Mississippi Today
Mississippi University for Women is betting its future on a new name. Will it work?
![](https://www.biloxinewsevents.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/MUW-name-mossy-sign-scaled-2.jpg)
COLUMBUS — Nora Miller, the president of Mississippi University for Women, opened a letter from her deans in 2022 that warned the country’s first state-supported women’s college had reached a critical crossroads.
Without bold change, the deans wrote, the pool of prospective students was “likely to grow dangerously thin,” affecting tuition. Their recommendation: Change the name to one that includes all students, not just women. After all, the university had been co-ed since 1982.
One consulting firm, three listening sessions, 4,300 survey responses, one failed proposal, and one apology later, MUW will ask lawmakers to approve a new name next month. But as the institution seeks to reposition itself to meet an uncertain moment for higher education in Mississippi, it has faced criticism from some alumni, passionate about the past, who have questioned if a new name is needed at all.
Lost in the hullabaloo is the fact MUW faces much bigger issues than its name, according to more than a dozen interviews Mississippi Today conducted with students, faculty, administrators and alumni.
Enrollment has continued to fall since the dean’s letter. All told, the campus has shrunk to just 2,227 students from its peak of more than 3,100 in the late 1990s. The tuition-dependent university has been operating at a deficit, losing $18 million in fiscal year 2022. And it likely can’t turn to the state for help: Mississippi’s state funding for higher education has barely recovered from the Great Recession of 2008. The liberal arts education that MUW offers is increasingly pooh-poohed by lawmakers and other state officials who view workforce development as “the message of the day.”
To be sure, all of Mississippi’s regional colleges are struggling, so MUW’s plight isn’t totally unique. But within thirty miles of its doorstep, MUW is facing a hydra — a behemoth SEC school, a booming industrial park and a flourishing community college — all while dealing with a name that excludes roughly half of the students it wants to admit.
“It’s kind of like false advertising, isn’t it?” said Dee Anne Larson, a marketing professor on the university’s naming committee.
The university has acknowledged it needs to do a better job of selling what it offers: Comparatively affordable tuition, small class sizes and a familial campus. It has revamped its recruitment strategies, brought back athletics and pumped money into professional programs like culinary arts, speech language pathology and nursing.
“While we would prefer not running at a deficit,” Miller said, “sometimes you have to invest in things.”
Signs of that investment, though, are hard to spot. North on Highway 25, a brick sign for Starkville brags of being the “home of Mississippi State University.” Over the Lowndes County line, at the Golden Triangle Global Industrial Aerospace Park, is East Mississippi Community College’s glassy “communiversity” and its LED marquee.
The sign for Columbus, called the “friendly city,” makes no mention of MUW. The university employs hundreds of people in the region, a fact belied by its quiet presence.
Miller acknowledged workforce development programs entice high school graduates. But, she said, when younger workers from Steel Dynamics get tired, they’ll start looking for a pathway to office jobs.
“And I think some of those steelworkers aren’t gonna take advantage of that” at MUW, Miller said, “because ‘Mississippi University for Women’ will be on their degree.”
Cutting ties with the long blue line?
When MUW sent Miller an offer letter in 1979, she thought it was for a “finishing school” and threw it in the trash. Her mom convinced Miller, a National Merit Scholarship semifinalist, to take a second look.
![](https://www.biloxinewsevents.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/MUW-name-Nora-Miller-scaled.jpg)
Three years later, when the Institutions of Higher Learning Board of Trustees ordered MUW to admit men following a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on the university’s admissions policy, Miller’s first thought was “at least we get to keep the name.”
Then state-supported women’s colleges across the country started taking “women” out of their names. MUW didn’t in large part because the university’s leadership failed to get alumni on board. Even though the university has changed its name four times throughout its history — it was originally the Industrial Institute and College for the Education of White Girls — the alumni just couldn’t let go of “The W.”
Many still can’t.
Earlier this month, the university’s first proposal, Mississippi Brightwell University, flopped. The feedback was resoundingly negative.
That’s when an unofficial group of alumni started discussing an alternate proposal: “The W: A Mississippi University.” It seemed to capture the campus’s Ivy League aspirations, said Laura Tubb Prestwick, who graduated in 2008, works in brand-name strategy and was part of the unofficial group.
