Mississippi State University‘s housing department has a confidential practice of helping certain well-connected students secure spots in its newest and most expensive dorms, while the premium price tag pushes many less privileged students into the campus’s older, cheaper halls.

It starts when donors, public officials, legacy alumni or other friends of the institution make a request for what the university calls “housing assignment assistance.” 

Then, the Department of Housing and Residence Life works to place these students in the dorms they desire.

The practice is not an official university policy, and it’s not advertised on Mississippi State’s website. But inside the housing department, it is institutionalized. Many full-time staff refer to the process by the phrase “five star,” a reference to the euphemistic code — 5* — the department used to assign well-connected students in its housing database, documents show.

In recent years, the department changed the process to make it more internal. 5* has remained a virtual secret on campus — until now. 

That’s partly because the department’s leadership has worked to keep the process under wraps, even going so far as to explicitly tell staff not to share information about 5* outside of the department, according to emails Mississippi Today obtained through a public records request.

“Family business reminder – We/you don’t air to others,” Dei Allard, the department’s executive director, wrote in an email four years ago to high-up staff in the department. “Basically, only a handful of those within our organization should be privileged to have this information… i.e. keep your mouth shut.” 

In response, one staff member noted that processes like this likely exist at universities across the country, while another raised concerns that 5* results in students receiving preferential treatment, such as a better room assignment or a new room if they aren’t satisfied with their initial draw, because of who they know. 

“The name itself is an issue in my opinion,” wrote Jessica Brown, the department’s assignments coordinator at the time. “I think this has created a very unfair system and a system of privilege. I think that it in a way causes other students to be unknowingly discriminated against such as based on their economic social status.”

The university did not grant an interview to Mississippi Today about the 5* practice. Allard declined to provide more information beyond the university’s official response.

Through written statements, a spokesperson denied the process results in better treatment of well-connected students, referring to 5* as a form of assistance the department works to provide to all types of students.

“There is a long-standing broad administrative practice of providing assignment assistance to those students who request it when that’s possible by price point and housing availability to do so,” Sid Salter, the university’s vice president for strategic communications, wrote in response to Mississippi Today’s questions and findings. 

Nevertheless, Salter did not deny the housing department uses the term 5* to refer to the practice and the students who benefit from it. He acknowledged the housing department sets aside about 120 beds for 5* students each year and confirmed which dorms they typically request — Magnolia, Moseley, Oak, Dogwood and Deavenport halls. And, Salter was able to estimate that the department has helped roughly 100 5* students each year, who are mostly white and wealthier. 

“Not exclusively correct, but generally so,” Salter wrote. “We certainly have received housing assignment requests from non-white students.”

The university does not know when the 5* designation started, Salter wrote, only that it predates the beginning of Mark Keenum’s presidency in 2009 and began as a response to requests “from legacy (multi-generational) alumni, university donors, university partners, institutional friends, public officials and others who asked for help.” 

Though emails obtained by Mississippi Today do not reflect that staff who were familiar with the process thought 5* students received the label based on academics, Salter wrote the practice has also been used to recruit “academic stars” who tie their enrollment to housing preferences such as location, cost, amenities and affinity groups. 

“Why would any university not be responsive to such requests if possible?” Salter wrote. 

A different housing assignment process exists for student athletes or those with certain scholarships like the Luckyday Scholars Program for students who are community leaders.

At one point, the process of helping 5* students land in their preferred dorm appeared to include a system for labeling these students in the university’s housing database. The department had what appears to be instructions for how to assign the status to the housing application profiles “for each 5 star and roommate of a 5 star,” according to an unlabeled document obtained by Mississippi Today. 

That document is no longer used, and the department does not know when it was created. Salter wrote that housing no longer uses the 5* label in its database and does not keep a separate list of 5* students.

Mississippi State believes the practice is widespread at similar universities across the state and country, Salter wrote, adding the university “is curious why we are being singled out among Mississippi institutions when significant housing issues are in the headlines at other state schools.” 

Unfairness exists in the dorms at universities across the country, experts say. That could look like a wealthy parent who knows how to pull strings for their students or a dorm that is priced too high for lower-income students. 

