The Spreading Virus: Kansas Edition

Now playing at the University of Kansas. From the Associated Press:

LAWRENCE, Kan. — Racial tensions are growing at the University of Kansas with a call for three top Student Senate leaders to resign and a recent graduate initiating a hunger strike.

The Senate’s Student Executive Committee is demanding that Student Body President Jessie Pringle, Student Body Vice President Zach George and Chief of Staff Adam Moon step down by Wednesday and that the full Senate to take up impeachment measures if they refuse to leave, the Lawrence Journal-World (http://bit.ly/1LfUc9v ) reported. The committee registered a 6-3 “no confidence” vote Friday for the three leaders. One member abstained from the vote. . . Pringle and George were singled out, with the committee saying they did not “stand in solidarity with their black peers and proclaim that Black Lives Matter” at Wednesday’s forum.

There follows the usual roster of cliches and list of demands. But the comedy comes at the end:

Meanwhile, John Cowan, a white 2014 University of Kansas graduate, began a hunger strike on campus Friday morning in solidarity with KU student group movements. If the activist groups’ demands are not met or if a plan of action is not issued by KU, “then I die or go to the hospital,” Cowan told the newspaper, echoing the sentiments of a graduate student at the University of Missouri who ended his hunger strike last week after the resignations of University of Missouri System President Tim Wolfe and Chancellor R. Bowen Loftin.

I’m kind of at an advantage because of my white privilege, so my suffering is self-inflicted,” said Cowan. “Others don’t have that choice, it’s inflicted upon them.”

Unlike the AmherstUprising Twitter feed, I’m pretty sure this isn’t parody. C’mon Mr. Cowan: Go fully Bobby Sands on us. That’s how we’ll know you’re really serious. And when are we going to get a Thatcherite college administrator to call such a bluff? Probably about as soon as we discover a Shiite “moderate.”

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