There’s an emotional stake in changing the name for “W girls” like Prestwick, whose grandmother also attended. Prestwick grew up going to modeling, photography and musical theater camps at MUW, and reading old copies of the “Meh Lady” yearbooks.
“When Tropicana changed their packaging, they saw a 20% drop in sales,” Prestwick said. “That’s an emotional tie to orange juice. Can you fathom it being somewhere you took out student loans for?”
Facing the demographic cliff
But MUW can’t sustain itself solely off the pockets of legacy students like Prestwick.
In Mississippi, as in nearly every state in the country, the number of high school graduates is poised to decline, an ominous trend deemed the “enrollment cliff.” This will force increased competition among Mississippi’s eight public universities, all of which are already more dependent on tuition than state funding, and 15 community colleges.
The future winners of that fight are laying the groundwork today. And MUW is already on the backfoot.
More than 200 freshmen used to enroll in MUW each year, according to the university. But since 2009, when EMCC’s Golden Triangle campus started a tuition-guarantee program, MUW is lucky if the freshman class broaches 200 at all. In the last decade, MUW has lost 600 undergrads — while down the road, Mississippi State University has seen undergraduate enrollment nearly triple that same amount. Meanwhile, last fall EMCC saw its largest enrollment increase in more than a decade.
The bleeding shows no signs of stopping. But MUW has been retooling its approach. In fall 2022, Miller promoted the longtime head of student success, David Brooking, to executive director of enrollment management.
![](https://www.biloxinewsevents.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/MUW-name-welty-hall-scaled.jpg)
One of the first things Brooking noticed was that MUW needed to do more outreach. The university was buying mailing lists to send letters like the kind Miller got in high school, but not nearly enough names — just 10,000 students when it needed more like 50,000. Brooking fixed that and has expanded MUW’s digital advertising, which he says is the way to reach the introverted, studious high schoolers who’d thrive at MUW.
Showing up at college fairs in parts of Mississippi with a growing population has been a challenge. The recruiting position assigned to the Coast, nearly five hours from Columbus, had been open since September, but only one person applied. Brooking plans to repost it as a remote job.
Even when MUW is present, the name impedes the elevator pitch.
“You only get two or three minutes to talk to a student at a college fair, if they’re even showing interest,” Brooking said. “We have to tell them what we’re not before we can tell them what we are.”
Brooking’s new approach isn’t expected to bear fruit until this fall, Miller said. In the meantime, students can tell the campus is emptier. Laila Wrenn, a member of the student government and a resident assistant, has noticed there are fewer freshmen in the dorms.
A junior on the pre-med track, Wrenn came to MUW for its close-knit campus, but she gets why others don’t.
“It’s just not fitting what they wanted college to be, kind of how they portray college on TV,” she said. “When you’re at the W, it doesn’t fit that picture. It’s not a party school. People commute here. It’s really quiet and it’s down to earth, and I feel like a lot of people aren’t attracted to that.”
MUW does have one powerful tool on its side — cost. At $7,766, it has the second lowest tuition for a public university in Mississippi. (In contrast, a year of tuition at Mississippi State runs $9,400.)
“If you’re gonna quote me on anything about that college,” said Ryan Ahrens, who graduated from MUW in 2021 with a business degree, “it is for sure and without a doubt the bargain of the century.”
Competing for men — literally
Ahrens, a Lowndes County native and transfer from East Mississippi Community College, was the exact kind of student MUW has been desperate to attract. And yet, he ended up there by accident.
“I missed the admissions window for State, and then I said at least the W is still open,” he said.
The university’s name is one reason it has struggled more than other former women-only colleges to attract men, according to a 2009 study commissioned when a past president, Claudia Limbert, sought to change the name. Since 1990, MUW has barely moved the needle on the number of men it admits, from 442 to 532 in 2020.
For his part, Ahrens thought the two-year renaming process moved too quickly. But alumni don’t control the school, he said.
“It’s not our job to have a hand in the pot, it’s our job to make the pot full,” he said. “In order for you to be proud of the university that you graduated from, it still has to be there decades after you leave it.”