“It’s not just a Mississippi thing,” said Elizabeth Armstrong, a University of Michigan sociology professor whose 2015 book, “Paying for the Party”, examined the different experiences students have in college, including in the dorms, based on their socioeconomic class. 

Still, Armstrong said she had never heard of a process as blatant as Mississippi State’s, which she described as tipping the scale in favor of privileged students who are already more likely to be able to live in the priciest dorms because their families can afford to foot the bill. 

“The sense they are trying to keep it a secret suggests they know this is something they shouldn’t be doing,” she said. 

Emails show housing department staff believed the 5* practice meant preferential treatment

No issues with the 5* process have been raised to the administration, Salter wrote. 

But emails obtained by Mississippi Today show housing department staff who were involved in the process had concerns or at least knew the practice troubled their employees.

In June 2020, Allard, who had been the executive director since 2017, asked her staff to describe the 5* process in the same email where she cautioned them against sharing information about it outside the department.

The request came at a salient time: Colleges across the country were issuing statements in support of diversity, equity and inclusion amid the George Floyd protests. Days earlier, thousands had gathered in Jackson in one of the state’s largest protests against racial inequities since the civil rights movement.

The responses, which are reprinted here without correction, show what staff on the ground understood the 5* status to mean: Better room assignments and help for VIP students with room changes and other housing issues. 

“I’m not quite sure what the true definition is but from my understand it is students that we adjust based on the wants or needs of the President’s Office,” wrote Brown, who is no longer with the university. 

But the 5* students themselves were starting to push the practice beyond its original intent to things like room changes, Brown continued.

“I think they know that they have this privilege,” she wrote, “and this is why the process is starting to go further than just a better room assignment.” 

Brown noted it was not up to staff to change the practice. 

“Honestly I am not sure how this issue can be fixed,” Brown wrote. “I think that this issue has to be fixed starting from a higher executive level (outside of housing), but I am not sure if they are willing to do that.” 

Danté Hill, the then-associate director of occupancy management and residential education, had a different perspective.  

“I’m sure all campuses have some type of VIP resident,” wrote Hill, who is now the department’s facilities and maintenance director. “It is just the nature to the political structure that is in place. I have not verified this with many campuses however.” 

Hill wrote that he did not feel that 5*s received special treatment, but his staff felt their decisions were overturned in instances involving those students. With access to the university’s housing database, they could see which students had the 5* status. 

“They do not see these students as a representative population,” he wrote. “They see these overall as privileged students not usually of color. I think this group is more honed in on inclusion and SJ (social justice) and wants to see fair treatment across the board and they see this process as the ability to allow a student whose family has some kind of connection to move in front of students who may have done everything the right way.” 

Hill thought it would help if the department stopped using the label. 

“I believe we may need to remove the classification and make this process more internal and not label these students as anything in particular,” he wrote. “I don’t know how we do this other than keeping emails on file when we place someone.” 

University will continue 5* practice

Mississippi State’s new construction dorms are already more likely to house wealthier and well-connected students in part because they can cost nearly $4,000 more than the campus’ traditional dorms, the seven residence halls built before 2005.

The 5* practice contributes to the inequity, Armstrong said. 

“It’s kind of like putting an extra thumb on the scale when the thumb is already way on the scale,” she said. 

It also means the traditional dorms are more likely to house lower-income students. Mollie Brothers, a resident advisor during the 2020-21 school year, observed this when she oversaw Critz Hall, one of the university’s traditional-style dorms that was built in the 1950s and renovated in 2001. 

More than half of the women on her floor were Black, she recalled, while her friends who worked in the new construction dorms oversaw floors that were almost entirely white. 

“In the other dorms that weren’t as nice, it was definitely more diverse,” Brothers said.

Salter said the university does not have metrics to support this claim. 

The university knows it has a shortage of new construction housing and is working to provide more options with the construction of Azalea Hall, a new dorm the university plans to open ahead of fall 2025 that will feature single rooms and restaurants, according to a press release. 

But if history is an indication, when freshman start applying for a room in Azalea Hall, it follows that 5*s would have an advantage, which the university did not deny.

