University of Mississippi Chancellor’s Firing Breeds Anger, Questions
Students and faculty held a rally Wednesday outside the school’s oldest building, and police estimated that more than 2,500 people attended….
…Now, legislation has been introduced that would dissolve the board and have individual governing bodies for each school in the state.
The one faction that seems happy with Jones’ firing is made up of those who want the school to reinstate traditions that have been phased out in an effort to promote inclusion. From the outside, the changes the university has undergone in the last few years may look small. After all, the school still has academic buildings named after white supremacists. But it no longer has a street called Confederate Drive. Students no longer chant “the South will rise again.” Its mascot is no longer Colonel Reb. And Confederate flags no longer fly at football games. Some fear that Jones’s departure could reverse those hard-won changes, some of which—the street name and the chant—happened under Jones.
The Facebook group for the Colonel Reb Foundation, which wants the school to bring back its defunct Confederate mascot, had a long list of celebratory comments on a post about Jones’s firing. Howie Morgan, the foundation’s co-founder, told the student-run radio station in a statement that Jones “felt that whatever he thought was right and didn’t want to listen to dissenting opinions” and that the IHL may have wanted “more congenial leadership at Ole Miss.”
Bloomberg
3/25/15
Magnolia Tribune