But the name is far from the only area of improvement Ahrens sees. He listed several things that, as a conservative, white member of a fraternity, he saw could be improved: The dorms, the outreach and a vibe he described as “a stern ‘what are you doing here’ kind of look.”
“If you’re a man going through the W, you gotta go in with a strong mind and a thick skin cause people are gonna talk crap, like ‘you’re just another W girl,’’ Ahrens said. “Like no man, I’m a man.”
And then there are sports. Changing the name, Ahrens said, is the hardest thing an MUW president has attempted to do since getting into the NCAA last year. Bringing back sports, which the university disbanded in 2003, is part of an effort to attract more students.
![](https://www.biloxinewsevents.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/MUW-name-Josh-Dukes-scaled.jpg)
It’s unclear if it’s working yet. Josh Dukes, a sophomore shooting guard from Booneville whose high school basketball team won the state championship, was enticed by the opportunity to help build MUW’s program from the ground up.
But his family of five brothers (and one sister) jokes that Dukes is playing “women’s basketball.” The team has a losing record. The university’s name makes it easier for other players, Dukes said, to “get inside your head.”
Losing its home turf
There is an elephant-sized bulldog in the room.
When Miller attended MUW in the 1980s, it had a complementary relationship to Mississippi State. Male students would come to Columbus to drink and eat out, because Lowndes County was wet and Oktibbeha County was dry. Female students would go to Starkville for the games.
It’s more competitive now.
Today, MSU is roaring, enjoying record enrollments, major success in fundraising and a slew of new construction projects. It is also raking in an increasing share of the number of college students who hail from Lowndes County, making MUW the only regional college in Mississippi at risk of losing its home turf.
In 2022, 450 students went to MUW compared to 432 to MSU, according to IHL data.
MUW is like a tiny planet that may be fated to fall into MSU’s orbit.
“They’ve got more gravitational pull than we do being so close to them,” Brooking said.
IHL classifies MUW as a “regional college,” yet MUW’s leaders know that in many ways, they are outmatched by MSU and EMCC. MUW must own its backyard, Miller said, but it also needs a name that can attract students from across the state and the South, one that gets at the one thing the small campus has: A private-college feel on a state-dollar dime that is accessible to all.
“At Mississippi State or Ole Miss, you might be intimidated … by the people with connections,” Miller said. “Others might say, ‘I couldn’t compete against that.’ But here, we nurture people taking on responsibility and getting to be a leader.”
But is that message connecting with Mississippians?
In downtown Columbus, where the number of local businesses rival Oxford’s Square, Naiya Bell, a 21-year-old community college student who was looking for jobs with her friends, said she had considered MUW’s nursing program.
![](https://www.biloxinewsevents.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/MUW-name-MSMS-students-2-scaled.jpg)
But Brenda Heard, a landlord dropping off dry-cleaning who lives in Alabama, leases to MUW students but didn’t know if the university admitted men. Roderick Dillard, a firefighter, said his daughters went to MSU for the experience.
“Kids like to get out,” Dillard said.
Naomi Simpson and Angel Viveros students from the academically rigorous Mississippi School for Math and Science, were walking into a local bookstore as they recalled their high school’s recent college fair, which was held in MUW’s gym. Simpson listed off the tables she recalled Mississippi State having: Agriculture, the honors college, education and more.
Then Simpson paused. For a moment, neither student could remember if MUW was there, too. It was, Viveros remembered.
Simpson shrugged. “Maybe I just didn’t go up to them.”
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Did you miss our previous article…
https://www.biloxinewsevents.com/?p=327817
Mississippi Today
‘Secure the bag’: Mississippi women want equal pay, paid leave and better health outcomes
![](https://cdn.mississippitoday.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/13115805/3X0A0889.jpg)
Mothers and advocates with the Black Women’s Roundtable gathered at the Capitol Thursday and called on the Legislature to prioritize women and children this year.
Speakers asked lawmakers to act on a range of issues from midwifery care to child care, but all their priorities centered around making women more financially secure in the poorest state with the worst maternal health outcomes.
Advocates brought with them “money bags,” which they said would be placed on the desks of all lawmakers.
