More than two years after Jimmie “Jay” Lee disappeared, sparking fear in Oxford’s small LGBTQ+ community, a University of Mississippi graduate will stand trial on capital murder charges this week.
Sheldon Timothy Herrington, Jr., is accused of killing Lee, a fellow Ole Miss graduate who was pursuing a master’s degree in social work, in an effort to keep their casual relationship a secret, according to arguments prosecutors made during Herrington’s preliminary hearing two years ago.
Herrington is charged with capital murder for allegedly kidnapping Lee, then killing him, according to the indictment. If convicted, Herrington faces the death penalty or life in prison without the possibility of parole.
The 24-year-old was indicted by a Lafayette County grand jury last year. He is being represented by state Rep. Kevin Horan. In interviews with Mississippi Today and other media outlets, members of Herrington’s family, who lead a prominent church in Grenada, have vociferously defended his innocence.
Herrington is charged with capital murder for allegedly kidnapping, then killing, Lee. If convicted, he faces the death penalty or life in prison without the possibility of parole.
“We’re all in shock, we’re all devastated, and we are all looking forward to proving his innocence,” Herrington’s half-brother, Tevin Coleman, said two years ago.
Dozens of people from Herrington’s hometown, including the then-superintendent and Grenada County Sheriff, have written letters to the court on his behalf before evidence was presented during 2022’s preliminary hearing.
In Oxford, Lee’s disappearance and death led his friends to organize a local movement, called Justice for Jay Lee, in an effort to remember Lee’s life. They have protested outside the Lafayette County Courthouse so loudly their chants could be heard during proceedings. They have tailgated in the Grove and tabled during local drag shows where Lee performed.
“It doesn’t feel real, especially since they haven’t found his body,” Braylyn Johnson, one of Justice for Jay Lee’s main organizers, told Mississippi Today two years ago. A fellow Ole Miss student, Johnson lived with Lee during the pandemic.
The trial will be presided over by Judge Kelly Luther. It was originally slated for earlier this fall but was postponed due to a lack of hotel availability for jurors during football season.
Anticipating the coverage, Luther ruled earlier this fall that jurors will be brought in from outside the county after denying a joint motion to seal all pre-trial filings in the case.
The jury is being selected in Forrest County, but there is nothing in the case file to indicate from which county jurors were being chosen.
Last week, Luther ordered that any public demonstrations in relation to the case will occur in the park next to City Hall. The potentially lengthy proceedings at the Lafayette County Courthouse are expected to bring significant media attention to the small north Mississippi college town.
Lafayette County District Attorney Ben Creekmore did not respond to a request for comment from Mississippi Today. A special prosecutor has been appointed to assist him.
Herrington has been out on bond since December 2022. Lee was declared legally dead earlier this month, but police have not recovered his body. The public has received little information about Lee’s potential whereabouts, or what efforts police have undertaken to find him.
Lee went missing on July 8, 2022, and Herrington was arrested a few weeks later. During the preliminary hearing, an Oxford Police Department detective testified to a plethora of evidence, including Snapchat and text messages, Google searches and video surveillance.
According to cellphone location data, Lee’s last location was in the vicinity of Herrington’s apartment on July 8.
Earlier that morning, the two exchanged messages about a fight they’d had. Herrington asked Lee to come back to his apartment, and Lee responded that he thought Herrington was “just tryna lure me over there to beat my ass or something.”
At 5:56 a.m., minutes after Lee messaged Herrington he was on his way, Herrington searched “how long does it take to strangle someone gabby petito,” then “does pre workout boost testosterone.”
Less than an hour later, video surveillance shows Herrington buying duct tape at Walmart and, later that day, retrieving a long-handle shovel and wheelbarrow from his parent’s house in Grenada and putting it in the back of a box truck that he used for a moving business.
During the police investigation, DeSoto County Sheriff’s Department “cadaver dogs” — K-9s that are trained to identify the smell of a dead body – “alerted” three times in Herrington’s bedroom, once in his living room and in his car.
During the preliminary hearing, Horan repeatedly questioned if the police had reviewed the dogs’ training or checked if the dogs had ever before correctly identified the smell of a dead body.
Last week, the prosecution agreed to withdraw evidence stemming from “the K-9s searches or purported detection of human remains” after Horan filed a motion to exclude it.
Horan has also filed a motion to dismiss the indictment on technical grounds.
