On Saturday, over 30 University of Missouri football players announced on social media that they would no longer go to practices or play in games until Mizzou President Tim Wolfe resigned.

This news came after Jonathan Butler, graduate student at Mizzou, began a hunger strike in protest of Wolfe, saying he would “not consume any food or nutritional sustenance at the expense of (his) health until Tim Wolfe is removed from office.” JT

Butler, the football players and other African-American students protest in various ways because they blamed Wolfe for the school’s failure to address the increasingly apparent racism on the Columbia campus. For months, black student groups have claimed that racial slurs and other racist acts on Mizzou’s primarily white, 35,000-studentJT campus went unaddressed by school officials.

On September 12, Payton Head, senior at Mizzou and president of the Missouri Students Association, was walking around campus when a person in a truck repeatedly shouted the “n-word” at him through his window. Head posted a status on Facebook about his experience and it went viral.JT

Mizzou’s lack of a response to his post was disheartening.

At Mizzou’s homecoming parade October 10, Wolfe refused to get out of his car to speak with black protestors who tried to get his attention. The students were surrounding his car and removed by police.

Yesterday, Wolfe resigned. Hours later, Mizzou chancellor R. Bowen Loftin announced he would be stepping down at the end of the year.JT

A New York Times article quotes Wolfe, “I take full responsibility for this frustration,” he added, “and I take full responsibility for the inaction that has occurred.”

These protests may be the most dramatic and recent action against racism on American college campuses, but it is not the only one. Universities around the country have housed many protests in the 15 months since Michael Brown was shot by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri — including a Black Lives Matter march on our own campus last year.

And even as the Black Lives Matter movement and others like it have drawn attention to lingering racism in the United States, racism is still prevalent in our country and on college campuses.

Many University students may have read about the news happening at Mizzou and compared it to our University. Though some students, like myself, may have initially expressed relief that our University seems relatively absent of racism, students are wrong to make that assertion.

I have learned how mistaken I was in my own misunderstanding through speaking with peers and other students need to see the ignorance in this belief as well.

There are many situations on campus that project or continue racist attitudes — be it the long-standing presence of the Chief, this publication’s printing of a racist cartoon, the presence of a Confederate Flag outside a fraternity house or any number of other indiscretions.

Eric Walker, sophomore in LAS explains that he has had certain students switch up their dialects when speaking with him to dumb down their language, which comes across as racist even if that is not the intention. When this happens, he reminds people “you can talk like yourself.”

Brandon Robinson, freshman in LAS, has had similar interactions, namely with a professor who teaches a class in which he is the only African-American student. “Every time I come in there, I feel like he (picks) on me … he asks me questions like I haven’t read or something,” he said. This makes him angry because he said it isn’t the case.

Our university is fairly diverse demographically. According to the Office of Inclusion and Intercultural Relations, people who are African American make up 5 percent of this campus’ population, Asian students compromise 14 percent and we have a Hispanic make up of 8 percent. 22 percent of the students on our campus are international students.

However, through this diversity we are not integrating.

Gabby Maloney, fresman in ACES explained the lack of integration when you walk through the Quad. “When you look at different cultural groups — African-Americans, Caucasians, Asians — you see them talking in their own groups with each other and I think that has a lot to do with feeling more comfortable talking to their own race.”

Additional examples of this can be seen if you look at the stereotypes surrounding university housing, where Pennsylvania and Florida Avenue Residence halls are perceived to house mostly African-American or international students, whereas the Ikenberry commons are typically believed to house white students.

These types of separation are difficult to see with the naked eye, but students need to become more attuned to these racial barriers and notice where they occur on campus. The recent events taking place at Mizzou prove that ignoring issues of racism, whether obvious or subtle, is not an acceptable solution.

Racism, whether purposeful or not, enables people to make judgments about others on the basis of the way they look. Racism alone allows people to justify assumptions made about different types of people.

It is vital that everyone sees what is happening at University of Missouri is not an issue tied only to that particular campus. We have similar issues here that just don’t happen to be in the news at this time. We can learn something about changing racism from Mizzou. They fought hard and made a very big difference by banding together as a student body.

And it is necessary that we are constantly and actively learning about and working towards a more inclusive environment so that we can one day say that our school is completely unprejudiced and non-racist.

Leah is a freshman in Media.

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