Low-income Mississippi students will get an extra two months to file a federal form in order to get the state’s need-based college financial aid program.
In Mississippi, students from families generally making less than $35,900 a year qualify for the Higher Education Legislative Plan for Needy Students, or HELP, grant if they meet certain academic criteria.
To apply, students must complete two applications — the Mississippi Aid Application and the federal Free Application for Federal Student Aid. This year, the deadline to submit MAAPP will remain March 31, but low-income students will now get until June 30 to file the FAFSA with the state’s financial aid office and confirm their family income.
The FAFSA extension comes as students and families have encountered hours-long wait times and glitchy forms after the federal government unveiled a “streamlined” process at the end of last year.
“I do believe in the end it is going to be better, but right now it doesn’t feel that way,” Jennifer Rogers, the director of Mississippi’s financial aid office, told members of the Post-Secondary Education Financial Assistance Board who approved the new deadline on Tuesday.
Rogers told board members she didn’t know if the extension would result in an overall increase in the cost of the HELP program. That has been a regular concern as HELP is the state’s most expensive financial aid program because it pays full tuition for all four years of college.
Still, it’s important to ensure low-income students, who may have less support in applying for college, don’t miss out on the HELP grant, Rogers said. They likely would not be able to afford a higher education in Mississippi without it.
“Giving students that extra time to get the FAFSA in this year when the FAFSA has changed so drastically is important to those lower-income students who don’t necessarily have the resources and the guidance and the help that other better-resourced, non-first-generation students have,” she said. “But I can’t tell you if it’s going to cost more.”
Students who are applying for Mississippi non-need-based college financial aid grants — the Mississippi Tuition Assistance Grant and the Mississippi Eminent Scholars Grant — do not need to submit the FAFSA to OSFA. The deadline for those grants is Sept. 15.
Rogers added that financial aid applications in Mississippi are on par with last year as school counselors and advocates for college access have been advising students to go ahead and fill out Mississippi’s aid application, a form that is working, while they wait for the FAFSA.
So far, about 25,500 students have applied for college financial aid in Mississippi this award cycle, compared to roughly 26,000 last year, Rogers told Mississippi Today.
A provision of the 1890 Mississippi Constitution designed to prevent Black people voting was not meant to be punitive, the office of Attorney General Lynn Fitch argued Tuesday before a full panel of the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.
The full panel of the New Orleans-based appeals court is hearing the second case in less than three years claiming a provision of the Mississippi Constitution that permanently prohibits some people convicted of felonies from voting is in violation of the U.S. Constitution.
In August a three-judge panel of the 5th Circuit in a 2-1 decision found that the lifetime voting ban violates the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution because it is cruel and unusual.
But the full panel of the court, known for its conservative rulings, vacated the decision of the three-judge panel and ordered Tuesday’s hearing. It is not known when the full panel – about 20 judges — will rule on the issue. But it is likely that the full panel’s ruling will be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Judge James Graves, who was the third Black member of the Mississippi Supreme Court in modern times before being appointed to the 5th Circuit, asked how the 1890 provision that inserted the lifetime ban in an effort to disenfranchise African Americans could not be considered punitive.
Scott Stewart of the state Attorney General’s office, responded that the lifetime ban was simply one of the regulations, such as a residency requirement, placed on voting. But the state had previously conceded that the original intent of the lifetime ban was to prohibit Black Mississippians from voting.
The framers at the time admitted they placed the lifetime ban in the Mississippi Constitution as a tool to keep Black people from voting. The framers said they believed Black Mississippians were more likely to commit some crimes. Those crimes placed in the state Constitution where conviction costs a person the right to vote are bribery, theft, arson, obtaining money or goods under false pretense, perjury, forgery, embezzlement, bigamy and burglary. The list has since been modified to adhere to changes in how crimes are identified in state law.
But under the original language of the Mississippi Constitution, a person could be convicted of cattle rustling and lose the right to vote, but those convicted of murder or rape would still be able to vote — even while incarcerated. Those convicted of murder and rape are now also prohibited from voting.
