COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP) — When cotton balls were found scattered outside the black culture center at the University of Missouri’s flagship campus in 2010 in a clear reference to slavery, two white students were arrested and expelled, with no larger discussion of race on a campus where blacks weren’t allowed to enroll until 1950.

“To say we were livid is an understatement,” said black alumna Erika Brown, who graduated with degrees in 2007 and 2012 and now lives in St. Louis. “It was just another example of them finding the offender and never going past that. There was never a larger discussion.”

Skip ahead five years to more racially charged incidents at the Columbia campus, where blacks account for just 8 percent of undergraduates. This time, students emboldened by last year’s protests in Ferguson took action, which led to the announcement that the university system’s president and the campus chancellor would resign — as well as the promise of even more changes.

Reuben Faloughi, a third-year doctoral student in psychology from Augusta, Georgia, who participated in the campus protests, said more needs to be done, but acknowledged feeling “liberated” by the exodus of university system President Tim Wolfe.

Such activism, he said, is a nod to Ferguson, the St. Louis suburb about two hours from Columbia where Michael Brown, a black, unarmed 18-year-old, was killed by a police officer. After the shooting, Faloughi took part in a “die-in” protest in Columbia, joining others in feigning death in Brown’s memory.