“Inside those money bags are coins that represent access to child care, access to health care, higher wages for families and the need to move paid family and medical leave,” said Robin Jackson, director of policy advocacy for the Mississippi Black Women’s Roundtable. “We are not asking you anymore – we are telling you ‘Secure the bag for Mississippi families.’”
Shequite Wilson-Johnson, a mother of five and assistant professor at Mississippi Valley State University, spoke about her struggle to birth her children safely and with job security – even when she worked her way up the social ladder.
Wilson-Johnson was a teenager when she had her first baby. By her second child, she was in college, working up until the day she gave birth. With her third, she was married. With her fourth, she had a master’s degree, and with her fifth, a doctoral degree. But she never got paid time off, and she was laid off twice after giving birth – including with her last child.
“Understand this: No matter how hard I worked, no matter how hard I tried, no matter the education I had, no matter the standard of life, I was still told, ‘You don’t matter,’” Wilson-Johnson said.
There are currently two bills moving through the Legislature that would create the state’s first paid parental leave mandate for state employees. The bills wouldn’t help people like Wilson-Johnson, but they would be a start, and might encourage the private sector to follow suit and “do the right thing,” said Rep. Kevin Felsher, R-Biloxi, and author of the House’s bill.
But it isn’t just about the money. Studies show that paid maternity leave drastically benefits the health of mothers and babies – including reducing postpartum depression and infant mortality, and increasing bonding and breastfeeding.
There are a dozen states that mandate paid parental leave across both private and public sectors. But the majority of states offer paid parental leave to state employees.
![](https://cdn.mississippitoday.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/13115542/3X0A0740.jpg)
Sen. Angela Turner-Ford, D-West Point, voiced her support for paid leave during the press conference.
“Our state does lag behind, whether it’s welcoming a newborn, caring for an elderly loved one, or managing a personal health crisis,” Turner-Ford said. “… Come back next year if we have not passed this legislation, hold us responsible, make us do more.”
Wilson-Johnson, of Indianola, also struggled to find adequate and affordable child care for her children, even when she worked at a child care center – a common plight for mothers everywhere.
Two out of five child care workers in America make so little they need public assistance to support their families. In Mississippi, there are so few child care employees willing to work under the industry’s conditions that it’s affecting every other sector of the job market, with moms staying out of work because they can’t find a safe day care in which to place their children. It’s costing Mississippi $8 billion, according to a report from the Mississippi Early Learning Alliance.
Bills aimed at allocating funds from the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families block grant, or TANF, to create child care vouchers for needy parents died in committee.
Advocates commended lawmakers for passing 12 months of postpartum Medicaid coverage in 2023, calling it “a win” – but emphasized the need to do more, and quickly. Mississippi, the state with one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the nation, was among the last states to ensure that these mothers could continue their Medicaid coverage for a year after they gave birth – the time during which most maternal deaths occur.
In fact, between 2018 and 2023, the Mississippi Legislature only passed four bills related to maternal health, according to a study by researchers at the University of Mississippi Medical Center.
Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann told Mississippi Today he recognizes the need for legislative action supporting women, and that’s why he founded the Women, Children and Families Study Group, a Senate committee tasked with reviewing the needs of women and children in the state, in 2022. He said more maternal health bills were passed in the last two years than ever before.
“This session, I hope to build on that progress by passing bills for paid maternity leave for state employees and enhancing postpartum depression screening to ensure more effective and efficient care,” Hosemann said.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Dau Mabil buried amid strained family relations and unanswered questions
![](https://cdn.mississippitoday.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/06012414/3X0A6388-scaled.jpg)
Nearly a year after he disappeared after going on a walk in Jackson and his body was discovered counties away in the Pearl River, Dau Mabil has been laid to rest, but questions about his death remain.
The 34-year-old Belhaven resident was buried Sunday and a celebration of life ceremony was held and attended by family and friends from the area, said Spencer Bowley, the brother of Dau’s wife, Karissa.
However, several key members of Dau’s family, including his older brother and birth mother who traveled from a Kenyan refugee camp last year, were not present or informed beforehand. Bul Mabil said he learned about his brother’s burial through someone else – not a member of the Bowley family – and he hasn’t received a response from them since he reached out Sunday.