Read Mississippi Today’s previous reporting on the case here.
Justice Reporter Mina Corpuz contributed to this report.
The winner of Tuesday’s runoff election between Mississippi Supreme Court Justice Jim Kitchens and Jenifer Branning likely won’t be declared until next week, according to an official with the Mississippi Secretary of State’s office.
Elizabeth Jonson, a spokesperson for the agency tasked with administering Mississippi’s elections, told Mississippi Today on Wednesday that there are currently more outstanding ballots than the current vote spread between Kitchens and Branning, who are vying for a seat on the state’s highest court.
“So voters probably won’t know the result until next week,” Jonson said.
With 97% of the vote reported on Wednesday morning, the Associated Press reported Branning narrowly led the race with 50.5%, and Kitchens trailed with 49.5%. About 1,200 votes currently separate the two candidates in the unofficial tabulations.
The tight race could come down to absentee and affidavit ballots, some of which are still flowing into local election offices. State law currently allows for election workers to process mail-in absentee ballots for up to five days after Election Day, as long as the ballot was postmarked by the date of the election.
Gov. Tate Reeves declared Thursday and Friday state holidays because of Thanksgiving, so state and most county employees, which includes local election workers, are not required to work on those days.
Both Branning and Kitchens in separate social media posts seemed to acknowledge that the close vote margin will likely lead to several additional days of vote counting.
“Thank you to everyone who helped our campaign in yesterday’s runoff election,” Branning wrote. “While we are still waiting on the remaining votes to be counted, I’m grateful and appreciative of your support.”
Kitchens similarly said the race was too close to call and that his supporters may not have an answer until next week.
“There are thousands of votes left to count, but we remain hopeful and prayerful,” Kitchens wrote.
This year’s delayed result is similar to a 2020 election for another central district seat on the Supreme Court. After 16 days of vote-counting in a close race, then-appointed Supreme Court Justice Kenny Griffis was declared the winner over state Court of Appeals Judge Latrice Westbrooks.
Kitchens, a Crystal Springs native, was first elected to the court in 2008. He is a former district attorney and private practice lawyer. He is largely considered one of two centrist members of the court.
Branning, a Philadelphia resident, is a private practice attorney who was first elected to the Legislature in 2015. She is challenging Kitchens and pledging to ensure that “conservative values” are always represented in the judiciary, but she stopped short of endorsing policy positions, which Mississippi judicial candidates are prohibited from doing.
Counties have until Dec. 6 to certify election results and transmit them to the Secretary of State’s office.
Ole Miss is a whopping 26-point favorite. A State victory likely would be the biggest upset in Egg Bowl history. As the Clevelands discuss, despite the old saying that you can throw the records out in a rivalry game, the better team almost always wins. The most memorable Egg Bowls are discussed at length.
The Mississippi Supreme Court runoff election between incumbent Justice Jim Kitchens and Republican state Sen. Jenifer Branning remained too close to call Tuesday night, with political prognosticators signaling a careful counting of ballots that could take days.
With 91% of the total votes reported, the Associated Press reported that Branning received 50.2% of the vote, while Kitchens had 49.8%. The reported margin of votes at 10:45 p.m. was about 500 in favor of Branning.
The tightly contested race could come down to absentee and affidavit ballots, which are not counted in AP’s election night tabulation. State law currently allows for election workers to process mail-in absentee ballots for up to five days after Election Day, as long as the ballot was postmarked by the date of the election.
The Mississippi Republican Party worked hard for months to oust Kitchens, one of the dwindling number of centrist jurists on the high court, consolidating its infrastructure behind Branning. Conservative leaders are keenly aware that Kitchens is next in line to lead the court as chief justice, a job with administrative powers, should current Chief Justice Mike Randolph step down.
Though candidates for judicial offices in Mississippi are technically nonpartisan, political parties and trade associations often contribute money to candidates and cut ads for them, which has increasingly made them effectively as partisan as traditional campaigns.
Kitchens is one of two centrist members of the high court and is widely viewed as the preferred candidate of Democrats, though the Mississippi Democratic Party has not endorsed his candidacy. The GOP has directly endorsed Branning.
Kitchens, a resident of Crystal Springs, was first elected to the court in 2008. He is a former district attorney and private practice lawyer. On the campaign trail, he has pointed to his experience as an attorney and judge, particularly his years prosecuting criminals and his rulings on criminal cases.