“Permanent disenfranchisement is not punitive and does not fall under the Eighth Amendment at all,” Stewart told the judges.
The lawsuit was filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center, Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP and others on behalf of Mississippians who have lost their voting rights.
Jonathan Youngblood argued before the Court on Tuesday that Mississippi is among a handful of states that permanently banned people from voting. At one point in the 1960s more than 40 states imposed a lifetime ban, but now only a few do as policymakers recognize the punitive nature of preventing people from voting.
Youngblood conceded that a voting ban could be imposed for certain crimes, such as for murder or rape,
He pointed to the random nature of the Mississippi provision that imposed a lifetime voting ban on someone convicted of timber theft, but not for someone convicted of some assault charges on police officers.
Youngblood said voting “was the center of what we are … I think what other states do is relevant. It (voting) is the fabric of our American society.” Some of the judges told Youngblood that lawmakers, not the courts, should be deciding what crimes merit a lifetime ban on voting.
In 2020 the full 5th Circuit heard oral argument and later ruled against an effort to say the voting ban was unconstitutional because of its racist beginnings. The 5th Circuit ruled that while the ban was imposed for racist reasons that it was no longer is racist because it had been revisited by legislators and amended since it originally was imposed in 1890.
Newly elected House Speaker Jason White says he will continue convening private Republican caucus meetings at the Capitol in 2024, effectively giving the supermajority House GOP a chance to formulate and debate policy outside public view.
Republicans hold 79 out of 122 seats in the House, which gives them a supermajority and wide latitude over which laws are passed. The state’s Open Meetings Act states that if a majority of the members of a public body, called a quorum, are gathered in one place, then the meeting is supposed to be open to the public.
But White, a Republican from West, told Mississippi Today that he believes the GOP caucus doesn’t qualify as a public body under the state law.
“I do think y’all’s distinction about it being less than a quorum or more than a quorum — I think that’s a weak out and argument,” White told Mississippi Today.
Those who argue that the meetings should be open say political debate in public bodies should be done in public to promote a healthy democracy. White, though, believes political caucuses should be able to meet in private.
The speaker said if caucus meetings were forced to be open to the public, then it could have a “chilling effect” on honest policy discussions. When asked if other public bodies, such as a city council, experience a chilling effect because of the law, White said it “probably does.”
“They don’t debate things to the extent and to the broad reaches that we do here,” White said of other public bodies. “They strictly deal with regulations that pertain to their city. I think that’s a little different.”
Democratic members also conduct private caucus meetings, but their members do not make up a majority of the House or the Senate. Republicans in the state Senate do not conduct private caucus meetings.
The first closed-door House Republican caucus meeting occurred on Jan. 17. White announced the meeting from the House floor.
The Mississippi Free Press, in March 2022, attempted to attend a House GOP caucus when former Speaker Philip Gunn was the leader of the chamber. Gunn and other leaders told the news outlet they could not attend the meeting.
The MFP filed a complaint with the state Ethics Commission over the private meetings. Tom Hood, the commission’s director, recommended that the commission determine the House is a “public body” as defined in law and require the caucus meetings to be open.
But the ethics commissioners, appointed by politicians, voted to disagree with Hood’s recommendation and ruled the private meetings were legal.
The news outlet appealed the ruling to the state court system, which remains pending in Hinds County Chancery Court.
Just when Alexis Smith thought it couldn’t get any worse, she was diagnosed with cervical cancer.
The 30-year-old mom of four had been recently widowed and lost her job of five years after missing work to care for her dying husband.
Her grief, though, was soon replaced by the more imminent stress of a long and arduous Medicaid application process that left her wondering how she would pay for the hysterectomy and chemotherapy she needed.
“Every time I was calling to check the status, no one could tell me anything,” she said.
At first, agency officials told her over the phone it would take 90 days to approve her application. Then, that became 120 days, Smith said. Her worries grew.
“I was getting worried, stressed out, I already had depression and anxiety,” she said. “In my head I’m like, ‘I’m sick, I can barely get up to cook for my children, I need to have this surgery, I have no money, and they won’t even approve my Medicaid?’ Medicaid was really my only hope.”
