MOORHEAD — Mississippi Delta Community College’s president is stepping down May 31 after 11 years leading the institution.
Larry Bailey announced his retirement in an email to employees Monday.
He said retirement will allow him to spend more time with his family and to pursue other goals.
“MDCC has been home to me, and I could not have chosen a place to work that was a more perfect match for me,” Bailey said in the prepared statement. “It has been very rewarding to work with students and see them purse their goals in life. It has also been exciting for me to play a role in the growth of the college in both enrollment and services to the school’s district.”
MDCC is supported by property taxes from Leflore, Sunflower, Washington, Humphreys, Issaquena, Sharkey and Bolivar counties. Its enrollment has increased in recent years, reaching 3,200 in the spring of 2011.
Leflore County Chancery Clerk Sam Abraham, an alumnus and a member of the college’s board of trustees, said he didn’t want to comment until hearing from Bailey at a board meeting.
Stephen Gill, a second-year student from Cleveland, Miss., there’s “a lot of silence on campus right now” among students who don’t know why Bailey is leaving. Gill is part of a group of black students who have voiced complaints about racial issues at the college, and he said there had been a lot of other things going on, too.
For one thing, the Leflore-Carroll Chapter of the MDCC Alumni Association announced in February that it wouldn’t have its annual meeting “due to organizational changes in the Alumni Association directed from Miss. Delta,” according to an ad that ran in the Commonwealth.
“Dr. Bailey’s a great person; he’s always been a great person, but we could tell he was torn between two sides and didn’t really know what to do,” Gill said.
He said he hopes the next president will have more interaction with students.
• Contact Charlie Smith at 581-7235 or csmith@gwcommonwealth.com.
