If Krystal is one of Knoxville's finest, then remind me never to order a burger in Eastern Tennessee.

The student's complaint, at it's core, is that the university's response to the swastika, as well as past incidents (two students covered the lawn of the Black Cultural Building with cotton balls) was not severe enough, and did not do enough to convince minority students that their feeling welcome at the university was a priority for the administration. This complaint was tied into stats about black students at Mizzou having much lower graduation rates, and asked for the university to take necessary steps to improve those numbers.

At it's core, minority students felt that the swastika issue--and the cotton ball issue, in which the student involved were able to plead guilty to. . .littering--were emblematic of a tenor on campus. It wasn't that hate crimes were rampant, but that the few instances of blatant racial issues underscored what they felt existed beneath the surface. They asked the administration to take their concerns seriously; in their estimation, the administration didn't do so, and they took drastic measures to make sure their viewpoints were heard.

It's important to understand that the president's resignation wasn't the goal, and criminal charges weren't the goal. Dialogue was the goal, and had the administration taken that seriously earlier, none of this happens. You can try and write this off as the actions of extremists, but I think it's worth asking why the University of Missouri football team--hardly a demographic associated with political activism--would feel that this cause had enough merit that they would threaten to boycott a game over it.

You've spoken a lot about the leader of these protests and the extreme lengths he went to get attention, and I don't disagree with you on that. But more interesting to me is the football team's willingness to go to such extreme lengths themselves. If this were a small group of radicals, I'd be inclined to think they were simply exploiting the attention they'd received with too-extreme measures. But am I supposed to believe the entire Mizzou football team is equally extreme? That seems unlikely to me, and indicates an issue that goes deeper than a single act of racist graffiti.

Ok, I'm trying to sound that out in my head, and I'm getting nowhere. Do you turn "Tenn" into two almost syllables ("TEE'an-ess-ee")?

Yes, but the two-syllable thing is very subtle. If you emphasize that too much, you'll sound like Ellie Mae, and a little less authentic.

The E vowel is pronounced halfway between the "Eh" sound you'd hear in Ohio, and the long E sound.

More important, though, is the accent on the Tenn. East TENNessee.

Ok, that's my problem. I can't say the long E in "East" and emphasize "TENN" without sounding like a hick. Too much West Virginia in my blood, I think.

I tried it with a little bit of a Tidewater Virginia flair, but that comes out like Forest Gump.

(My Western NC ancestors would be ashamed).



Anyhoo, diversion over. Everyone can resume their name-calling now.

[/QUOTE]
Shame could've come on here months ago, years ago, and made the exact same arguments about the exclusionary culture in Missouri, generalized statements of alleged oppression of blacks in this country, blah, blah, blah. But then, and now, the evidence is circumstantial at best.

It's not that Shame's experience is worthless, it's that Shame's argument is worthless. Shame can plug and play this argument any time of year for the forseeable future for any number of topics. The argument is in not directly connected to actual events. [/QUOTE]

And herein lies the problem with what you are posting. To state that claims of an exclusionary culture are circumstantial at best makes me embarrassed that you were able to graduate from OU and still hold those beliefs. Are universities no longer sending people into the world with the ability to look around them and see what's going on? God help us all.

Only if you don't know a noun from an adjective. ;-)

Perfectly because we are saying exactly the same thing.

In the spirit of the season, Tennesseans also emphasize the first syllable of our next holiday: THANKSgiven.

On a separate note Mr. Fox. Attended the UT football game Saturday. Their PA announcer had the damndest time pronouncing "measurement" - came out as more "meeerzurement" - even those from TN appeared perplexed.

LOL. I'm not surprised. They often have a damn hard time pronouncing Ohio with any consistency. It may be related to their preference for emphasizing that first syllable, which makes Ohio an awkward pronunciation. That particular announcer is used on local advertisements and he happens to grate hard on my nerves with one of my biggest Tennessee accent pet peeves: the difference between "sale" and "sell." Because of the local accent, everyone pronounces the word "Sale" as "sell." Now, many folks have lost the ability to distinguish between the words, so you often see advertisements like: 1999 Jeep for sell. Or worse: "I have decided to sale my 2008 mustang."

Yes and no. I do not believe we can say we are "not affected by it." We're all affected by it, and I believe it sets a bad precedent. From what I've read, I've seen little, very little, evidence of what this university president specifically did, or didn't do, that cost him his job. If this is such a worthy cause, why would this group not do much more to publicize their specific beefs? If the football team and the head coach are going to take such a strong stand, great, but it better be a very well understood position. Right now, it's anything but. I heard the coach interviewed about this, and he refused to acknowledge the position, saying only that he would "support his team." But what does that MEAN? Support them in WHAT? If it's such a strong position, why wouldn't the coach be willing to say it?

I wager to say MOST Americans have no idea what the position was/is of this protest. It's loosely interpreted as a racism complaint of some sort, but I'd say most people have no solid understanding of what the core problem is.

So in the end, what's the message? Does this promote healing among races or division?