Branning, also private practice attorney, was first elected to the Legislature in 2015. She has led the Senate Elections and Transportation committees. During her time at the Capitol, she has been one of the more conservative members of the Senate, voting against changing the state flag to remove the Confederate battle emblem, voting against expanding Medicaid to the working poor and equal pay for women, and supporting mandatory and increased minimum sentences for crime.
While campaigning for the judicial seat, she pledged to ensure that “conservative values” are always represented in the judiciary, but she stopped short of endorsing policy positions, which Mississippi judicial candidates are prohibited from doing.
The two candidates have collectively raised around $187,000 and spent $182,000 during the final stretch of the campaign, according to campaign finance reports filed with the Secretary of State’s office.
Counties must certify the election results and send them to the Secretary of State’s office by Dec. 6, meaning a counting effort could continue through the Thanksgiving holiday and into the first part of December.
Amy St. Pé , an attorney from Jackson County, defeated Jennifer Schloegel, a chancery judge, on Tuesday night for an open seat on the Mississippi Court of Appeals.
With 94% of the vote reported, the Associated Press projected that St. Pé, who led with 61.5% of the vote, would defeat Schloegel, who trailed at 38.5%. The runoff election pitted two prominent Gulf Coast names against one another and saw hundreds of thousands of campaign dollars spent in the race.
St. Pé is a municipal judge in Gautier. Schloegel is a chancery court judge in Hancock, Harrison and Stone counties.
Whenever St. Pé is installed as the judge replacing outgoing Judge Joel Smith, she will be one of five women serving on the 10-member Court of Appeals, the highest number of women who have ever served on the court at one time.
It’s Egg Bowl Week in the Magnolia State, as integral a part of Thanksgiving weekend in Mississippi as turkey, oyster dressing and casseroles.
So, without further adieu, and in no particular order, my five most memorable Egg Bowls of the nearly 50 I have witnessed:
Rick Cleveland
1) The Immaculate Deflection: Ole Miss led 24-23 at Mississippi Memorial Stadium in 1983 when Artie Cosby, one of the best place-kickers in Mississippi history, lined up for a 27-yard, chip shot field goal. I was standing under the goal posts at the south end of the stadium amid gusting winds that threatened my balance. Cosby’s kick appeared perfect and then one of those 60 mph gusts blew the ball straight up into the air and then backward. Today, you would swear the scene was created by artificial intelligence. So it was that Billy Brewer’s first Ole Miss team went to a bowl game. So it was that State coach Emory Bellard told me postgame, “God just decided that Mississippi State wasn’t going to win that game.”
2) Back to Veterans Memorial Stadium and back to 1981. Ole Miss trailed State 17-14 with just 13 seconds to play. John Fourcade aimed a pass toward his crackerjack receiver Michael Harmon in the end zone. What happened next is Egg Bowl lore. State fans will tell you Harmon pushed off. The back judge, Dick Pace, instead ruled that State defensive back Kenneth Johnson, who intercepted the pass, was guilty of pass interference. With first down from the one, Fourcade faked a handoff and circled right end for the game-winning touchdown and then proceeded to wave the ball at State fans on his way back to the sidelines. For years, I had a running joke with Harmon. “You know you pushed off, Michael,” I’d tell him, to which he’d reply with a smile, “That’s not what the official said…”
3) Back to Scott Field for the 1997 Egg Bowl and another thrilling finish. Stewart Patridge, a clutch quarterback if there ever was one, drove Ole Miss on a last-minute drive for a touchdown and winning two-point conversion in a 15-14 Rebel victory. As exciting as the finish was, the pregame fireworks were just as memorable. A pregame brawl broke out, which, of course, State blamed on Ole Miss and Ole Miss blamed on State. I remember this: Mississippi Highway Patrolmen watched, seemingly amused, until it became apparent that somebody was going to get maimed, if not killed. It took officers a while, but they stopped it.
4) This happened in 2007 at Starkville, two days after I had written a column saying it was time for Ole Miss to find a new football coach, that the Ed Orgeron experiment has failed. Ole Miss, winless in the SEC and last in the league in every major statistical category, led 14-0 in the fourth quarter and faced fourth and one at midfield. State had gained only four first downs the entire game. Nevertheless, Orgeron decided to go for a first down instead of punting. State stuffed BenJarvus Green-Ellis for a two-yard loss. Suddenly, the Scott Field crowd was back in the game and so was State. To make a long story short, the final score: State 17, Ole Miss 14. Orgeron was fired the next day.
