MU junior Sarah Johnson led the chanting outside Memorial Union.
Standing in the back of a group of about 30, Johnson clasped her hands together and shouted “M-I-Z!” to the masses. Just like on any Saturday at Faurot Field or basketball game day, she waited for a response.
But this time, sure enough, “Be Coal Free!” wailed the other side.
Johnson, member of the student group Coal Free Mizzou since 2010, led banner-wielding, chanting volunteers into Thursday’s UM System Board of Curators meeting. The group’s mission for the meeting was to urge the board to make a formal commitment to get coal power off of the MU campus and transition to cleaner energy sources, the group’s website states.
They ultimately wanted to get the board to take the issue seriously, Coal Free Mizzou spokeswoman Kelsey Wingo said.
The group was hoping to urge the university to understand how passionate they were about the issue, as evidenced by 3,000 petition signatures and a full-fledged proposal. Wingo said they didn’t want it to be anything at all like a protest.
“We want to be allies with the school,” she said. “We want to support the school and what they do.”
However, Coal Free Mizzou didn’t get a chance to make any remarks.
“We appreciate you looking into this for us and we’ll assign (Chancellor Brady Deaton) to meet with a management crew so we can look at what can be done in the future in regards to a power plant,” Board of Curators chairman David Bradley said in the meeting.
Even though the large student group didn’t make any sort of presentation, Johnson was still excited that she and the group had a chance to have their voices heard.
“In the past when we’ve met with the vice chancellors, any sort of proposal to research or statistics that we’ve given them have been pushed aside and not looked and taken into consideration when we dialogued with them,” Johnson said. “Now they were actually taking notice, looking at (the proposal) and asking questions about it.”
At around 3 p.m. Thursday, once the meeting hit its break, Coal Free Mizzou President Alexandra Rather met with Deaton, Johnson said. The chancellor told Rather that he would talk the proposal over with UM System President Tim Wolfe and they would get a team together. He told them they will be ready to have a discussion by the next meeting.
Next week they hope they can make the presentation they’ve been preparing months for, Johnson said. Their goal is to get the administration to formulate an overarching plan to move beyond coal. They don’t think it will come suddenly, but the group wants it to happen by 2015.
Johnson, who was pumping up the crowd members Thursday, said she is happy that MU is on its way.
“I’m so happy (with the way it turned out),” Johnson said, laughing. “I’m about to go open a bottle of wine right now and celebrate.”