Mizzou has shown before it can successfully address protests, with shanties and all

Get ready to reassess if you thought the racial tensions and national media glare that descended upon the University of Missouri last fall were dramatic.

Child’s play in comparison to what the university went through in the mid-’80s. The issue then was a student-backed effort to force the University of Missouri System to divest millions in investments tied to the racist apartheid government of South Africa.

All the same players were involved: alumni concerns, the warring perspectives of state legislators, conflicted faculty, administrators who both worked well with student protesters and those who saw them as pests, curators with similarly divided views. And, of course, activist students who set up campsites on campus and refused to budge until their concerns were met.

This is important because a university committee is weighing a nearly 70-year-old rule that governs setting up tents and overnight protests on campus. The rule could be used to squash future campus protests.

Perspective can help. The magnitude of what was being challenged in the 1980s and the longevity of the protests then are incomparable to last year. And MU survived.

Last November, members of the group Concerned Student 1950 and its sympathizers spent a week in tents, protesting campus intolerance.

Compare that to the year students spent in shantytown huts constructed on campus beginning in the fall of 1986. The huts were to illustrate the conditions that black people were enduring in South Africa.

At least three times, university police tore down the structures of wood, plastic and cardboard, according to Kansas City Star accounts. Students kept rebuilding. In February 1987, more than 40 protesters were arrested, charged with trespassing and hauled to jail. Another time, 400 people joined the protest.

In late June 1987, someone burned one of the huts. That led to round-the-clock protection for the shantytown.

Back then, administrators struggled with whether the activist students had a permit, whether they were a student group or not, and what would overstep free speech. All similar to what the Concerned Student 1950 group faced.

The rule under consideration now essentially forbids camping overnight on campus. It’s been in place since 1949. It might have been adopted to address a severe shortage in student housing. Thanks to veterans using the GI Bill, Mizzou’s enrollment more than doubled after the war, according to former Kansas City Star reporter Brian Burnes, who wrote the book “Mizzou 175.”

The camping ban was not invoked to dismantle the Concerned Student 1950 tents last fall. And it shouldn’t be used to kill future dissent, or to avoid media attention.

Rather, the university and its disgruntled students should take a cue from the past and work on resolutions, with patience and an understanding that meaningful change doesn’t happen quickly.

Contrary to what some protesters wish to believe, working with the system that currently exists is necessary. Sure, you might get a few heads to roll by loud dissent, but that’s not systemic change. Last year, the system president and MU’s chancellor stepped down amid the turmoil.

In the same vein of pulling on the big-boy pants, the Missouri legislature needs to stand down from its attempts to punish a whole university system for the antics of a few by cutting funding.

In 2015, it was far too enticing for both media and critics of the students to get caught up in the personalities involved, the antics of a professor and a hunger-striking protester.

Lost was the issue: the inclusion and safety of differing races, ethnicities and viewpoints on campus.

Again, the past is helpful. A forum was held at MU in April titled ’86-’87 MU Shantytown Occupation: Legacy of a Successful Protest.

Pressures to divest had begun years earlier. Then-university president C. Peter Magrath called the system of apartheid “reprehensible” in 1985, but also noted the complexity: “These investment questions involve moral, legal, political and economic implications.”

What followed was a lengthy process of public hearings, economic studies, the work of committees, the slow shift of public opinion and, yes, vibrant protests.

Curators had fiscal responsibilities to uphold, along with meeting the humanitarian need of South Africans. What they decided would affect endowments, pensions and student scholarships, let alone the financial standing of the multiple-campus university system.

By December 1987, curators approved a five-year plan to divest about $75 million from university portfolios worth $576 million. A moral, righteous path had been found.

How do you measure a protest’s success? The passage of time helps. Incidents that court glaring media attention and controversy today might be lauded in the future.

Keep that in mind before quickly passing judgment on efforts to manage campus protests and the controversies that the Concerned Student 1950 group highlighted.

This story was originally published May 18, 2016 at 6:59 PM with the headline "Mizzou has shown before it can successfully address protests, with shanties and all."