Smith’s first application, filed on Aug. 7, was approved 93 days later on Nov. 8., the day before her surgery – only after Mississippi Today reached out to the Mississippi Health Advocacy Program and its consumer advocates got involved.
Smith’s story likely sounds familiar to the thousands of Mississippians who have experienced increased Medicaid application processing times in the second half of 2023.
Experts say the increased application times are due in large part to “unwinding,” a process in which state Medicaid divisions across the country have been reviewing their rolls for the first time in three years after the end of COVID-19 restrictions that prevented them from unenrolling beneficiaries.
It’s a massive undertaking for state Medicaid agencies, and in states such as Mississippi, the diversion of resources has made an already-lengthy application process even more prolonged.
Medicaid spokesperson Matt Westerfield confirmed that “unwinding is the main reason for the shift in eligibility application processing times.”
Westerfield said that most of the applications taking more than 45 days end up being deemed ineligible. But in the last six months in Mississippi, ineligibility only accounted for 23% of those kicked off Medicaid. The other 77% of cases fell under the “procedural disenrollment” category – most of them a result of issues with paperwork.
Some of the people who are disenrolled for procedural errors end up reapplying, adding more stress to the system, explained Joan Alker, executive director of Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families.
“On the slowdowns getting worse, we do think that is likely due to unwinding and the pressure on the system of families being inappropriately terminated and then reapplying — this is one example of why the state should slow down or pause procedural terminations, especially for children,” Alker said.
Children have been disproportionately affected by unwinding. So far, most of the people who have lost coverage in Mississippi have likely been kids — 54,918 children have lost Medicaid coverage since unwinding began in June. A total of 98,766 people have been dropped in Mississippi thus far, but the agency won't say exactly how many of the people kicked off due to unwinding are children.
There’s not a simple solution. In the short-term, it would obviously be helpful to hire more staff, but the agency is already struggling with its vacancy rate.
Mississippi Medicaid’s staff vacancy rate was 12% around the time unwinding began. That percentage has since inched up to 15%. Though that’s in line with other Medicaid agencies, Westerfield acknowledged that the department is working “aggressively to recruit and retain employees.”
The agency is adding 70 contractors this month to aid the workforce in eligibility determinations and redeterminations, he said.
If Mississippi already had Medicaid expansion, unwinding likely would not be this bad, Alker said, since more people would fall under the income limit and would be automatically enrolled. The short-term effects of expansion could mean a much larger application volume, but in the long-term, expansion would provide for a more streamlined process.
A majority of Mississippians support the policy, and most other states have expanded Medicaid. But Republican state leaders, such as Gov. Tate Reeves, have remained staunchly against it.
“What [Smith’s case] is demonstrating is that a simple income determination is a lot easier to make than a disability determination,” said Alker. “If you just have an income standard, as you would under Medicaid expansion, everyone under 138% of poverty is eligible. Period. You don’t have to prove other things.”
Right now, not only is the application process time-consuming — it’s confusing.
When Smith first filed her regular Medicaid application on Aug. 7, nobody told her that cancer is considered a disability and she would need to apply for Aged, Blind and Disabled Medicaid. When she was told a week later and filed her new application, not only did the clock start all over again for her application’s processing time, but it was longer.
States are required by law to approve or deny a regular Medicaid application within 45 days. For disability determination, that number is 90 days.
“Medicaid is complicated,” Alker said. “It’s very confusing and there are a lot of changes happening ... The workforce is overloaded and they’re understaffed at most places. Unquestionably, unfortunately, there are mistakes made.”
Though Westerfield said, in the short term, “finishing the unwinding is going to be the best thing we can do to decrease application processing times,” Medicaid’s latest unwinding numbers show the biggest backlog yet in December.
The vast majority of the reviews due in December — 42,531 of 57,616 — went uncompleted last month.
The agency’s growing backlog appeared to be shrinking some in recent months — until December. The latest numbers increased the agency’s total number of incomplete reviews by 72%, bringing the grand total to 81,358.