“Why wouldn’t they reach out to us?” Bul Mabil asked during a Tuesday interview.
Spencer Bowley defended his sister and family’s decision not to inform Bul Mabil ahead of time because they believed he would potentially make the funeral service difficult. Mabil has accused members of the Bowley family of murdering his brother a number of times publicly on Facebook, which the family has continued to deny.
“We frankly didn’t feel safe informing him of what we were doing,” he said Wednesday.
![](https://cdn.mississippitoday.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/05062555/Press-Conference1-scaled.jpg)
Pa,ela Griffin, the mother of Dau’s son, was told about the funeral beforehand and they were invited, but she and the boy were not able to attend, Spencer Bowley said. Pamela Griffin could not be reached for comment.
Dau was buried months after two autopsies and a Capitol Police investigation were completed.
Bul Mabil has raised concerns about whether his brother would be cremated, saying as early as last year that their culture does not permit it. Bowley said Wednesday that cremation was not part of the plan to put Dau to rest because his wife knew it was against his wishes.
Dau and his brother came to Jackson in 2000 as “Lost Boys” of Sudan who fled war. They were among 50 boys who came to Missisisppi through the help of local churches.
Karissa Bowley reported her husband missing March 25, 2024, after he left their Belhaven home to walk around an area in town where the couple was known to go.
![](https://cdn.mississippitoday.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/05211715/Image-from-iOS-4.jpg)
On April 13,2024, fishermen spotted a body in the Pearl River in Lawrence County – over 50 miles downstream from Jackson. A preliminary autopsy by local officials identified the body as that of Dau and the sheriff said there was no evidence of foul play.
Since the discovery of Dau’s body, Bul Mabil has questioned whether his brother was the victim of a homicide. That suspicion led him to file a lawsuit against Karissa Bowley to prevent the release of Dau’s body to her until an independent autopsy could be conducted.
In court, insinuations were directed at Bowley and members of her family, and at one point Karissa Bowley’s attorney asked if she had anything to do with her husband’s death, to which Bowley responded no. The hearing in Hinds County Chancery Court was for a civil case rather than a criminal one.
Chancery Judge Dewayne Thomas later dismissed Bul’s lawsuit and affirmed that Karissa Bowley, as Dau’s widow, was his next of kin who has legal authority over how to handle his remains.
Thomas did, however, allow an independent autopsy to be conducted at the “direction and expense” of Bul Mabil.
A second autopsy was completed in August in Florida by Dr. Daniel Schultz – a pathologist approved by Karissa Bowley over one proposed by Bul Mabil, according to court records.
In a recent email, Bul disagreed with previous reporting that he agreed with Karissa Bowley to use Schultz. Instead, he said the court forced him to use that pathologist “or else the second autopsy would not have been conducted.”
The second autopsy shared with Mississippi Today is longer and more thorough than the first completed by the state, but it arrived at the same conclusion: Dau died from drowning and his manner of death was undetermined.
It addresses allegations of a video showing what is believed to be Dau’s abduction and harm. Schultz wrote he watched the video repeatedly and didn’t find evidence to support the claims, noting that the video showed a blurred image from a distance likely moving but not a specific activity.
“And it is extremely important to also consider the context of the two independent autopsies (one by the state and one by a pathologist [myself] effectively hired by those who think that this might be a homicide and want to clarify),” Schultz wrote.
“My role is to be honest and neutral. And in that vein, there is no evidence of foul play.”
The report provides more context about how Dau ended up in the Pearl River. The place where he entered the water is unknown, but the report states a reasonable location could be the dam near the water treatment plant, which is an area where Dau walked.
Google Earth pictures included in the report show a 1.4-mile distance between where Dau was last seen in video surveillance and the dam.
The pathologist wrote Dau’s manner of death as undetermined because available information make it difficult to distinguish whether his death was an accident or by suicide.
To support that conclusion was a new finding of a bite mark on Dau’s tongue, which the pathologist said likely happened from a seizure from drowning after entering the river or before due to a seizure related to consumption of alcohol.
