Meet Student Who Toppled University President

Hours after his hunger strike forced the resignation of the president of the University of Missouri System, graduate student Jonathan Butler appeared on campus and insisted it wasn't about him.

"Please stop focusing on the fact of the Mizzou hunger strike itself," Butler said Monday. "Look at why did we have to get here in the first place. And why the struggle. And why we had to fight the way that we did."

Butler refused to talk about his health,  which had become a source of growing concern on the university's flagship campus in Columbia, and focused on the unsatisfactory response from the university's administration to racial incidents.

Since arriving on the campus as an undergraduate in 2008, Butler has become increasingly involved in social movements, in Columbia and beyond. 

Last year, he traveled to Ferguson, Missouri, following the shooting of a black man by a white police officer, and was energized by the protests there, he has said. He applied that vigor to his life on campus.

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