“Having pending renewals is not uncommon, and it’s neither good nor bad news,” Westerfield said. “We’ve been committed to a balanced approach aimed at protecting beneficiaries by ensuring accurate redeterminations and at protecting taxpayers by promptly removing ineligible individuals from the rolls.”
For the first time during unwinding, the majority of Mississippians dropped last month were disenrolled because they were found to be ineligible. Still, the majority of people kicked off the rolls so far during unwinding in Mississippi have been dropped for procedural reasons, instead of being found ineligible for Medicaid.
Short-term relief isn’t coming anytime soon — unwinding is set to continue for months. And while patients are waiting for Medicaid approval, they have to pay out of pocket for doctor’s visits and treatments.
As a single, unemployed mother of four, Smith began a number of ventures – cooking and selling plates of lunch to workers, braiding hair, cleaning houses and party decorating – to cover basic needs. But she wonders if she had been able to pay for regular doctor’s visits if a pap smear could have detected the precancerous condition, which is nearly 100% treatable.
“I still wonder, since I was not going to those frequent doctor visits like I was supposed to, maybe they could have caught it before it turned cancerous,” Smith mused.
Marcus Thompson, the newly appointed president of Jackson State University, has finalized six key administrative hires as his tenure reaches the two-month mark.
That includes Alla Jeanae Frank, a former assistant commissioner of operations at the Institutions of Higher Learning, who will now serve as a special assistant to the president. Another familiar face is Van Gillespie, a former assistant commissioner of legal affairs at IHL, who is now Thompson’s chief of staff.
Gillespie started Dec. 1. He graduated from the University of Mississippi School of Law and served as general counsel to the board of trustees during the same years that Thompson worked at the higher education agency as chief administrative officer.
Both men came to IHL under the aegis of former commissioner Hank Bounds. Together, Thompson and Gillespie have significant insight into the inner workings of the often-opaque governing board that oversees Mississippi’s eight public universities, including Jackson State.
At IHL meetings, Gillespie could usually be seen sitting to the side of the trustees, and he was privy to the board’s executive sessions.
In a press release, Thompson described the new members of his administrative team as “servant leaders.”
“Combined with the knowledge and passion of my existing cabinet members, this is the genesis of an incredible dream team to execute a strong pathway to success for JSU’s future,” he said.
From top left to right: : Kylon Alford-Windfield, Alla Jeanae Frank, Van Gillespie, ConSandra McNeil, Mitchell Shears and Onetta Starling Whitley. Credit: Courtesy Jackson State University
Thompson also hired a new vice president for enrollment management whom IHL approved last week. (Gillespie’s hire as chief of staff did not need to be approved by IHL, according to a JSU spokesperson.)
Kylon Alford-Windfield, a Jackson native, will make $150,000. He was previously the vice president for enrollment management at Stillman College, a private historically black college in Alabama, where he oversaw a “notable increase in enrollment,” according to JSU’s press release. He has also worked at two other historically Black schools, Mississippi Valley State University and Rust College.
Like Thompson, Alford-Windfield is a recent graduate of Jackson State’s executive doctoral program in urban higher education, which was created to prepare diverse students to assume leadership roles at colleges and universities. Alford-Windfield is also a member of the same fraternity as Thompson, Kappa Alpha Psi.
Thompson also made what appear to be two internal promotions. ConSandra McNeil, who recently served as an associate provost at Jackson State, is now the interim vice president of research and economic development. Mitchell Shears, the associate vice president for student success, will oversee the university’s federal funds and act as chief liasion for the leadership team.
At JSU, Shears “spearheaded the return of TRIO programs to JSU with 16 competitively funded programs – the most in the state and most on an HBCU campus,” according to JSU’s press release.
Onetta Starling Whitley, the first Black woman to serve as a deputy attorney general in the state of Mississippi, is Thompson’s new general counsel. After she retired from state service in 2020, Starling Whitley joined W T Consultants as a registered lobbyist.
