You By a Falling Bomb” by Thursday  

Jason is the politics correspondent for St. Louis Public Radio.
Tim Lloyd was a founding host of We Live Here from 2015 to 2018 and was the Senior Producer of On Demand and Content Partnerships until Spring of 2020.
Kameel Stanley co-hosted and co-produced the We Live Here podcast—covering race, class, power, and poverty in the St. Louis Region—from 2015 to 2018.