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Ole Miss says it will close DEI division, leading to skepticism | Mississippi

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www.thecentersquare.com – By Tate Miller | The Center Square contributor – 2024-08-26 15:19:00

(The Center Square) – The University of Mississippi says it will shut down its DEI department “Division for Diversity and Community Engagement” and open in its place the Division of Access, Opportunity, and Community Engagement.

The head of a free market think tank in the state, however, says the announcement is more likely a rebrand to deflect criticism than it is a move away from DEI policies.

“After a yearlong internal review, the University of Mississippi will create a Division of Access, Opportunity and Community Engagement and close its Division of Diversity and Community Engagement, pending approval by the state Institutions of Higher Learning board of trustees,” the school announced in a news release.

“Through a range of programs and services, the division will work with students to strengthen a sense of community, enrich learning and development, enhance research and ensure opportunities for all,” according to the release.

With its new division, the university “seeks to do more to promote student success” in response to the declining rates of high school graduation and higher education enrollment in the state of Mississippi.

“One way in which the division will support students is through opportunities for low-income Mississippi families, such as Ole Miss Opportunity,” the release states. “Also known as OMO, the initiative is a guarantee that eligible lower-income Mississippi residents will receive financial aid to cover the cost of tuition, residence hall housing and an allowance for meals.”

Vice Chancellor for Diversity and Community Engagement Shawnboda Mead will continue as vice chancellor over the new division, according to the school.

The Center Square reached out to the Division for Diversity and Community Engagement for more information from Mead and to the Office of the Chancellor for Ole Miss’ Chancellor Glenn Boyce for comment and was directed to the school’s public relations contact. No response was received from public relations in time for publishing.

President and CEO of Mississippi Center for Public Policy Douglas Carswell told The Center Square via email that he fears Ole Miss’ closure of its DEI department “could just be a re-branding exercise,” since the previous department is being replaced by a new one.

The center is a think tank that helps to make policies, some of its priorities being “opposing ‘woke’ extremism” and “[lowering] taxes,” according to its website.

Carswell told The Center Square: “I fear that tax dollars will still be spent on promoting extreme and divisive left-wing ideology at a public university in our state.”

Carswell said he thinks Boyce made the decision to close one DEI division and open another to “head off anti DEI legislation.”

According to Carswell, Mississippi’s Senate, which has blocked anti-DEI bills, “no longer has the strength” to keep up their opposition. Carswell said Boyce may have realized the Senate’s weakness and thus created the DEI rebrand as a prevention measure.

Carswell told The Center Square about the University of Mississippi’s “five-year university wide strategic plan committed to equity and racial justice” called Pathways to Equity. “Under ‘Pathways to Equity,’ everything at the university – including curriculum content – has been increasingly managed and run through the prism of intersectional ideology.”

“Instead of receiving a rounded education, DEI means that young people are taught the politics of grievance,” Carswell said. “Rather than learning to see themselves as the authors of their own future, DEI ideology teaches young minds to search,” for “victimhood.”

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Trump touts border security successes in address before Congress | National

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www.thecentersquare.com – By Bethany Blankley | The Center Square contributor – (The Center Square – ) 2025-03-04 22:28:00

(The Center Square) – President Donald Trump touted a list of border security measures he’s implemented in his first month in office before a joint session of Congress Tuesday night.

“Since taking office, my administration has launched the most sweeping border and immigration crackdown in American history – and we quickly achieved the lowest numbers of illegal border crossers ever recorded,” he said.

In February, illegal border crossings were the lowest in recorded U.S. history, The Center Square reported.

This was after Trump issued multiple executive orders to secure U.S. borders, including declaring an invasion, a national emergency at both the southwest and northern borders, and directed the U.S. military to assist with apprehensions and deportations, The Center Square reported.

“Twenty-one million people poured into the United States” under the Biden administration, Trump said. “Many of them were murderers, human traffickers, gang members and other criminals from the streets of dangerous cities all throughout the world.” They illegally entered the U.S. “because of Joe Biden’s insane and very dangerous open border policies. They are now totally embedded in our country, but we are getting them out and getting them out fast.”

In Trump’s first month in office, more than 20,000 illegal foreign nationals were arrested, a 627% increase in monthly arrests compared to 33,000 at large arrests in all of last year, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said. Overall, total removals of illegal foreign nationals exceeds 50,000, including some of the most violent offenders, according to DHS.

Trump cited examples of violent criminal illegal border crossers killing Americans, including University of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley, and 12-year-old Houstonian, Jocelyn Nungaray, whose angel mothers were in attendance.

