U.S. District Judge Mike Mills joins Mississippi Today’s Adam Ganucheau and Bobby Harrison to discuss his storied career in politics and the state and federal judiciary. He discusses his time in the Legislature, on the Mississippi Supreme Court, and in the federal court.
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The vaccine with the poorest track record in the U.S. has its worst uptake in Mississippi. Nearly 20 years after the first FDA-approved HPV vaccine was introduced to the public, Mississippi has one of the highest rates of cervical cancer deaths in the country.
The Human Papillomavirus, or HPV, vaccine protects against the nine most common and high-risk strains of the virus that cause cancers and genital warts in both males and females. Despite its efficacy, it has one of the lowest immunization records of recommended vaccines in the country, with a national average of only 63% of teens up to date on their two-dose vaccine.
In Mississippi, only 39% of teens are up to date on immunization. Practitioners say the biggest barriers to immunization against the virus are the stigma around how the virus is thought to be transmitted and misunderstanding about who the vaccine is for.
Dr. Anita Henderson, pediatrician at Hattiesburg Clinic and the former president of the Mississippi chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said that it has taken time for the public to understand that the vaccine is not simply preventing a sexually transmitted disease.
“That is not what the HPV vaccine was developed for – it was developed to prevent cancers,” Henderson said. “And unfortunately, I think the misinformation around this vaccine has played a significant role in its poor uptake.”
In fact, despite the longstanding definition of HPV as a “sexually transmitted disease,” research is now bringing to light instances of non-sexual contact transmission. Some pediatricians are seeing HPV transmission from mother to baby during birth.
“We have had several babies with HPV in their airways causing stridor and difficulty breathing,” Henderson said. “The pediatric ENT made the diagnosis of HPV warts in the airway with diagnosis and treatment via upper airway endoscopy.”
For parents who associate the virus with sexual behavior, it can be confusing why practitioners recommend the vaccine at such a young age. But the impact of age on efficacy of the vaccine is also misunderstood.
“The vaccine is about 90% effective against cervical cancer when given at the age of 12 or 13, it is about 60% effective if given at the age of 14 to 16, and it is about 30 or 35% effective if given at the age of 16 to 18,” Henderson explained.
According to Henderson, that has to do not only with the fact that earlier immunization increases one’s chances of vaccinating prior to exposure, but also with the fact that “when you’re younger, your immune system does a better job of developing the appropriate antibodies to the vaccine.”
The HPV vaccine has been an outlier in childhood vaccines in Mississippi. The state has been at the forefront of childhood immunization for years, often ranking first for vaccination in young children – a title that only now could be challenged as Mississippi joined other states in allowing religious exemption for childhood vaccination last month.
The widespread association of the HPV vaccine with sexual activity is part of what makes HPV vaccine hesitancy so unique and pervasive in the state, explained the Mississippi HPV Roundtable Coordinator Amy Ellis.
The Mississippi HPV Roundtable works to increase HPV vaccination rates by offering online resources for parents and coordinating health initiatives across the state. Member organizations come from a diversity of sectors including academia and state and local agencies.
“If it was a vaccine to prevent any other type of cancer that wasn’t sexually transmitted, I don’t think it would be this controversial,” Ellis said.
And while some parents might fear that the vaccine encourages sexual behavior, studies show there is no evidence to support that claim.
“A misconception that some parents have is that if their kids get the HPV vaccine, that that is going to give them permission to have sex, and that has just not proven to be the case,” Ellis continued. “Kids don’t even know what vaccine they’re getting.”
While the state has the worst HPV vaccine rates, there are a number of Mississippi initiatives to change that statistic that Ellis is excited to see play out. One of the most successful so far, she said, is the college campus initiative, that aims to inform college students who never received the vaccine, for whatever reason, about the HPV virus and vaccine.
“Ole Miss is taking the lead on that and doing an amazing job,” Ellis said, “educating students about the vaccine, and then if they want to get it, they can go get it at a clinic on site.”
The Mississippi Board of Dental Examiners also ruled in April 2021 to allow licensed dentists in the state to administer the vaccine, according to the board minutes. Currently, there are no dentists who have completed the process to store and administer the vaccine on site, but the policy is in place for that to happen in the future.
“We are ahead of the game there,” Ellis said. “There are not many states that have dentists that are able to give the vaccine, so that is exciting for Mississippi.”
Cervical cancer is a more known example of HPV-related cancer because there are so many studies and an abundance of data and marketing highlighting the connection to the HPV virus. But Tara Smith, an epidemiologist and professor at Kent State University College of Public Health whose research is rooted in science denial and vaccine hesitancy, noted there are also several debilitating cancers for males.
HPV can cause penile, anal and oral cancers in men, the last of which has been on the rise in recent years.
“I don’t think some people have gotten past the idea that the only reason to get it for boys is to protect their female partners,” Smith said. “I think that that education campaign has been kind of lacking.”
Smith also said that one of the biggest causes of this miseducation is the reluctance to talk about these topics – both on the part of parents and practitioners.
