Connect with us

Mississippi Today

Lawmaker behind bill to close three universities says its has ‘slim’ chance to pass

Published

on

A lawmaker behind a controversial bill to close three public universities in Mississippi says its chances of becoming law this session are “slim.”

Sen. John Polk, R-Hattiesburg, told Mississippi Today that he just wanted to start a conversation when he filed Senate Bill 2726, which would require the governing board of Mississippi’s eight public universities to shutter three by 2028.

“It’s pretty out there,” Polk said.

Start a conversation, Polk did. Social media was a flurry the weekend after the bill dropped. By Wednesday, an online petition opposing the bill had gained more than 7,500 signatures. A local newspaper serving Columbus, the northeastern city home to Mississippi University for Women, published an op-ed warning the bill would devastate the local economy.

And alumni of the state’s three historically black universities and colleges decried the bill as a do-over of former Gov. Haley Barbour’s plan to merge those schools.

That isn’t his intention, Polk said. Any of the eight universities could be closed under his bill. And among the most vulnerable based on enrollment are three of the state’s regional colleges: MUW in Columbus, Delta State University in Cleveland and Mississippi Valley State University, a historically Black university in Itta Bena.

“If I were trying to close an HBCU, I would’ve put that in the bill,” Polk said.

The bill will likely die in the Senate Colleges and Universities Committee due to politics, Polk said, and the emotional ties that Mississippians have to their colleges. His bill is not on the committee’s agenda for Thursday.

Still, it comes at an inauspicious time for higher education in Mississippi as university officials are scrambling to contend with a dwindling number of high school graduates going to college, a trend that will hit the regional colleges the hardest. It also comes on the heels of a failed push this session to rename MUW, part of an effort to boost the college’s declining enrollment.

“You can see how changing the name of the W causes such angst,” Polk said. “This bill will cause much more, and I know that.”

A number of solutions have been offered to this problem. Sen. Nicole Boyd, R-Oxford, the chair of the Senate Colleges and Universities Committee, has introduced a bill that would create a legislative taskforce to study how the “enrollment cliff” will impact the state’s higher education system.

But Polk’s bill is the first to propose the state close universities instead of coming to their rescue.

“Sometimes you just have to pull the Band-Aid off the wound,” Polk said. “Until I introduced this bill, no one was talking about that.” 

Polk said the bill was his idea and that he did not consult the 12-member Institutions of Higher Learning Board of Trustees before filing it. An IHL spokesperson said the board does not comment on pending legislation.

If passed, IHL would be required to decide which three schools to close after conducting statewide listening sessions and evaluate criteria such as enrollment data; tuition rates; economic impact; additional services such as medical, agricultural, engineering or research; and “any other special factors that the board believes the institution offers that cannot be easily replaced or replicated.”

Involving IHL, Polk said, seemed like a way to make this process less political than if the Legislature decided which three to close. But many universities in Mississippi have felt overlooked by the board at various points in their history. Nine of the 12 trustees are graduates of Mississippi’s three largest research universities. Some are high-dollar donors to Gov. Tate Reeves, and all are gubernatorial appointees.

“IHL has the best interest of the education of students in higher education settings in Mississippi, and they’re the ones that can make the best decision for all of Mississippi,” Polk said.

Though Polk says his bill will save taxpayer dollars, he does not envision it reducing the annual funding IHL receives. He referred to an IHL handout showing the appropriations each school received last year.

If IHL closed the three schools with the smallest enrollments — Delta State, Valley State and MUW — the state could save $85 million, Polk said, money he sees as better off distributed among the remaining five. 

“If they didn’t choose the three I just mentioned, the savings to the state would be better,” Polk said.

What would happen to the towns around these smaller colleges, like Itta Bena, Cleveland and Columbus? Polk said that’s not why the state universities exist.

But he noted his bill would not permit the closed campuses to become branches of the remaining five. The buildings would have to be sold or repurposed, he said.

“Our universities have a mission,” Polk said. “We forget sometimes their mission is to educate in a higher form than K-12. It is not economic development.”

If the University of Southern Mississippi closed, Polk said he would say he’s sorry, “but that’s what IHL thinks is best for the state of Mississippi.”

