Students are responding to the University of Missouri’s decision to change the name of its Welcome Black BBQ to the Welcome Black and Gold BBQ. This comes as the MU Faculty Council unanimously voted last month to support the university’s Black Studies Department’s formal complaint against the name change.
The Welcome Black BBQ had been an annual event that the University of Missouri that the Gaines/Oldham Black Culture Center hosts along with the Legion of Black Collegians and MU’s National Pan-Hellenic Council. It's meant to welcome new and returning Black students to campus.
But University System President Mun Choi said the university changed the name to make the event sound more inclusive. The university has maintained that it’s trying to stay ahead of the legislature.
“It is a national trend that we were seeing, and there were some universities that did not take proactive approaches, like Texas and Florida,” Choi said. “And in those universities, they ended up having to eliminate their entire departments and also lay off staff.”
In March, the University of Florida eliminated positions to comply with its state’s legislation that banned DEI, and the University of Texas at Austin did the same in April to comply with its legislature.
The GOBCC is run by and staffed by MU employees, which is why Choi said MU changed the BBQ’s name. But the university said no other LBC events will be affected because it is a student-run organization.
Carrington Peavy is the President of Legion of Black Collegians and says the Welcome Black BBQ was meant to provide a safe space to new and returning Black students.
“I just really critically worry about the sanctity of our spaces, like the sanctity of our organizations and if we’ll be able to host things without having to change something for somebody else,” Peavy said.
Patrice St. Jean, a returning student attending the BBQ, is a part of LBC’s Freshman Action Team.
“Being Black, being African American – however Black Americans want to identify themselves – in America, it’s radicalized and it’s political when it shouldn’t be,” St. Jean said, “We realized we need to be a community more now than ever because I think it is one of those things where you may see the siren from the distance but you don’t do anything, you gotta wait till it’s closer. But now, it's actually here right in front of us.”
For now, the university said it won’t change the names of other upcoming events, especially if they are purely student run. But students still feel confused or surprised by the threat of their events changing.
Vy Vu is the secretary of MU’s Asian American Association, or Triple A.
“It was just a little bit of a shock because we weren’t made aware of it until a week before school,” Vu said. “So that definitely delayed our planning process.”
MU accidentally left Triple A off an email chain informing student organizations of the change which would move them from the now dissolved IDE department to Student Affairs.
“Obviously we heard there might be restrictions what with we can and can’t do, but we heard that maybe one or two days ago,” Vu said in August. “I am sure we will hear the rest of it and what’s the final decision.”
Karina Franquiz is the community coordinator for the Association of Latin American Students, which was also absorbed by the Student Affairs division after the university dissolved its IDE division.
She said she’s only noticed managerial changes since the move, but that doesn’t completely alleviate her worries.
“With the removal of DEI initiatives, it's definitely I guess, like, a fear in the back of our heads that it will drive our numbers lower and stuff like that,” Franquiz said. “Just generally discourage people from attending events.”
Time will tell how other event names will shake out at the university.
But for now, students like Ashlee Cooper are working to protect safe spaces for Black students on campus.
“We have this community of people in this predominantly white institute, and we want you to gather here, we want you to feel safe here, feel like you have a community here,” Cooper said. “That doesn’t mean that we’re excluding you from everybody else.”
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