JACKSON — Although my loyalties to my Mississippi State University alma mater have never been secret, I likewise know that Ole Miss is a truly great university that is one of Mississippi’s best success stories.
From the time I spent in the mid-1990s as the Kelly Gene Cook Chair associate professor in what has become the Meek School of Journalism at Ole Miss, I learned that the university was diverse in every way and headed in the right direction.
From my time as the parent of an Ole Miss student, I learned that the university values and nurtures its students. While I enjoy the sports rivalry as much or more than most, I don’t let that cloud my mind about the value of public education and the need to protect academic freedom and appropriate university governance.
Rep. Mark Duvall, D-Mantachie, is the author of House Bill 1106 — legislation that would amend the state code, adding a provision that Ole Miss “shall bear the nickname ‘Ole Miss Rebels’ and its mascot shall be ‘Colonel Rebel.’”
Additionally, Duvall’s bill mandates that the Ole Miss marching band must play “Dixie” and “From Dixie With Love” at home and away games.
Without question, this bill represents a slippery slope in Mississippi university governance that harkens back to the days of Theodore Bilbo.
Duvall’s bill seeks to have the Legislature supersede the authority of the state College Board and that of individual university administrations in making policy on matters that should be left to those entities and the university’s stakeholders to determine.
Older readers will recall the “Bilbo purges” in the state universities and the havoc that those purges caused.
History chronicles the fact that in June, 1930, Bilbo used his influence on the boards of trustees of the universities to fire the presidents of Mississippi State, Ole Miss and the University of Southern Mississippi in one fell swoop and hand-pick their replacements. Bilbo was unable to control the board at Delta State and simply chose not to interfere at Alcorn State, so those two presidents survived.
Historian Richard Aubrey McLemore wrote: “The newly-elected heads of the institutions of higher learning were given (by Bilbo) lists of individuals on the staff and faculty that had to be replaced and offered suggestions (of Bilbo cronies) for the replacements. There were 31 dismissals and two demotions on the University of Mississippi campus. There were reports that a total of 179 faculty and staff members were ousted in the Bilbo purges.”
The effect of Bilbo’s political meddling was swift and sure. MSU, Ole Miss and Southern all lost their accreditations with the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, and it stoked the political fires of a new class of Mississippi legislative candidates in the 1931 campaign who pledged to the voters to take politics out of higher education.
In 1932, new Gov. Mike Conner called on the Mississippi Legislature to abolish the existing individual university boards of trustees and establish a single Board of Trustees of Institutions of Higher Learning, the membership of which would be appointed to staggered terms, making it difficult for any governor to dominate.
Let Ole Miss — the students, administration, alumni and other stakeholders — decide their traditions. Ole Miss Chancellor Dan Jones, current Ole Miss students and the university’s stakeholders don’t need pandering lawmakers shilling for election-year attention to get involved in that discussion.
Mississippi has spent the better part of the last century evolving to an enlightened, progressive form of university governance in Mississippi that is working.
With all due respect to Rep. Duvall — a fellow State alum — there are far more important matters requiring legislative attention. Ole Miss will find its way without legislative direction on this question — and alumni of the other seven state schools should fight hard to help defend the right of Ole Miss to be free of legislative meddling in this matter.
If Ole Miss loses this fight, the other seven schools will soon follow.
I trust the House will let Rep. Duvall’s bill die the ignominious death that it so richly deserves.