The report noted Dau had a “history of chronic alcohol abuse” supported by several pieces of information, including how his wife reported him drinking more than a dozen alcoholic beverages in a week and how he experienced shakes that could be a sign of withdrawal.
It also notes how a person who saw Dau in the early morning before he disappeared smelled alcohol on him, and how former coworkers at times saw him drunk at work.
Toxicology reports can’t pinpoint whether Dau had alcohol in his system at the time of his death because alcohol is a common byproduct of decomposition, the report noted.
Spencer Bowley said the family had some reason to believe alcohol may have been a contributing factor in Dau’s death, and the autopsy report supports that. Overall, he said they are glad to have more information that wasn’t available earlier on and in the previous autopsy report.
Bul Mabil disagreed with the report’s emphasis on Dau’s alcohol consumption and a years-old DUI charge, which he said made it seem like Dau caused his own death.
He also wanted to learn more about the bite mark in the report, which was called a deep muscular hemorrhage, and found a scientific journal article that suggested such injuries on the tongue could be evidence of strangulation from homicide.
Bul Mabil said he shared the journal article with the pathologist and asked if it could be incorporated into his findings, but the pathologist did not, and he said it felt the information was dismissed.
Mabil said the emphasis on Dau’s drinking, findings about the tongue injury and what he sees as a failure to incorporate other evidence of a crime against Dau leads him to see the recent report as biased.
He is looking to hire a new attorney and a private investigator to uncover new information and a forensic pathologist to review the recent autopsy report.
“It’s very difficult for me to accept any report and to give up on my brother’s case,” Mabil said in a video posted on Facebook Sunday evening.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Mississippi ballot initiative measure set to die for fourth straight year
![](https://cdn.mississippitoday.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/04190711/Voting-2024-9.jpg)
The House on Thursday will likely let a proposal that would restore voters’ right to sidestep the Legislature and put measures on a statewide ballot die without a vote.
House Constitution Chairman Price Wallace, a Republican from Mendenhall, told Mississippi Today that he would let the measure die by Thursday’s legislative deadline because he believed the Senate would not be receptive to any ballot initiative proposal.
“They’re not taking it up on that end of the building, so there’s no sense in us fighting about it down here,” Wallace said of the Senate.
This would be the fourth straight year that lawmakers at the Capitol have been unable to agree on restoring the ballot initiative after the state Supreme Court in 2021 ruled the state’s initiative was unworkable because of the signature-gathering process.
Despite the Mississippi Constitution explicitly stating that voters still have a right to offer amendments through an initiative process, citizens have no process to change state laws or the state Constitution.
Since the court’s ruling that the initiative process was invalidated, some lawmakers have questioned whether Mississippi needs an initiative and raised concerns that uber-wealthy out-of-state donors can use their wealth to manipulate voters through a ballot initiative.
During the 30 years that the state had an initiative, only seven proposals made it to a statewide ballot: two initiatives for term limits, eminent domain, voter ID, a personhood amendment, medical marijuana and a measure forcing lawmakers to fund public education fully.
Of those seven, only eminent domain, voter ID and medical marijuana were approved by voters. The rest were rejected.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
-
News from the South - South Carolina News Feed6 days ago
32-home development in Horry Co. halted after community outcry
-
Mississippi Today6 days ago
Mississippi parents, owed $1.7 billion in child support, could collect gambling winnings
-
News from the South - North Carolina News Feed5 days ago
Losing state Supreme Court candidate Jefferson Griffin’s legal case to overturn 2024 election results hits obstacle • Asheville Watchdog
-
News from the South - South Carolina News Feed6 days ago
Scammers Stealing Homes: Anderson County takes action to stop deed fraud
-
News from the South - Florida News Feed3 days ago
Family of heart transplant patient who died after leaving JSO custody set to receive $300K settlement
-
News from the South - Texas News Feed7 days ago
How did a Texas man spend almost 50 years on death row without being executed?
-
News from the South - Oklahoma News Feed5 days ago
Protest against President Trump's policies
-
News from the South - Texas News Feed6 days ago
Forney shooting: 1 dead, 1 hurt, 2 in custody after gunfire near Brown Middle School