Mississippi Today

‘System of privilege’: How well-connected students get Mississippi State’s best dorms

Published

1 month ago

September 25, 2024

mississippitoday.org – Molly Minta – 2024-09-25 04:00:00

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.”

Dogwood Hall, part of Mississippi State University’s housing facilities, is seen on campus in Starkville, Miss., on Friday, Sept. 6, 2024. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today

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.

An untitled and undated document obtained by Mississippi Today through a public records request appears to be instructions for how to add the 5* designation to a student’s housing application.

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.

Critz Hall, a residential dormitory, stands on the Mississippi State University campus in Starkville, Miss., on Friday, Sept. 6, 2024. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today

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.”

Do you have insights into Mississippi State’s 5* process? Help us report.

Our investigation uncovered Mississippi State’s institutionalized practice of helping well-connected students land spots in the university’s newest and best dorms. But there’s more to report: When did the 5* practice start, who started it, and why? Once 5* students are in the dorms, what kind of additional support does the Department of Housing and Residence Life provide? How are less-connected students affected by the 5* practice?

Help us continue our reporting by filling out the form below. We are gathering this information for the purpose of reporting, and we appreciate any information you can share. We protect our sources and will contact you if we wish to publish any part of your story.

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

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Mississippi Today

New health care coalition forms, including hospitals that left state hospital association

Published

6 hours ago

November 5, 2024

Staff Editor

mississippitoday.org – Gwen Dilworth – 2024-11-05 12:46:00

A new health care alliance will unite several of Mississippi’s largest hospital systems – all of which left the state hospital association following controversy over Medicaid expansion – under the umbrella of one of the state’s largest and most influential lobbying firms.

The new group will be helmed by former Mississippi Medicaid Director Drew Snyder, who served under two Republican governors who thwarted Medicaid expansion and the flow of billions of federal dollars to provide health insurance to low-income Mississippians for over a decade.

The new collaborative will focus on “providing sustainable solutions to challenges facing access to care,” said a press release. It will include representatives from the state’s leading acute and trauma care hospitals, rural hospitals, mental health providers and primary care providers.

Critics, along with the Mississippi Hospital Association, say the new group’s formation is motivated by partisan politics.

A slew of hospitals left the hospital association after the organization’s political action committee made its largest-ever contribution to Democratic gubernatorial candidate Brandon Presley, a strong supporter of Medicaid expansion, in 2023. All but one have joined the new collaborative.

This means lawmakers in 2025 will hear from two separate groups of hospitals and health care organizations, raising questions about whether their overall impact will be diluted without a unified voice.

Gov. Tate Reeves announces his plans for a series of Medicaid reimbursement reforms during a press conference at the Walter Sillers Building in Jackson, Miss., on Thursday, Sept. 21, 2023. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today

Snyder, who declined repeated requests for comment for this story, will lead the Mississippi Healthcare Collaborative under the umbrella of multi-state, Jackson-based lobbying firm Capitol Resources and its new health policy consulting division, Health Resources.

Capitol Resources is a strong supporter of Republican Gov. Tate Reeves. The firm’s political action committee has contributed nearly $75,000 to Reeves since 2018.

Five of Capitol Resources’ scores of Mississippi clients hold multi-million dollar contracts with the Division of Medicaid.

A query to the Mississippi Ethics Commission published just days before Snyder announced his resignation from the Division of Medicaid sought an opinion on how a former head of an agency could work for a lobbying firm with clients in the same field as his or her public service without violating state law. Requests for opinions are anonymous.

The Ethics Commission ruled that the public official could not work for compensation on matters “which he or she was directly or personally involved while working for the government,” but would not be forbidden from working for a company that does.

A national ethics expert told Mississippi Today that when public officials transition to private sector work, particularly in the same field as their public service, it can raise ethical issues.

The knowledge and information public officials hold can be used as a “leg up,” which leads to unfairness in private companies’ and lobbying organizations’ business dealings with government entities, said professor John Pelissero, the director of Government Ethics at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University.

