He had better not wear cotton to the meeting. Update to this story.
Via The Tennessean:
Lipscomb University President Randy Lowry said he would meet with black students this week in the wake of a controversy over the decor and food at a dinner in his home.
Lowry said he would make “special efforts” to talk to students who were offended by cotton stalk centerpieces that were set out last week for the dinner he hosted for black students enrolled at Lipscomb.
“We’ll invest a lot of time this week talking with students and trying to understand at deeper levels,” he said. “Rather than running away from something, I’ll lean into those kinds of conversations and relationships.”
Some students took to social media to criticize the centerpieces, which they considered a callous symbol of slavery. Students also took issue with the menu, which featured collard greens and corn bread a day after Latino students had come to Lowry’s house for fajitas.[…]
Lowry has been particularly forceful in his defense of Lipscomb students who entered the country illegally as children or overstayed visas. Lipscomb was among the first university’s in the area to actively recruit and enroll the students.
When President Donald Trump announced plans to end a program that allows many of those students to live and work here, Lowry pledged to stand by them.
Lowry said last week’s dinner would not stop long-running efforts to improve the campus climate and support minority students.
“It doesn’t hurt the goal. It doesn’t change the mission. I think it acknowledges that we’re not perfect,” he said. “We always seek to be perfect but we never expected we would be — even the president of the university.”