5) The Piss and Miss: Nobody who saw it will forget what happened at Scott Field in 2019. Ole Miss wide receiver Elijah Moore, who has become a terrific pro, snagged a short touchdown pass with four seconds remaining to cut State’s lead to 21-20. Moore celebrated on his hands and knees, hiking a leg as if he were a dog peeing in the State end zone. Officials did not appreciate Moore’s taste in humor and flagged him 15 yards for unsportsmanlike conduct. Ole Miss missed the ensuing PAT and State won 21-20, costing Ole Miss coach Matt Luke his job and earning a $75,000 bonus for State coach Joe Moorhead, who was subsequently fired. Interestingly, State received a Music City Bowl bid as a result of the victory, which added $2.75 million to the SEC’s bowl pool. So Ole Miss received an extra $100,000 or so in its SEC bowl share because of Moore’s antics. What’s more, Ole Miss hired Lane Kiffin to replace Luke and State hired Mike Leach to replace Moorhead. You could not make all this up if you tried.
Here are five Egg Bowls I wish I had seen:
1) The first one ever in 1901: The opening kickoff was delayed 45 minutes because — believe it or not — there was a heated dispute. Ole Miss accused State of playing non-students, including one who had played for Ole Miss the year before. Finally, the game began and State won 17-0 in a game called for darkness in the third quarter.
2) In 1907, the Rebels and the Bulldogs sloshed onto the field on a cold, gray day at the State Fairgrounds in Jackson after several days of relentless rain. Much of the field was underwater, some of it knee-deep according to newspaper reports. The State men proved better mudders, winning 15-0, in part because Ole Miss coach Frank Mason provided an urn of coffee spiked with whiskey to warm his players. When asked about his team’s travel plans afterward, Mason said the team would leave for Oxford that night, but that he would not. And, he added, “I hope I never see them again.” He likely never did. He was fired shortly thereafter.
3) In 1918, the teams played not once but twice. State won 34-0 at Starkville and then two weeks later 13-0 at Oxford. The Rebels were coached by none other than Dudy R. Noble, a State graduate who later would become State’s beloved athletic director. “I know what hell is like,” Noble would tell folks. “I once coached at Ole Miss.”
4) In 1926 at Starkville, Ole Miss won 7-6 ending a 13-game losing streak to its bitter rival. Rebels fans and players celebrated, intending to tear down the goal posts. A melee ensured during which State fans reportedly attacked the Ole Miss celebrants with wooden chairs. As a result, a football-shaped trophy — the Golden Egg — was created to be awarded each year to the winning team (in lieu of goal posts). Thus, the Battle for the Golden Egg, later shortened to Egg Bowl. As noted, the trophy has done little to curb fighting, before games or after.
5) In 1941 at Oxford, State and Ole Miss played for the SEC championship for the only time in history. State won 6-0 to claim the only outright SEC title in Bulldog history. The late, great William Winter, a future governor, covered that game as an Ole Miss student reporter. More than seven decades later, he recounted the game, remembering even the most minute details. When an interviewer, this one, expressed amazement at Winter’s keen memory for something that happened 73 years before, he replied, “Well, you have to understand it was the most important thing in my life at the time.”
Polls will close at 7 p.m. today as voters in central Mississippi choose a state Supreme Court justice and those in south Mississippi choose a state Court of Appeals judge in runoff elections.
In the Jackson Metro area and parts of central Mississippi, incumbent Supreme Court Justice Jim Kitchens faces Republican state Sen. Jenifer Branning of Neshoba County. In areas on the Gulf Coast, Jennifer Schloegel and Amy St. Pé square off for an open seat on the Mississippi Court of Appeals.
Attorney General Lynn Fitch is asking the Supreme Court to set an execution date for Charles Ray Crawford, who has been on death row for over 30 years.
“Crawford’s death sentence is final and he has exhausted all state and federal remedies,” the attorney general’s office wrote in its Nov. 22 filing.
Fitch’s office requests the execution date to be set within the next 30 days, which could fall sometime around Christmas. But that 30 days can be extended if other court motions are filed or if other action is taken.
