Enrollment at the University of Missouri (Mizzou) has continued plummeting, with the 25 percent decline reported in 2016 increasing to a 35 percent decline, according to a figure reported Sunday.
Mizzou experienced a 25 percent decline in freshman enrollment and suffered a $32 million hit to its budget in spring 2016. The university’s freshman enrollment deficit is at 35 percent as of Monday, according to The New York Times.
Allegations of racism on campus from the student group #ConcernedStudent1950 in November 2015 led to the school’s football team refusing to play until the school president stepped down (he did) and a protest at which mass media professor Melissa Click called for “muscle” to forcibly remove a student reporter from the area. (RELATED: Mizzou Professor Calls For ‘Muscle’ To Help Remove Reporter Covering Protests [VIDEO]
Mizzou has eliminated more than 400 positions and closed seven dorms on campus.
“The general consensus was that it was because of the aftermath of what happened in November 2015,” Mun Choi, Mizzou’s president, told The New York Times. “There were students from both in state and out of state that just did not apply, or those who did apply but decided not to attend.”
While the school has not yet released freshman enrollment for fall 2017, the fall 2016 numbers were down 21 percent for white freshmen and 42 percent for black freshmen.
“Being ‘the other’ in every classroom and every situation is exhausting,” Whitney Matewe, a rising black senior at Mizzou, told TheNYT. Matewe said that she was disappointed when her friend’s boyfriend told her she looked like Aunt Jemima and her friend did not protest the characterization.
Meanwhile, Aly Zuhler, a Jewish student whose mother and cousins had attended the school, decided not to apply after a swastika made from feces appeared on a dorm bathroom wall, an event which spurred the campus protests.
“The discrimination wasn’t against white people, but I didn’t want to be that person who I guess was stereotyped because I was white,” said Tyler Morris, a white student who decided to attend Missouri Valley College instead of Mizzou.
The Daily Caller News Foundation reached out to Mizzou for comment, but received none in time for publication.
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