Emails from the University of Missouri’s computer network show that the activists who led last semester’s eruption of Black Lives Matter protests demanded generators and a fire pit to keep themselves warm and cozy as they camped out in tents on a campus quad during chilly November nights.
“The students tenting/demonstrating are asking for a generator for their campsite,” Noor Azizan-Gardner, Mizzou’s chief diversity officer wrote, according to email obtained by HeatStreet (a Dow Jones website) and National Review.
“Is there any way that we can help with this?” Azizan-Gardner queried. “Let me know if this is even possible.”
The date of the email is Friday, Nov. 6, four days after Jonathan Butler, a twentysomething graduate and the son of a millionaire railroad executive, declared a hunger strike.
The previous evening had been a brisk one for the campers. The low temperature on campus was about 39 degrees, according to Weather Underground.
Gary Ward, vice chancellor for operations, responded in just two minutes to the generator request.
“We got them power this morning,” Ward wrote.
The activists remained unsatisfied, however.
Not four hours later, Azizan-Gardner sent another email — this one copying (now former) chancellor R. Bowen Loftin — explaining that protesters needed “heat and refrigeration” for the weekend.
“I just heard from the students that they have one power strip with 8 outlets on it and it’s connected to one of the power sources on the quad,” Azizan-Gardner advised, according to HeatStreet. “The students are concerned that they may trip the circuitry if they overload it. So, they have texted me that they need to have more power outlets and/or a small generator so that they can have heat and refrigeration this weekend. Please let me know how we can provide this for them.”
Ward also responded to this email, expressing concerns about safety, about unduly burdening taxpayer-funded employees during their free time and about the protesters destroying the taxpayer-funded campus.
“I am very concerned with providing a gas generator for safety concerns,” Ward wrote. “That also requires us to have a person come in and keep them in gas. I very much appreciate our students and their right to protest but they are right now killing grass and putting stakes in the ground where we have underground sprinkler system. No other group or individual have been allowed to set up home on our quad.”
The quad “really was not designed for a campsite,” Ward also observed.
Loftin, the $459,000-per-year chancellor, was unmoved by any Ward’s concerns, however.
In his own email, Loftin exhorted school officials to “handle power by providing a generator” or “access to more power from campus.”
Ward emailed back, telling his boss he would figure out how to provide weekend power for the protesters. He also wrote that the protesters had come up with yet another demand.
“They want a fire pit,” Ward wrote, according to HeatStreet.
Ward said he told the protesters he couldn’t deliver a fire hazard because it would be a fire hazard.
It’s unclear if school officials eventually capitulated on providing an open-air blaze to keep protesters toasty.
Last semester’s days-long, racism-related protest on Mizzou’s Columbia, Mo. campus involved groups of black activists marching around campus and camping out in tents on a quad. The protesters called themselves Concerned Student 1950. (The name relates to the year the first black student matriculated at Mizzou.)
Delusional students eventually became so dizzy with racism that they saw imaginary people wearing Ku Klux Klan hoods. (RELATED: The Biggest, Dumbest Race Hoaxes And Fake Hate Crimes On Campus In 2015)
The protest centered on Butler, who went on a six-day hunger strike at the beginning of November.
Butler’s goal, which he achieved, was to force then-MU system president Tim Wolfe to resign.
The protest gained strong momentum when he convinced 32 University of Missouri football players to pledge to boycott all team activities until Wolfe quit his job. (Ultimately, the team missed a single practice.) (RELATED: University Of Missouri Football Players BOYCOTT FOOTBALL Over Black Activist’s Hunger Strike)
In a letter to school officials posted (but no longer visible) on his Facebook page, Butler indicated that he began his hunger strike because someone in a pickup truck allegedly shouted a racist insult at a black student government member, because state law prevents Planned Parenthood from performing on-campus abortions and because someone drew a swastika with human feces in a dormitory bathroom. (RELATED: Here Is The Police Report From The Mizzou Poop Swastika Incident)
The protest also included a now-fired professor, Melissa Click, who was caught on video threatening a student cameraman with mob violence for attempting to cover on-campus protests. (RELATED: Newly-Surfaced Video Shows Melissa Click Yelling LIKE AN UNHINGED LUNATIC At Cops)
Applications for the fall 2016 academic year are down considerably at the University of Missouri. (RELATED: SURPRISE! Mizzou Sees Application Drop After Days Of Protests, Illusory Klan Hoods, Poop Swastika)
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