Trump also countered a narrative of the previous administration that “we needed new legislation to secure the border. It turned out that all we really needed was a new president,” he said. The bill Democrats touted would have codified existing Biden administration policies, worsening the border crisis, The Center Square reported.

Trump also criticized the Biden administration for opening the U.S. borders by flying illegal foreign nationals into the country “to overwhelm our schools, hospitals and communities … like Aurora, Colorado, and Springfield, Ohio, which buckled under the weight of the migrant occupation and corruption like nobody’s ever seen before. Beautiful towns destroyed.”

By implementing a mass deportation effort, he said his administration was undergoing “the great liberation of America.”

Trump also highlighted his decision to designate drug cartels and violent transnational criminal gangs as foreign terrorist organizations, saying, “They are now officially in the same category as ISIS. Countless thousands of these terrorists were welcomed into the U.S. by the Biden administration but now every last one will be rounded up and forcibly removed from our country, or if they’re too dangerous, put in jails standing trial in this country. Because we don’t want them to come back, ever.”

He also praised former Border Patrol agent Roberto Ortiz, who was fired upon by cartel members in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, saying, “he leapt into action, returning fire and providing crucial seconds for his fellow agent to seek safe safety.”

The U.S.-Mexico border, which was dominated by Mexican cartels under the Biden administration, “pose a grave threat to our national security … and are waging war in America,” he said. “It’s time for America to wage war on the cartels, which we are doing.”

Trump also highlighted Mexican authorities transferring 29 cartel leaders to the U.S. “That has never happened before,” he said. However, Mexican and Canadian officials can “do much more,” he said, to stop fentanyl and drugs from pouring into the U.S., which is why he was holding steadfast on imposing tariffs.

Trump said he submitted a detailed border security funding request to Congress. It lays out “exactly how we will eliminate these threats to protect our homeland and complete the largest deportation operation in American history,” he said, calling on Congress to pass it so he can sign it into law.

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WATCH: Trump says men will no longer be able to play in women’s sports | National

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www.thecentersquare.com – By Casey Harper | The Center Square – (The Center Square – ) 2025-03-04 22:16:00

(The Center Square) – President Donald Trump Tuesday night told the story of a North Carolina high school athlete who was severely injured by a transgender male athlete when he hit a volleyball into her face so hard it caused brain damage.

The young girl, Payton McNabb, was present as Trump’s guest at his address to a joint session of Congress.

“Payton, from now on, schools will kick the men off the girls team or they will lose all federal funding,” Trump said, calling his policies a “common sense revolution.”

Watch below:

YouTube video

President Trump: “From Now on Schools Will Kick the Men off the Girls’ Team”


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UNC System makes it 9 years in a row no in-state tuition increase | North Carolina

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www.thecentersquare.com – By David Beasley | The Center Square contributor – (The Center Square – ) 2025-02-28 17:01:00

(The Center Square) – Tuition for out of state undergraduate students at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill was increased during Thursday’s meeting of the Board of Governors.

Costs remain the same for in-state students in the entire university system. It marked the ninth straight year without a tuition increase for in-state undergraduate students, Andy Wallace, spokesman for the university system, told The Center Square.

“UNC System is the only system in the country able to say that,” Wallace said.

The increases approved Thursday will bring the out-of-state tuition at Chapel Hill to $43,152. The revenue from the increase would be used for faculty and staff retention, academic support, campus safety, and to “offset the inflationary impacts on contracted services,” according to the university system.

Chapel Hill received 51,181 first-year applications from out-of-state residents for admission in the fall of 2024, according to the university system.

Only 18% of first-year slots at Chapel Hill are available for out-of-state and international students, leaving 82% for in-state residents.

The university system governing board also kept tuition the same – $500 per semester – at Elizabeth City State University, Fayetteville State University, The University of North Carolina at Pembroke, and Western Carolina University in the NC Promise program.

The NC Promise Program has “increased educational access, reduced student debt, and grown the state’s economy,” the university system says on its website.

The percentage of bachelor’s degree students in the UNC System with federal loan debt at graduation is actually dropping, Wallace added. It has gone from 61.2% in 2018-19 to 49.9% in 2023-24, the spokesman said.

In their request for tuition increases this year for out of state students and some in-state graduate students, North Carolina universities cited inflation as a factor.

Appalachian State, for example, was approved Thursday for a 3% increase for both in- and out-of-state graduate students and all out-of-state undergraduates.

“Revenues resulting from this increase will be used to offset the impacts of inflation on supplies, materials, and services, to invest in classroom equipment and technology, and to provide for new faculty and academic advisor positions to support the growing student population at the Boone and Hickory campuses,” a university system document states.

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