“In this particular facility, Lucky Day Scholars will have primary preference, but we believe Azalea will be an extremely popular housing option,” Salter wrote. 

After Allard’s email, the university made changes to its 5* practice — it stopped notifying RAs which students on their floor were receiving housing assistance, therefore reducing the number of people who know about the status. Around the same time, the university also stopped applying the 5* status to student profiles in its housing database, Salter wrote.

But Mississippi State said it would continue the practice. 

Salter provided a statement from Regina Hyatt, the vice president for student affairs, who said the department’s housing policies are compliant with best practices and state and federal law. 

“MSU works hard to assist all students who ask for help in the process, including students at every point on the socioeconomic continuum,” Hyatt said. “We will continue that practice as it (has) historically been part of our university’s traditions.”

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

WASHINGTON — Minutes before the U.S. House Committee on Ways and Means held a hearing Tuesday on the topic of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, the subject of a still unfolding scandal in Mississippi, Chairman Rep. Jason Smith huddled with his colleagues.

The other congressmen wanted to know why the chairman had invited former NFL quarterback Brett Favre — who is facing civil charges for his alleged role in diverting TANF funds to a volleyball stadium and a pharmaceutical startup — to testify. 

Then, Smith revealed, one of the congressmen asked a question that underscored the larger problem: “What is TANF?”

Temporary Assistance for Needy Families is a $16 billion-a-year federal block grant administered by states to address poverty. While it is known for providing cash assistance, known as the welfare check, to low-income families, states have been spending the vast majority of the money in other ways, “including some with tenuous connections to a TANF purpose,” the federal agency that oversees the funds recently concluded.

The unnamed lawmaker is about four years late to the game.

Favre said he learned what TANF was in 2020, when Mississippi State Auditor Shad White released an audit naming Favre as one of the improper recipients of an estimated $94 million in misused funds.

“Now I know, TANF is one of our country’s most important welfare programs to help people in need,” Favre told members of House Ways and Means, the budgeting committee responsible for revenue-related legislation within the nation’s social safety net programs. “Importantly, I have learned that nobody was — or is — watching how TANF funds are spent.”

Smith said he invited Favre to testify about rampant abuse in the program, which ensnared the athlete in a reputation-marring scandal, as part of a conversation about how to transform TANF to reach needy families and move people into work. Tuesday’s hearing, which lasted more than four hours, followed a subcommittee of Ways and Means held a similar hearing more than a year ago.

But four years after the original audit, Mississippians have more to learn about how the misspending occurred, who all was responsible and how the government plans to hold them accountable. A federal criminal investigation quietly drags on as seven people who pleaded guilty await prison sentencing; a slow-moving state civil lawsuit against Favre and three dozen others gags defendants and their attorneys from speaking publicly about the case; and the federal human service agency has yet to enact meaningful guardrails around the program.

A report that the committee requested last year, and was released Tuesday, found that accounting deficiencies within the TANF program occur in all 50 states and little is done to correct them.

The committee heard Tuesday from a beneficiary of Missouri’s TANF work program, Matt Underhile, a corrections officer and father of seven children.

Underhile was in his early 40s when he took action to turn his life around after nearly two decades of drug abuse and unstable employment. He learned about the state’s TANF-funded work program called the Missouri Excel Center on Facebook. Through it, he received transportation assistance to get to and from class and earned his high school diploma. He said the program offered to pay for things like steel-toe boots or scrubs to help people succeed at work.

He said the program taught him “that there is always a way to remove any barrier you may have; that there are people and programs out there that care and can help you.”

But Mississippi’s TANF program hardly works this way. In 2022, the cash assistance program — no more than $260 a month for a family of three — served just 291 adults. Of those, fewer than 1% were employed, according to federal data. 

TANF is supposed to be a work program, but Mississippi imposes such strict eligibility requirements and such harsh sanctions — such as taking away a person’s food benefits — that low-income Mississippians are scared to apply, said Jarvis Dortch, director of the ACLU of Mississippi.

When the state has contracted with outside agencies to provide work training like Underhile described, it has not produced reports to say what the programs offered or who they served. 