Crawford’s attorneys are asking for the court to hold off because he has not yet exhausted his remedies in federal court. They cited a divided decision that the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued last week denying him habeas relief challenging a previous rape conviction that is not tied to his death sentence.
The appeal court’s decision came the same day the attorney general’s office asked for an execution to be set.
For his death sentence, Craword, now 58, was convicted of the rape and murder of North Mississippi Community College student Kristy Ray in 1993.
Four days before a separate trial on aggravated assault and rape charges, Crawford kidnapped 20-year-old Ray from her parents’ home in Tippah County. He left ransom notes for her family and took her to an abandoned barn and stabbed her. Crawford’s DNA was also found on Ray, indicating he sexually assaulted her, according to court records.
Crawford, also a student at North Mississippi Community College, told investigators he was going hunting and had a knife and firearm. He said he was worried about “an upcoming event” and had been stockpiling food in the barn where he killed Ray, according to court records.
Crawford said he had blackouts, remembering only being inside the Ray home, hearing someone crying, finding Ray handcuffed and then putting her in a car and driving away. After another blackout, Crawford woke up in the woods with Ray dead and her hands handcuffed behind her back.
He admitted “he must have killed her, but did not remember doing so,” according to court records. Crawford also led police to Ray’s body in the woods.
At his 1994 trial, Crawford presented an insanity defense, with a prison psychiatrist who treated him testifying that he suffered from depression and periods of time lapse without memory. The psychiatrist also testified about Crawford’s past medication treatment, previous psychiatric hospitalization and bipolar disorder diagnosis in 1989.
A clinical psychologist who provided rebuttal testimony didn’t see evidence of Crawford suffering from bipolar illness, and said he showed premeditation and was able to distinguish right from wrong. Another rebuttal witness, a forensic psychiatrist, said Crawford was improperly diagnosed with having psychogenic amnesia.
Crawford was convicted in Lafayette County as a habitual offender for burglary, rape, sexual battery and capital murder.
The Mississippi Supreme Court denied his appeal, and several times the U.S. Supreme Court denied him a petition for writ of certiorari.
Crawford has also pursued post-conviction relief. In 2017, the court denied a motion for an execution to be set because he was still challenging his rape and aggravated assault conviction and sentence.
In those cases, he was convicted for raping a 17-year-old and hitting her friend over the head with a hammer, according to court records. Similarly, he claimed insanity and said he didn’t remember because of blackouts.
The Nov. 22 5th Circuit Court dissent said the trial court repeatedly declined to provide Crawford with a psychiatrist or mental health professional, other than a state expert, to evaluate him and help with his defense, a violation of his rights. The justices also said his appellate counsel was ineffective.
The dissent mentions how Crawford was eventually evaluated by qualified mental experts and diagnosed with severe brain injury and partial epilepsy, which explains his spells and periods of blackouts, and how on the day of the 17-year-old’s rape he was in a state of repetitive seizures.
The Pearl Police Department fired patrol officer Taylor Lofton for reportedly stealing $32,000 from a dying woman’s house. It’s the second officer dismissed for alleged criminal conduct in less than a year.
On the morning of Nov. 18, Jason Kelly’s mother, Jackie, collapsed unexpectedly, and his father called 911.
Jackie Kelly Credit: Courtesy of Baldwin-Lee Funeral Home
Ambulance workers arrived. So did four or five Pearl police officers, including Lofton, Kelly said.
His 80-year-old mother never recovered and may have died of a blood clot, he said. “It was unexpected.”
She had just inherited $32,000 and received the money in cash, which she put in an envelope in her drawer in the bedroom, he said.
After ambulance workers and police left, Kelly said his father determined the cash had been stolen and called Pearl police, who returned to the home.
After arriving, Lofton admitted that he had opened the drawer and seen the money, but he insisted he closed it right back, Kelly said. “He turned off his camera and stole $32,000.”
Kelly praised Pearl police’s swift response and said, “I hope they press charges.”
He said he doesn’t know if the city is going to pay the family back.
The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation is investigating, but spokesperson Bailey Martin said the agency could not comment further. Lofton could not be reached for comment.
Kelly believes there must have been thefts on previous occasions as well. “This ain’t his first time doing this,” he said.
Pearl Police Chief Nick McLendon said he’s not aware of any previous incidents.