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

Mississippi Today

On this day in 1909, Matthew Henson reached the North Pole

Published

on

mississippitoday.org – @MSTODAYnews – 2025-04-06 07:00:00

April 6, 1909

Matthew Henson arrived ahead of the Admiral Peary Expedition to plant the American flag at the North Pole.

Matthew Henson reached the North Pole, planting the American flag. Traveling with the Admiral Peary Expedition, Henson reportedly reached the North Pole almost 45 minutes before Peary and the rest of the men. 

“As I stood there on top of the world and I thought of the hundreds of men who had lost their lives in the effort to reach it, I felt profoundly grateful that I had the honor of representing my race,” he said. 

While some would later dispute whether the expedition had actually reached the North Pole, Henson’s journey seems no less amazing. 

Born in Maryland to sharecropping parents who survived attacks by the KKK, he grew up working, becoming a cabin boy and sailing around the world. 

After returning, he became a salesman at a clothing store in Washington, D.C., where he waited on a customer named Robert Peary. Pearywas so impressed with Henson and his tales of the sea that he hired him as his personal valet. 

Henson joined Peary on a trip to Nicaragua. Impressed with Henson’s seamanship, Peary made Henson his “first man” on the expeditions that followed to the Arctic. When the expedition returned, Peary drew praise from the world while Henson’s contributions were ignored. 

Over time, his work came to be recognized. In 1937, he became the first African-American life member of The Explorers Club. Seven years later, he received the Peary Polar Expedition Medal and was received at the White House by President Truman and later President Eisenhower. 

“There can be no vision to the (person) the horizon of whose vision is limited by the bounds of self,” he said. “But the great things of the world, the great accomplishments of the world, have been achieved by (people with) … high ideals and … great visions. The path is not easy, the climb is rugged and hard, but the glory at the end is worthwhile.” 

Henson died in 1955, and his body was re-interred with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery. The U.S. Postal Service featured him on a stamp, and the U.S. Navy named a Pathfinder class ship after him. In 2000, the National Geographic Society awarded him the Hubbard Medal.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Continue Reading

Mississippi Today

A win for press freedom: Judge dismisses Gov. Phil Bryant’s lawsuit against Mississippi Today

Published

on

mississippitoday.org – @GanucheauAdam – 2025-04-04 13:35:00

Madison County Circuit Court Judge Bradley Mills dismissed former Gov. Phil Bryant’s defamation lawsuit against Mississippi Today on Friday, ending a nearly two-year case that became a beacon in the fight for American press freedom.

For the past 22 months, we’ve vigorously defended our Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting and our characterizations of Bryant’s role in the Mississippi welfare scandal. We are grateful today that the court, after careful deliberation, dismissed the case.

The reporting speaks for itself. The truth speaks for itself.

This judgment is so much more than vindication for Mississippi Today — it’s a monumental victory for every single Mississippian. Journalism is a public good that all of us deserve and need. Too seldom does our state’s power structure offer taxpayers true government accountability, and Mississippians routinely learn about the actions of their public officials only because of journalism like ours. This reality is precisely why we launched our newsroom nine years ago, and it’s why we devoted so much energy and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars defending ourselves against this lawsuit. It was an existential threat to our organization that took time and resources away from our primary responsibilities — which is often the goal of these kinds of legal actions. But our fight was never just about us; it was about preserving the public’s sacred, constitutional right to critical information that journalists provide, just as our nation’s Founding Fathers intended.

Mississippi Today remains as committed as ever to deep investigative journalism and working to provide government accountability. We will never be afraid to reveal the actions of powerful leaders, even in the face of intimidation or the threat of litigation. And we will always stand up for Mississippians who deserve to know the truth, and our journalists will continue working to catalyze justice for people in this state who are otherwise cheated, overlooked, or ignored.

We appreciate your support, and we are honored to serve you with the high quality, public service journalism you’ve come to expect from Mississippi Today.

READ MORE: Judge Bradley Mills’ order dismissing the case

READ MORE: Mississippi Today’s brief in support of motion to dismiss

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Continue Reading

Mississippi Today

Meet Willye B. White: A Mississippian we should all celebrate

Published

on

mississippitoday.org – @rick_cleveland – 2025-04-04 11:09:00

In an interview years and years ago, the late Willye B. White told me in her warm, soothing Delta voice, “A dream without a plan is just a wish. As a young girl, I had a plan.”