The largest subrecipients of non-assistance funds are not workforce training agencies, but organizations that work with children — the child abuse and neglect investigations department, the Boys & Girls Club, a children’s mental health organization and a global humanitarian nonprofit.

“Mississippi continues to spend little on direct cash assistance while continuing to provide TANF dollars to unaccountable third parties,” Dortch said in his testimony on Tuesday.

The federal government gathers little information about how states choose to use their TANF grants, except for periodic reporting of how they divvy up the money among several vague categories — basic assistance, child welfare services, work, education or training activities, work supports, child care out of wedlock pregnancy prevention, fatherhood and two-parent family formation and maintenance programs, etc.

Mississippi consistently spends a much greater share of its TANF grant on “work, education and training activities” than most states — 40% in 2022. With that statistic, Mississippi’s TANF program might seem as if it’s prioritizing solutions to generational poverty.

“Sounds good until you look under the hood,” Dortch said.

A closer look shows that roughly 80% of that spending is on a college scholarship program serving many middle-class families, Mississippi Today first reported in 2019.

Dortch offered an alternative: More child care funding for working parents. Mississippi is allowed to transfer up to 30% of its TANF funding to the existing Child Care Development Fund to provide vouchers to more families, though it hasn’t opted to do this in recent years. Dortch also pointed to the success of Magnolia Mother’s Trust universal basic income program created by Jackson-based Springboard to Opportunity. 

“People that get cash assistance … they’re able to get the space to breathe to be able to do things like apply to go to school, look for other jobs, they aren’t so pressured in life by trying to make ends meet,” Dortch said.

In Mississippi, $5 million of the spending that it labeled work activities, work supports or fatherhood programs was actually the construction of a new volleyball stadium.

In 2017, Favre started lobbying for money from a nonprofit funded almost entirely by TANF funds to build a volleyball stadium at his alma mater, University of Southern Mississippi. The nonprofit founder, Nancy New, informed him that federal restrictions prevented her from using the money on construction projects. But, they thought, if they called the facility a “Wellness Center,” and included classrooms where the nonprofit could ostensibly hold classes for needy parents, the nonprofit could provide the funding through a $5 million upfront lease of the property. 

Lawyers hired by the state welfare department in 2022 filed civil charges against the university’s athletic foundation and seven people they say are responsible for this sham, including Favre. New is awaiting sentencing on state charges for her role in the overarching scheme.

U.S. Rep. Adrian Smith, R-Nebraska, asked Favre on Tuesday how officials characterized the source of the funding he was seeking. Favre said it was his understanding that they were grants.

“Never was TANF or welfare funds mentioned in any conversations,” Favre said.

“Were public funds mentioned?” Adrian Smith asked, and Favre didn’t immediately respond. “Was it your understanding that it was private funds from a wealthy individual or some source?”

“I don’t recall. I just remember that grant money,” Favre said.

Favre and New also arranged an additional $1.1 million payment in exchange for Favre to record a radio ad promoting the welfare program, which aired the following year. 

“If you were to pay me is there anyway the media can find out where it came from and how much?” Favre once texted the nonprofit operator.

U.S. Rep. Linda Sanchez, D-California, enlarged and printed the text message on a display board that she brought to the hearing. Favre returned those funds to the state in 2020 and 2021.

After Favre secured the funds for the initial groundbreaking on the volleyball stadium, he returned to New for an additional investment in a startup pharmaceutical venture claiming it was going to produce a drug to treat concussions — an injury with which Favre was familiar. The project received over $2 million in welfare funds, but no drug was developed. 

“Sadly, I also lost my investment in a company that I believed was developing a breakthrough concussion drug I thought would help others,” Favre said in his testimony. “As I’m sure you’ll understand, while it’s too late for me — I’ve recently been diagnosed with Parkinson’s — this is also a cause dear to my heart.”

The founder of the company, Jake Vanlandingham, pleaded guilty within the ongoing federal probe in July. The revelation of Favre’s Parkinson’s diagnosis made national headlines before the TANF hearing concluded.