Asked about possible criminal prosecution, he said he could not comment further because the case is under investigation.
He said in a statement made public that the officer hasn’t been charged with any crime and should be presumed innocent. But the department, he said, “must be concerned with even the slightest appearance of impropriety — and especially in the area of law enforcement.”
Two days before Christmas 2023, Pearl police officer Michael Christian Green forced a man he arrested to lick urine from a holding cell floor.
The 26-year-old officer took the man into custody after a family disturbance call to Sam’s Club in Pearl. After he booked the man into a holding cell, footage showed the man telling Green he needed to urinate, but when Green failed to respond, the man urinated in a corner, according to the federal bill of information.
When Green found out what the man had done, Green berated him, “Let me tell you something. You see this phone? I will beat your f—ing ass with it. You’re fixin’ to go in there, and you’re gonna lick that p— up. Do you understand me? … Go suck it up right now.”
Green filmed the man as he licked the urine from the floor, and when the man gagged, Green said, “Don’t spit it out.” When the man gagged, Green responded, “Lick that s— up. Drink your f—in’ p—.”
When the man was allowed to leave the booking area, he vomited in a garbage can.
On June 13, Greenwas sentenced to a year in federal prison and a $1,500 fine. He told the judge he regrets what he did.
Pearl Mayor Jake Windham Credit: Courtesy of the City of Pearl)
At a press conference after Green’s guilty plea, Pearl Mayor Jake Windham told reporters, “God created us in his image. Treating someone like this is despicable.”
“If you’re going to operate as a police officer,” said Windham, who served in law enforcement for 16 years, “you’ve got to do things right.”
He apologized to the man and his family for “the horrible treatment by an officer of the law.”
At the time, Windham declared, “We hold our officers to a higher standard.”
Four days after the incident, Windham confronted Green and told him to resign, which he did.
The city handles matters swiftly, Windham said. “I think there’s a stark contrast between the Pearl Police Department and this incident [and the handling of] the ‘Goon Squad.’”
Six Rankin County officers were involved in the January 2023 torture of two Black men and the shooting of one of them, but it wasn’t until six months later that those involved were fired. The six officers pleaded guilty and are now serving between 10 and 40 years in federal prison.
Green had been on the force six months when this incident occurred. “His certificate was clean when he came to the Pearl Police Department,” Windham said. “We strive to do an extensive background check on people.”
He said he hopes law enforcement agencies would report any problems with officers to the Mississippi Board on Law Enforcement Officer Standards and Training.
A new law, passed in the wake of the Goon Squad’s acts, beefs up the board’s ability to investigate allegations against officers.
As for Lofton, McLendon put the officer on administrative leave after investigating the matter. On Thursday, the Pearl Board of Aldermen fired the officer on McLendon’s recommendation.
“We acted on it immediately,” Windham said. “We don’t put up with it.”
It’s a bad situation when “you have to terminate officers,” he said, “but we’re going to make sure that if they screw up, we’re going to send them down the road.”
Asked about getting the $32,000 back to the family, the mayor replied, “Our goal is to make the family whole as soon as possible.”
Lofton was hired by Dean Scott, who resigned as Pearl police chief in January after an investigation into possible misuse of tax dollars. A WLBT investigation revealed that Scott claimed to work for Rankin County as a homestead fraud investigator while on city business at law enforcement conferences on the Coast. He now works as a lieutenant for Capitol Police.
Lofton worked at a series of jobs in law enforcement. He worked at the Greenwood, Flowood and Brandon police departments before starting at Pearl Police Department, where he had worked since 2023.
Lofton completed 480 hours at the Mississippi Delta Community College Law Enforcement Training Academy. He is married and has a newborn son, according to his Facebook page.
“He threw his whole life away,” Kelly said. “You risk your whole family for $32,000?”
UPDATE 11/26/24: This story has been updated to correct the spelling of the accused police officer’s last name and his education.
Note: This story was co-published with Open Campus, The Hechinger Report, and The Washington Post.
CLEVELAND — With no car and a toddler, Shamya Jones enrolled this fall at the four-year university in her small town in Mississippi — Delta State University.
She planned to major in digital media arts, but before she could start, the college eliminated that major, along with 20 other degree programs including history, English, chemistry and music.
She was advised to change her major, even though the university would go on to offer a bachelor of arts in digital media, which the university’s governing board approved last week.