Capitol Resources has for years represented Centene, a company that currently holds $5.2 billion worth of contracts for managing Medicaid beneficiaries care through its subsidiary Magnolia Health. The company has paid the lobbying firm $3.9 million over the last decade, according to the Secretary of State’s website.

Tim Moore, the former head of the Mississippi Hospital Association, said he has concerns about the conflict posed by a lobbying firm representing two health care organizations with competing interests.

“How do you represent a managed care company and a bunch of hospitals at the same time?” he said.

Moore was ousted by the Mississippi Hospital Association’s Board of Governors following hospitals’ withdrawal from the organization.

Clare Hester, the founder and managing partner of Capitol Resources, did not respond to a request for comment by press time.

The evolution of the Mississippi Hospital Association

The Mississippi Hospital Association was for many years one of the most powerful lobbies at the Capitol. But that began to change with the passage of the federal Affordable Care Act, which created a partisan rift over whether or not the state should expand Medicaid.

The trade association splintered in May 2023, starting with the departure of the state’s largest hospital system, University of Mississippi Medical Center, in May. Four additional hospitals, all led by Gregg Gibbes, left the association in 2024.

Hospital leaders at the time declined to say what precipitated their decision to leave, other than to cite concerns about the hospital association’s leadership. But the exodus was widely interpreted as a rebuke of the association’s support for Presley and, specifically, Medicaid expansion.

Research has shown that Medicaid expansion would provide millions of dollars to Mississippi’s struggling hospital system.

As Reeves faced an uphill reelection bid, due in part to his opponent’s support of Medicaid expansion and his adamant opposition, he worked with Snyder to create a new program to provide supplemental payments to hospitals to offset low Medicaid payments. While the program did not directly support low-income Mississippians, it was estimated to generate $700 million for the state’s largest hospitals.

Republican House leaders pushing for Medicaid expansion in the last legislative session said the program prevented some large hospitals from being strong advocates for expansion, in part due to fear that Gov. Reeves would punish such a move by doing away with the expanded payments.

The Mississippi Hospital Association has 76 current hospital members, according to its online directory. Some are members of hospital systems.

Richard Roberson, CEO of the Mississippi Hospital Association. Credit: Jerry Mitchell/MCIR

“The Mississippi Hospital Association will continue to be the trusted voice in health care and to offer education and quality advocacy solutions based on sound health care policy – and not politics – as we have successfully done for almost 100 years,” president and CEO Richard Roberson told Mississippi Today. Roberson is the former head of TrueCare, a provider-led, nonprofit managed care organization that contracts with Medicaid.

Kent Nicaud, one of Reeves’ top campaign donors and the president and CEO of Memorial Hospital, will serve as chair of the collaborative’s board. Memorial Health System left the hospital association in 2023, and is a current client of Capitol Resources.

Moore said having two major health care trade associations in the state will “create division among the industry, which is not good.”

“…The best thing for all hospitals is to be united in one voice, because they have similar issues, whether they’re a small hospital or a large hospital,” he said.

Along with hospitals that left the association, Mississippi Healthcare Collaborative incorporates several existing Capitol Resources clients, including the state’s 21 Federally Qualified Community Health Centers, and Universal Health Services, a company with five behavioral health centers in Mississippi.

“For too long, too many health providers have been siloed in our advocacy. It’s time to sit down at the same table and work together,” said Terrence Shirley, CEO of the Community Health Center Association of Mississippi, which represents the Federally Qualified Community Health Centers, in a press release.

Other members of the new group include Methodist Rehabilitation Center and Northwest Regional Medical Center in Clarksdale.

The group’s members are based in 78 of Mississippi’s 82 counties.

Ochsner Medical Center, which left the Mississippi Hospital Association last year and is a client of Capitol Resources, is not listed as a member of the new collaborative. Ochsner did not respond to Mississippi Today by the time of publication.

Geoff Pender contributed reporting.