Edward Watson was formerly general counsel at JSU. He is now deputy general counsel.
When the state’s economic development agency briefed lawmakers last week about the details of a multibillion-dollar economic development package, the public had few ways to listen in on how their tax dollars would be spent.
The Mississippi House of Representatives does not livestream or record its committee meetings, which can leave the public in the dark about a crucial step in Mississippi’s lawmaking process. Meanwhile, the Mississippi Senate does livestream both its committee meetings and full chamber proceedings.
House Speaker Jason White, a Republican from West, told Mississippi Today that he has no objection to livestreaming committee meetings, but he wants to consult with his leadership team before adopting a permanent policy on recording them.
“My commitment to you is I know our new Rules Committee chairman and our Rules Committee will look at that,” White said. “I don’t think anybody here is, like, staunchly against it.”
The bulk of the Capitol’s work happens in committee meetings because committee leaders have control over which bills are voted on and which bills die over the course of the legislative session. Committee meetings are also where lawmakers hear directly from agency leaders and conduct hearings.
House Rules Committee Chairman Fred Shanks, a Republican from Brandon, also said he does not oppose livestreaming the committee meetings, but he believes the House needs to think through logistical plans on how the recordings would work.
“The Senate does it,” Shanks said. “I really don’t know the temperature of what all the other members think about it, but I would be open to hearing about it.”
The House does livestream its proceedings in the House chamber, but not its 49 committees.
As a senior at Southern Miss, Derrick Nix, 43, ran for 202 yards in a victory over defending Big Ten Conference champion Illinois. (Photo by Danny Rawls, Southern Miss)
Derrick Nix served Ole Miss exceptionally well for 16 years as an offensive assistant football coach, working first with running backs, then with wide receivers, all the while helping recruit some of the most productive players in Ole Miss history.
Rick Cleveland
Last week’s announcement that Nix was leaving Oxford to join Hugh Freeze’s staff at Auburn came as a surprise to this column, mainly because I knew Auburn had made a huge run at Nix a year ago when Freeze first got the Auburn job. Then, Nix turned down his former boss to remain at Ole Miss.
But this time, the Auburn offer came with a new job title: offensive coordinator, which naturally comes with a higher salary and presumably one step closer to some day becoming a head coach.
“It was hard as hell to leave Ole Miss,” Nix told AuburnUndercover.com. “I spent all of my adult life in Mississippi. My 16 years at Ole Miss has been great for me, but an opportunity like this to move up and become an offensive coordinator in this great league and do it around those guys was like a layup, a dream come true.”
It is a dream come true in a career that almost never happened. The Derrick Nix story is one of family, faith, and remarkable perseverance in the face of near tragedy. It is a story worth retelling, especially since many younger readers weren’t around 21 years ago when Nix’s dreams of a professional football career were dashed and, at the age of 22, Nix did not know whether he was going to live or die.
Nix, a Baptist preacher’s son from Attalla, Alabama, was a highly recruited high school football player. Home state schools Alabama and Auburn recruited him hard. Florida wanted him, and Georgia, too. But they all wanted him to play linebacker, as had an older brother, Tyrone, at Southern Miss. Tyrone, by then, was coaching for Jeff Bower at Southern Miss. They recruited Derrick and told him he would play running back in Hattiesburg.
And, boy, did he. Nix, who weighed 220 pounds and possessed break-away speed, ran for 1,180 yards as a true freshman. He could run around you, but would just as soon run through you or over you. “The Baby Bull,” they called him. He possessed all the intangibles, too. Nobody out-worked him. He was first on the practice field, the last to leave it. Bower absolutely adored him, both as a player and a person. Derrick Nix ran for 1,054 more yards as a sophomore in 1999, leading the Golden Eagles to a 9-3 season, a Liberty Bowl victory and a No. 14 finish in the the final AP Poll.
Nix’s heath issues began the next year. Southern Miss began the 2000 season losing a 19-16 heartbreaker at Tennessee, but then trounced No. 15 Alabama 21-0 in Birmingham the following week and then throttled Oklahoma State 28-6 at Stillwater. The Golden Eagles won five of their first six games before Nix was diagnosed with kidney issues that would end his season. Without Nix, those Eagles finished 7-4.