“They’re cutting off so much, and teachers [are] leaving,” Jones said. The cuts “take away from us, our education.”
Across the country, rural students like Jones are feeling short-changed and frustrated.
Many of the comparatively few universities that serve rural students are eliminating large numbers of programs and majors, blaming plummeting enrollment and resulting financial crises. Nationwide, college enrollment has declined by 2 million students, or 10 percent, in the 10 years ending in 2022, hitting rural schools particularly hard. An increasing number of rural private, nonprofit colleges are not only cutting majors, but closing altogether.
“We are asking rural folks to accept a set of options that folks in cities and suburbs would never accept,” said Andrew Koricich, a professor of higher education at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. “It’s almost like, ‘Well, this is what you get to learn, and this is how you get to learn it. And if you don’t like it, you can move.’ ”
For many rural students, there are already few places to go. About 13 million people live in higher education “deserts,” the American Council on Education estimates, mostly in the Midwest and Great Plains, where the nearest university is beyond a reasonable commute away.
Meanwhile, more than a dozen private, nonprofit universities and colleges that are in rural areas or serve large proportions of rural students have closed since 2020, data show.
“It is creating a second class of people to say, ‘You pay your taxes just like everybody else does. You vote like everybody else does. But you just can’t have the same choices as everybody else, because there aren’t enough of you here,’” Koricich said of the cuts. “In a lot of rural places, the idea of choice is sort of a fiction,” he said.
Rural-serving institutions are defined by the Alliance for Research on Regional Colleges, or ARRC, which Koricich directs, as those located in counties classified as rural and not near a metropolitan area.
Even some flagship universities that serve rural communities are making big cuts. West Virginia University this fall began the process of eliminating 28 undergraduate and graduate majors and programs, including most foreign languages and graduate programs in math and public administration. The University of Montana is phasing out or has frozen more than 30 certificate, undergraduate and graduate degree programs and concentrations. A course review is also underway at branch campuses of Pennsylvania State University due to declining enrollment.
But most of the cuts have occurred at regional public universities, which get considerably less money from their states — about $1,100 less, per student, than flagships, the ARRC calculates. Regional institutions educate 70 percent of undergraduates who go to public four-year schools, according to the American Association of State Colleges and Universities. These campuses are also more likely than other kinds of institutions to enroll students from lower-income families and who are the first in their families to go to college, the Baltimore-based Art & Science Group consulting firm found.
St. Cloud State University in Minnesota is cutting 42 degree programs, for example, including criminal justice, gerontology, history, electrical and environmental engineering, economics and physics. The University of Alaska System has scaled back more than 40 programs since 2020, including earth sciences, geography and environmental resources and hospitality administration. Also during that period, Henderson State University in Arkansas dropped 25 and. Emporia State University in Kansas cut, merged or downgraded around 40 undergraduate and graduate majors, minors and concentrations.
The State University of New York at Fredonia is dropping 13 majors. SUNY Potsdam is cutting chemistry, physics, philosophy, French, Spanish and four other programs. The University of North Carolina Asheville is discontinuing religious studies, drama, philosophy and concentrations in French and German.
“Some institutions have no other options” than to do this, because of financial problems and plummeting enrollment, said Charles Welch, president and CEO of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities and a former president of Henderson State and the Arkansas State University System, both of which have cut programs.
At Delta State, for instance, enrollment is down by nearly a quarter since 2014.
A drop in tuition revenue stemming from that decline created an $11 million hole in the university’s budget, President Daniel Ennis told the campus last year. When Ennis got to Delta State, he also found the university was overestimating its revenue from facilities and merchandise.
Delta State University President Daniel J. Ennis attends the Mississippi State Institutions of Higher Learning board meeting at the IHL headquarters in Jackson, Miss., on Thursday, June 20, 2024. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today
“At a certain point there’s going to be less of everything — personnel, money, equipment and opportunities — because we have to rightsize the budget,” Ennis said.
But the American Association of University Professors, which represents faculty, said in a 2021 report that problems such as enrollment drops made worse by the pandemic are being exploited by administrators to close programs “as expeditiously as if colleges and universities were businesses whose CEOs suddenly decided to stop making widgets or shut down the steelworks.”
Welch said schools are often simply trying to reduce program duplication among campuses in the same systems and compensate for having less financial support than flagship universities.