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

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Mississippi Today

On this day in 1926

Published

12 hours ago

November 5, 2024

Staff Editor

mississippitoday.org – Debbie Skipper – 2024-11-05 07:00:00

Nov. 5, 1926

Victoria Gray Adams, Freedom Summer, 1964, Herbert Randall Freedom Summer Photographs. Credit: University of Southern Mississippi

Victoria Gray Adams, one of the founding members of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, was born near Hattiesburg, Mississippi.

“(There are) those who are in the Movement and those who have the Movement in them,” she said. “The Movement is in me, and I know it always will be.”

In 1961, this door-to-door cosmetics saleswoman convinced her preacher to open their church to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which began pushing for voter registration. A year later, she became a field secretary for SNCC and led a boycott of businesses in Hattiesburg, later helping found the umbrella group, the Council of Federated Organization, for all the civil rights groups working in Mississippi.

In 1964, she and other civil rights leaders fought the Jim Crow laws and practices that kept Black Mississippians from voting, marching to the courthouse in the chilly rain to protest. By the end of the day, nearly 150 had made their way to register to vote.

Adams became the first known woman in Mississippi to run for the U.S. Senate, unsuccessfully challenging longtime Sen. John Stennis. She also helped found the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. It was time, she said, to pay attention to Black Mississippians, “who had not even had the leavings from the American political table.”

In August 1964, she joined party members in challenging Mississippi’s all-white delegation to the Democratic National Convention.

“We really were the true Democratic Party,” she recalled in a 2004 interview. “We accomplished the removal of the wall, the curtain of fear in Mississippi for African-Americans demanding their rights.”

Four years later, the party that once barred her now welcomed her.

She continued her activism and later talked of that success: “We eliminated the isolation of the African-Americans from the political process. I believe that Mississippi now has the highest number of African-American elected officials in the nation. We laid the groundwork for that.”

In 2006, she died of cancer.

“When I met … that community of youthful civil rights activists, I realized that this was exactly what I’d been looking for all of my conscious existence,” she said. “It was like coming home.”

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Vote today: Mississippi voters head to the polls. Here’s what you need to know

Published

14 hours ago

November 5, 2024

Staff Editor

mississippitoday.org – Geoff Pender – 2024-11-05 03:00:00

Polls in Mississippi will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. today as voters make their picks for presidential, congressional, state judicial and some local races.

Voters are reminded to bring a photo identification. This can include a valid Mississippi driver’s license, an identification or employee identification card issued by any government entity of the U.S. or state of Mississippi, a U.S. passport, a military photo ID card, a current student ID card issued by an accredited college or university or a Mississippi voter ID card. For more information on voter ID rules, check here.

Those who do not have a valid ID can vote affidavit, but must return and present a photo ID within five days for their ballot to count. Voters waiting in line as polls close at 7 p.m. will still be allowed to vote. If you vote absentee or affidavit, you can track the status of your ballot here.

POLLING PLACE LOCATOR: Use the secretary of state’s online locator to find where you vote

Stay tuned to Mississippi Today for live results, starting after polls close.

LISTEN: Podcast: Mississippi’s top election official discusses Tuesday’s election

The Mississippi secretary of state’s office offers an online resource, My Election Day, where voters can locate or confirm their polling place, view sample ballots and view current office holders. Those with doubts or questions about their precinct locations are urged to contact their local election officials. Contact info for local election officials is also provided on the My Election Day site.

The secretary of state’s office, U.S. attorney’s office and the state Democratic and Republican parties will have observers across the state monitoring elections and responding to complaints.

The secretary of state’s elections division can be contacted at 1-800-829-6786 or ElectionsAnswers@sos.ms.gov.

The U.S. attorney’s office investigates election fraud, intimidation or voting rights issues and can be contacted at 601-973-2826 or 601-973-2855, or complaints can be filed directly with the Department of Justice Civil Rights division at civilrights.justice.gov. Local law enforcement holds primary jurisdiction and serves as a first responder for alleged crimes or emergencies at voting precincts.

The secretary of state’s office also provides some Election Day law reminders:

It is unlawful to campaign for any candidate within 150 feet from any entrance to a polling place, unless on private property.

The polling places should be clear of people for 30 feet from every entrance except for election officials, voters waiting to vote or authorized poll watchers.