She most definitely did have a plan. And she executed said plan, as we shall see.

And I know what many readers are thinking: “Who the heck was Willye B. White?” That, or: “Willye B. White, where have I heard that name before?”

Rick Cleveland

Well, you might have driven an eight-mile, flat-as-a-pancake stretch of U.S. 49E, between Sidon and Greenwood, and seen the marker that says: “Willye B. White Memorial Highway.” Or you might have visited the Olympic Room at the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame and seen where White was a five-time participant and two-time medalist in the Summer Olympics as a jumper and a sprinter.

If you don’t know who Willye B. White was, you should. Every Mississippian should. So pour yourself a cup of coffee or a glass of iced tea, follow along and prepare to be inspired.

Willye B. White was born on the last day of 1939 in Money, near Greenwood, and was raised by grandparents. As a child, she picked cotton to help feed her family. When she wasn’t picking cotton, she was running, really fast, and jumping, really high and really long distances.

She began competing in high school track and field meets at the age of 10. At age 11, she scored enough points in a high school meet to win the competition all by herself. At age 16, in 1956, she competed in the Summer Olympics at Melbourne, Australia.

Her plan then was simple. The Olympics, on the other side of the world, would take place in November. “I didn’t know much about the Olympics, but I knew that if I made the team and I went to the Olympics, I wouldn’t have to pick cotton that year. I was all for that.”

Just imagine. You are 16 years old, a high school sophomore, a poor Black girl. You are from Money, Mississippi, and you walk into the stadium at the Melbourne Cricket Grounds to compete before a crowd of more than 100,000 strangers nearly 10,000 miles from your home.

She competed in the long jump. She won the silver medal to become the first-ever American to win a medal in that event. And then she came home to segregated Mississippi, to little or no fanfare. This was the year after Emmett Till, a year younger than White, was brutally murdered just a short distance from where she lived.

“I used to sit in those cotton fields and watch the trains go by,” she once told an interviewer. “I knew they were going to some place different, some place into the hills and out of those cotton fields.”

Her grandfather had fought in France in World War I. “He told me about all the places he saw,” White said. “I always wanted to travel and see the places he talked about.”

Travel, she did. In the late 1950s there were two colleges that offered scholarships to young, Black female track and field athletes. One was Tuskegee in Alabama, the other was Tennessee State in Nashville. White chose Tennessee State, she said, “because it was the farthest away from those cotton fields.”

She was getting started on a track and field career that would take her, by her own count, to 150 different countries across the globe. She was the best female long jumper in the U.S. for two decades. She competed in Olympics in Melbourne, Rome, Tokyo, Mexico City and Munich. She would compete on more than 30 U.S. teams in international events. In 1999, Sports Illustrated named her one of the top 100 female athletes of the 20th century.

Chicago became White’s home for most of adulthood. This was long before Olympic athletes were rich, making millions in endorsements and appearance fees. She needed a job, so she became a nurse. Later on, she became an public health administrator as well as a coach. She created the Willye B. White Foundation to help needy children with health and after school care. 

In 1982, at age 42, she returned to Mississippi to be inducted into the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame and was welcomed back to a reception at the Governor’s Mansion by Gov. William Winter, who introduced her during induction ceremonies. Twenty-six years after she won the silver medal at Melbourne, she called being hosted and celebrated by the governor of her home state “the zenith of her career.”

Willye B. White died of pancreatic cancer in a Chicago hospital in 2007. While working on an obituary/column about her, I talked to the late, great Ralph Boston, the three-time Olympic long jump medalist from Laurel. They were Tennessee State and U.S. Olympic teammates. They shared a healthy respect from one another, and Boston clearly enjoyed talking about White.

At one point, Ralph asked me, “Did you know Willye B. had an even more famous high school classmate.”

No, I said, I did not.

“Ever heard of Morgan Freeman?” Ralph said, laughing.

Of course.

“I was with Morgan one time and I asked him if he ever ran track,” Ralph said, already chuckling about what would come next.

“Morgan said he did not run track in high school because he knew if he ran, he’d have to run against Willye B. White, and Morgan said he didn’t want to lose to a girl.”

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Continue Reading

Trending