Testimony from Sam Adolphsen, policy director for the conservative think tank Foundation for Government Accountability, challenged whether states should be entirely to blame for TANF misspending.

When Adolphsen served as the chief operating officer of the Maine Department of Health and Human Services, he said his agency exercised policy that allows states to transfer TANF funds to another federal program, the Social Services Block Grant, which involved home-based services for seniors and people with disabilities, domestic violence support centers, transportation, and other services.

This resulted in a similar comingling of funds that got Mississippi officials in trouble.

Adolphsen said in his written testimony that Maine officials sought guidance from the federal agency that administers the funds, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, “with often unclear communications from the officials.” Maine auditors eventually raised concerns about some of this transfer spending and the state reversed the expenditures.

In Mississippi, at least one defendant in the ongoing civil case has said that federal welfare officials were present in the planning of programs that auditors later found unlawful. 

“More work can be done in federal law to provide states with more clarity on the flexibility of these transfers in advance of such expenditures,” Adolphsen said in his testimony.

Adolphsen’s organization, FGA, lauded Mississippi for policies it enacted during the scandal, including the HOPE Act — a law that imposed some of the strictest eligibility requirements in the nation, creating a maze of bureaucratic red tape that current Mississippi Department of Human Services Director Bob Anderson said burdens the department and should be repealed.

Last year, the House Ways and Means Committee requested that the Government Accountability Office conduct a nationwide review of non-cash TANF spending, which is where 78% of the funds go. The committee wanted to know, among other things, how states track the performance of their non-assistance programs, how they ensure they are submitting accurate financial reports, and what the federal government does with the annual TANF audit findings it receives.

The report, released in conjunction with the hearing, shows that from 2021-2023, all 50 states had unresolved audit findings in their TANF programs, 50 of which were “severe” and the majority of which were repeated findings from previous years. 

Before the Mississippi welfare scandal became known, these audit deficiencies proved to be a warning sign of the larger program breakdown.

West Virginia has recorded an accounting deficiency for 15 years. Thirty-one of the 155 findings contained questioned costs, like the ones cited in Mississippi’s widely publicized 2019 audit. One state’s questioned costs involved over $107 million and repeated for two years.

As for how the federal government follows up on these unresolved findings, the Government Accountability Office didn’t have an answer, but said that it would examine this process in its ongoing work.

Movement in the civil case against Favre and roughly three dozen other people or companies — which attempts to claw back an implausible $80 million in misspending — picked up the day before Favre’s testimony.

On Monday, Favre’s lawyers fired off 10 new subpoenas requiring depositions from the state auditor’s office, deputy state auditor Stephanie Palmertree, the attorney general’s office, the lieutenant governor’s office, Gov. Tate Reeves, former Reeves chief of staff Brad White, former First Lady Deborah Bryant, and three individual Mississippi Department of Human Services employees.

At the hearing, Favre predictably threw shade at State Auditor Shad White, the state official who launched the initial investigation into welfare spending and has since written a book about the ordeal with Favre’s name in the subtitle. The athlete is currently suing White for defamation. 

Favre called White “an ambitious public official who decided to tarnish my reputation to try to advance his own political career.” 

White wrote a letter to the Ways and Means committee Monday evening in an effort to preempt any negative impression Favre may give of him. White included photos of Favre’s text messages to remind lawmakers of the athlete’s interest in keeping the payments confidential.

Favre also questioned the current leadership of the state welfare agency, which has paid Jones Walker law firm nearly $1.5 million in TANF funds to bring the ongoing civil action.

“Those same lawyers, before they sued me, came to my home town to try to convince me to retain them in this very dispute,” Favre said. 

University of Southern Mississippi attempted to resolve the claims against it by setting up a scholarship program for TANF-eligible students, Favre said, but the plaintiff rejected the settlement, which “would have shut off the spigot of TANF funds to the lawyers.”

Back to the original question by Chairman Smith’s colleagues: What’s the purpose of inviting Favre to speak before Congress?

“If someone in Mississippi is accused of misspending $50 in SNAP benefits, that person’s life will be turned upside down. Mr. Favre’s right here and he’s accused of misspending a million dollars and he’s speaking before Congress,” Dortch told the committee. “Something is wrong.”

