MU claims recovery from racial protests, boasting another record fundraising year

Four years after student protests over claims of a racist campus culture sent the University of Missouri into a downward spiral for enrollment and fundraising, college leaders on Wednesday announced record giving they say proves the school has regained its footing.

MU has reached $200 million in gifts for this academic year, including pledges for future funds, up from the previous one-year record of $170 million set in 2016.

Vice Chancellor for Advancement Tom Hiles credited MU fundraisers and the generosity of university supporters, saying, “I will put our team and Mizzou donors up against anyone in the country.”

This year’s fundraising lifts the “Mizzou: Our Time to Lead” campaign to more than $1.2 billion. University officials said last year they hope to reach the goal of $1.3 billion by 2020.

This represents the second consecutive year that the Columbia campus has announced that its fundraising has broken a record. Last July donors put the campaign over $1 billion for the first time.

“It shows the confidence and love people have for this institution,” said Chancellor Alexander N. Cartwright. “We have a lot of real positive momentum going on. We are going to keep it moving forward.”

The new money will go toward such things as strengthening MU’s endowment, the creation of signature centers and institutes; supporting research with new and renovated facilities; and developing student success initiatives, including scholarships and study abroad programs.

Among the gifts was one announced on Wednesday from Charles R. Wall, an alum who pledged $4.5 million from the Wall Family Foundation to the School of Law.

“I want all future University of Missouri School of Law graduates to know they can compete with graduates from any law school in the country,” Wall said in a statement. From the gift, $2 million is going to scholarships for law students. Another $2.5 million will go toward two faculty positions: a Wall Family Chair in Corporate Law and Governance and the new Wall Family Chair in U.S. Constitutional Law.

The Our Time to Lead campaign was launched in October 2015, just one month before student protests over alleged racism erupted on the campus.

The protests, including a hunger strike and a promised game boycott by MU football players, led to the resignation of the University of Missouri System president and the campus chancellor.

MU officials admit the protests, and how the university responded, had damaged the school’s image. The following year, incoming freshman enrollment dropped below 5,000 students for the first time since 2007. The 2017 freshmen enrollment of 4,134 students was the lowest in more than a decade, and fundraising leaders said that over those two years MU lost some donors.

In May, MU reported that 5,460 students had paid enrollment deposits to be freshmen next semester, a more than 15% increase over the same time last year. Those numbers still haven’t reached the 2015 level, when 6,191 first-time students had enrolled at MU.

“We learned from those experiences and we are a much stronger because of it,” Hiles said. “ We learned you have to have diverse perspectives and diverse groups at the table for those discussions. Once our donors saw new leadership with new direction they started to invest again.”

This story was originally published July 10, 2019 at 12:47 PM.