Nix sat out the 2001 season but came back as a senior in 2002 for a season that those who witnessed will never forget. Despite recurring kidney issues that sapped his strength and limited his endurance, he ran for 1,154 yards. In a 23-20 victory over defending Big Ten Conference champion Illinois, he ran for 202 yards. Most memorably, he scored on one 50-yard run, then, exhausted, he went to his knees, puking in the end zone.
Derrick Nix, from 2002. (Southern Miss athletics)
“Derrick had it all,” Dan Rooney, a college scout for the Pittsburgh Steelers, once told Sports Illustrated. “He reminded me a lot of Deuce McAllister. He had a gliding style, but he also had great running ability. He could break tackles with power, but he also had good enough feet that he could be elusive in open space. And once he broke loose, he could finish a run. He was a can’t-miss prospect, the kind any NFL team would love to have.”
Somehow – and despite shoulder, ankle and heel injuries – Nix made it through the entire regular season, rushing for 139 yards in a 24-7 victory over East Carolina in the season finale. The next week, extensive medical tests showed that he had lost 90% of his kidney function and would need daily dialysis until a matching kidney was found. His football career was over.
I remember talking to Preston Nix, Derrick’s dad. “My son is still alive and God has a purpose for him,” the father said. “We will do what it takes. He still has a long battle in front of him, but he will fight it.”
And I remember talking to Derrick himself. “The night before a game, I used to envision myself scoring touchdowns. Now I envision myself with a new kidney, out on the field coaching,” he said.
Said Bower, “He’ll be a great coach, like his brother.”
Now then, this is going to make a really long, really complicated story short. The search for a new kidney ended with his oldest brother, Marcus, who was a perfect match. On June 6, 2003, doctors transplanted one of Marcus’s kidneys into Derrick’s abdomen.
A month later, Derrick Nix talked about it, saying he felt like a brand new person and hadn’t realized just how lousy he felt before the transplant. “I get a lot of credit,” he said, “but my brother Marcus is the hero. He went into that hospital when nothing was wrong with him and let doctors cut on him and take that kidney for me.”
Derrick said he was still coming to grips with the end of his playing his career, but added, “I am going to become the best coach I can be.”
And now here he is, just over two decades later, an accomplished coach, a husband and a father, respected by all who know him, including those he leaves behind at Ole Miss. He never made the millions he would have made in the NFL, but he will make right at a million a year at Auburn. When Derrick Nix got his brother’s kidney and new lease on life 21 years ago, he ran with it. Indeed, he is still running.
Willa Beatrice Brown served as a lieutenant in the U.S. Civil Air Patrol. Credit: Wikipedia
Pioneer aviator and civil rights activist Willa Beatrice Brown was born in Glasgow, Kentucky.
While working in Chicago, she learned how to fly and became the first Black female to earn a commercial pilot’s license. A journalist said that when she entered the newsroom, “she made such a stunning appearance that all the typewriters suddenly went silent. … She had a confident bearing and there was an undercurrent of determination in her husky voice as she announced, not asked, that she wanted to see me.”
In 1939, she married her former flight instructor, Cornelius Coffey, and they co-founded the Cornelius Coffey School of Aeronautics, the first Black-owned private flight training academy in the U.S.
She succeeded in convincing the U.S. Army Air Corps to let them train Black pilots. Hundreds of men and women trained under them, including nearly 200 future Tuskegee Airmen.
In 1942, she became the first Black officer in the U.S. Civil Air Patrol. After World War II ended, she became the first Black woman to run for Congress. Although she lost, she remained politically active and worked in Chicago, teaching business and aeronautics.
After she retired, she served on an advisory board to the Federal Aviation Administration. She died in 1992. A historical marker in her hometown now recognizes her as the first Black woman to earn a pilot’s license in the U.S., and Women in Aviation International named her one of the 100 most influential women in aviation and space.