For years in Mississippi, state employees and politicians scrambled to please Favre when he reached out about funding for projects or requests for meetings. One of the state’s favorite and most notable sons was in their corner, and they often responded accordingly.

Similar behavior was on full display in the House committee hearing on Tuesday. When Favre entered the Longfellow Office Building hearing room, cameras clicked and attendees turned their heads to catch a glimpse of the NFL Hall of Famer.

U.S. Rep. Beth Van Duyne, R-Texas, said it seemed Favre had become a victim of his own celebrity.

Sanchez, the California representative, delivered the most aggressive questions about Favre’s involvement in the welfare scandal, to which U.S. Rep. Drew Ferguson, R-Georgia, responded, “Unlike my colleague, I’m not mad at you about much, but I am mad that you couldn’t stay with the Atlanta Falcons.”

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Most everyone at House Speaker Jason White’s tax summit said they support cutting taxes – even eliminating the personal income tax — but there were concerns expressed by many on whether that goal could be accomplished without negatively impacting vital state services.

White’s  chair of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, Rep. Trey Lamar, R-Senatobia, told the crowd gathered at a Flowood hotel Tuesday for the daylong summit that the upcoming 2025 legislative session is the time to begin the process of phasing out the income tax.

“I believe it is time to make really big transformative changes in our tax system,” Lamar said.

He said eliminating the income tax would make the state more competitive.

On the other hand, Sen. Jeremy England, R-Ocean Springs, said he also supported tax cuts, but said “baby steps” might be needed to ensure funds are available to pay for state services.

Josh Harkins, R-Flowood, the chair of the Senate’s tax writing Finance Committee, cautioned that time might be needed to see the results of previous massive tax cuts passed in 2022 and in 2016 that are still being phased in. Plus, Harkins pointed out that the state and its citizens received about $33 billion in federal COVID-19 relief funds that have artificially bolstered state revenue. He said time might be needed to look at the financial condition of the state’s after the impact of those COVID-19 funds had faded.

White, who organized the summit that had more than 500 people registered to attend, stressed that there were no preconceived notions on what the House leadership’s recommendations for tax changes would be during the upcoming session. White said he had the summit as part of an effort to discuss and build consensus on improving the state’s tax structure.

But both White and Lamar have voiced strong support for phasing out the personal income and also for at least reducing the state’s 7% tax on groceries which is the highest of its kind in the nation.

Gov. Tate Reves, who also spoke at the summit at the invitation of White, also spelled out his reasons for supporting the elimination of the income tax.

He said Mississippi “was in the best financial situation … in our state’s history. Because of that there has never been a better time to eliminate the income tax.”

Harkins said eliminating the income tax would take about $2.2 billion out of state coffers. The grocery tax would reduce state revenue by less than $500 million.

Harkins said the state has many needs ranging from transportation infrastructure to shoring up the state’s public pension program that has a deficit of $25 billion.

Beside eliminating the income tax, Lamar said the goals of House leaders in their plan to make “monumental” changes in tax policy are to ensure cities and counties have sufficient revenue and  “to fix” the funding issues at the state Department of Transportation.

Central District Transportation Commissioner Willie Simmons, D-Cleveland, and Transportation Executive Director Brad White said the 18-cents-a-gallon gasoline tax and other revenue directed to the agency is not enough. They said the agency needs an additional $480 million a year for road maintenance.

In recent years, the Legislature had provided an additional $1.3 billion to the MDOT in addition to the designated sources of revenue. But they said the agency needed an additional recurring revenue stream instead of having to wait to the end of each session to find out how much extra money the Legislature was providing transportation.

Other speakers included legislative leaders from other states that have worked on tax policy and national tax-cut advocate Grover Norquist. John McKay, executive director of the Mississippi Manufacturers Association, and Hattiesburg Mayor Toby Barker said the most important issues for companies are work force development and site preparation.

At the end of the day-long summit, White unveiled poll results compiled by nationwide Republican pollster Cygnal. The poll found 64% of Mississippians supported phasing out the income tax over a five year period.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.