“The challenge that our institutions have is that they tend to be lower resourced than institutions in urban areas, or flagship institutions. They can’t rely on big endowments,” Welch said. The pandemic, he said, “threw a whole additional layer on top of what those institutions were already facing.”
Many of the majors affected are in the humanities and languages, making those disciplines less available to rural students than they are to people who live in urban and suburban areas.
These subjects “do much of the work of helping students dream beyond their realities,” said Michael Theune, who chairs the English Department at Illinois Wesleyan University, a private, nonprofit school thathas also eliminated majors. “We are paring down the sense of the vastness of our world and the possibilities of university students to experience it differently.”
Some rural-serving public universities and public universities in largely rural states have now undergone repeated rounds of cuts. Youngstown State University in Ohio, for instance, axed Italian, religious studies and other majors in 2021, then six more this year. In all, more than 25 programs have now been eliminated there, many of them in the humanities.
The university, in a message to the campus, pointed out that there were no students at all in 10 of those majors. But students and faculty say it was still important to offer them.
Owen Bertram, a senior theater studies major at Youngstown State University which has eliminated more than 25 programs and majors. Bertram is about to graduate, but says he hears his classmates asking the questions, “Do I stay?” “Do I leave?” “Is it worth it?” Credit: Amy Morona for Open Campus
“It is easy to just write us off as, ‘Oh, well, do they really need that school?’ when there are so many other majors,” said Owen Bertram, a senior theater major whose program has so far escaped the cuts. “But I don’t think it’s that simple.”
Bertram, who is also student government representative for the university’s College of Creative Arts, said it’s hard to watch his classmates who wanted to study humanities struggle with the questions, “Do I stay?” “Do I leave?” “Is it worth it?”
At many of the schools, it’s too early to tell if the program cuts will lead to even lower enrollment. In some cases, however, enrollment has continued to decline. At Emporia State, enrollment is down by 14 percent in the two years since about 40 majors were eliminated there.
These cuts come at a time when the proportion of rural high school graduates going to college is falling. Fifty-five percent enroll right after high school, down from 61 percent in 2016, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. That’s a lower rate than the national average.
Low-income and Black students are disproportionately impacted by program cuts. The University of North Carolina Greensboro, for example, is in the process of phasing out 20 degree programs, including anthropology and physics. More than half the students are low income and 28 percent are Black, according to the state university system.
Holly Buroughs poses for a portrait in front of the Jackson Library on the UNC Greensboro campus. Credit: Alycee Byrd for The Hechinger Report
“UNCG should be a place where anyone should be able to come and get an affordable education in whatever they want,” said Holly Buroughs, a physics major who started a petition protesting the cuts.
“Is a first-gen student like me going to come next year and not see the UNCG that I fell in love with and the opportunities I had?” asked Azariah Journey, a second-year graduate student in history who comes from a rural town in Kentucky.
Azariah Journey poses for a portrait in front of the Jackson Library on the UNC Greensboro campus. Credit: Alycee Byrd for The Hechinger Report
Dominick Bellipanni is one of the last remaining music students at Delta State as the department is being phased out. He received a scholarship to study piano, which he isn’t sure he would have gotten at the state’s larger, more competitive universities.
Bellipanni is from Indianola, a once-busy crossroad 30 minutes from the university, where he grew up hearing stories about businesses that once operated there but closed.
Delta State! Dominick Bellipanni, a music major at Delta State University in Mississippi, standing in front of the music building. The university is phasing out its music program. Credit: Molly Minta for Open Campus and Mississippi Today
“Used to be, used to be, used to be,” he remembered people telling him.
Now he’s hearing that again.
His professors talk abouthow there used to be more music recitals, more scholarships, more money, said Bellipanni, who said he plans to leave the Mississippi Delta when he graduates.
“All you hear is, ‘We used to have this, because we used to have more students.’ ”
Contact writer Jon Marcus at 212-678-7556 or jmarcus@hechingerreport.org.
This story about rural college majors was produced byThe Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education, andOpen Campus, a nonprofit newsroom focused on strengthening local coverage of higher education. Reporters in the Open CampusLocal Network contributed: Mississippi Today’s Molly Minta, WUNC’s Brianna Atkinson and Signal Ohio’s Amy Morona
UPDATE 11/26/24: This story has been updated to reflect that Delta State is now offering a bachelor of arts degree in digital media.