“I think there is a lot of misunderstanding that if teens behave in a manner that the parents would like them to, as far as abstaining, that that will protect them, which unfortunately, it really doesn’t,” she explained.
Even teens who abstain from intercourse might end up engaging in other forms of sexual activity, all of which can transmit the virus. For those who do abstain entirely, Smith said, “you still don’t know who they’re going to marry.”
What makes these conversations even more trying for parents, Smith explained, is that they “can sometimes bring up more uncomfortable topics about things like rape and sexual assault, where your child may not be protected, and it may not be their choice to engage in sexual activity.”
But for Smith, there is nothing more important than setting up the dialogue between parents and practitioners as early as age 9, which is the youngest age the HPV vaccine can be administered.
“We need to be talking about it, and talking about it earlier,” she said. “When you get to the time when kids are recommended for the vaccine, which is generally around 12 or so, parents are starting to think about things like their child growing up, and bringing in that conversation about sex is sometimes difficult. So I really think it’s about the dialogue, and starting early, and not being afraid to talk about these things.”
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More than 20 Africans, kidnapped by Portuguese forces from what is now Angola, landed in Point Comfort (now Hampton Roads, Virginia) on a 160-ton English ship known as the White Lion. They were the first recorded Africans to arrive in England’s American colonies. They included Anthony and Isabela whose son, William, became the first African child born in English North America. By the time slavery ended, nearly 15 million Africans had landed in the Americas.
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The issue of abortion is in a kind of limbo in Mississippi despite the state being viewed as perhaps the most staunchly anti-abortion state in the nation.
Many state politicians like to make that claim.
Because of bills passed by the Legislature and signed into law by multiple governors, abortion is prohibited in nearly every circumstance in Mississippi. Yet there is a 1990s state Supreme Court ruling that provides a right to an abortion under the Mississippi Constitution. That ruling, in theory, would trump those laws.
But still, no provider is willing to provide abortions in Mississippi because of the fear that law enforcement and state courts would ignore that basic legal tenet that the constitution trumps laws.
The abortion conflict could be solved by one of two ways: by the state Supreme Court overturning its earlier ruling, or by lawmakers amending the Mississippi Constitution.
But it appears staunchly anti-abortion Mississippi legislative leaders are afraid to try to amend the Constitution because to do so would require allowing the people to vote.
Polls over the past several months surprisingly show Mississippians almost evenly divided on the emotional and contentious issue, with some polls even saying a plurality supports abortion rights.
In every state where abortion has been on the ballot during the past year, including conservative controlled states, proposals to expand abortion rights have prevailed.
The latest Republican, anti-abortion state where voters might approve abortion rights is Ohio. On the same day earlier this month that Mississippi held its party primary elections, Ohioans rejected a proposal to make it more difficult to pass initiatives placed on the ballot by voters. That vote was directly related to abortion.
Ohio’s state Republican leaders, who like their counterparts in Mississippi are anti-abortion, were trying to make it more difficult for voters to approve a proposal to place in their constitution a right to an abortion by requiring approval by 60% instead of a simple majority of voters. An initiative that Ohio voters gathered the mandated number of signatures will be on the November ballot to guarantee that right to an abortion. Ohio voters overwhelmingly rejected the proposal to make it more difficult to pass that initiative and any future ones.
That vote in Ohio underscores the fact that while the initiative process is alive and well and being protected in some states, it was taken away from Mississippians and politicians have refused to restore it. That refusal could be directly related to abortion.
Mississippi’s initiative process was ruled unconstitutional on a technicality by the state Supreme Court in 2021. In both the 2022 and 2023 sessions, lawmakers did not restore it even though legislative leaders had committed multiple times to doing so.
Mississippians who support abortion rights should not expect any relief from the upcoming November election. Republicans, who generally are against abortion, are expected to win and maintain their legislative supermajorities.
And both major gubernatorial candidates say they are anti-abortion. Republican incumbent Gov. Tate Reeves is a vocal abortion opponent. Challenger Brandon Presley, like many recent statewide Democratic candidates, says he is also anti-abortion.
Perhaps the Legislature in the upcoming 2024 session will put a proposal before voters to restore the initiative process. If they do, and voters do the expected and vote to restore the initiative, they in theory could then bypass the Legislature and place an initiative on the ballot to let the public decide the abortion issue.
Presley has even called on his opponent, the incumbent Reeves, to call a special session and try to get reluctant legislators to approve restoring the initiative immediately.
But abortion supporters should not get too excited about a chance to vote on abortion even if the initiative is restored. Before the Senate under Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann killed the restoration of the initiative during the 2023 session, the House had passed an initiative proposal that would have prohibited voters from using the process to place abortion on the ballot.
To highlight the changing dynamics of the abortion issue, it should be pointed out that the ban on a vote on abortion was the brainchild of House Speaker Philip Gunn. Before then, in 2012, Gunn had proposed placing before voters an amendment to the Constitution to ban abortion.
Now he and other Mississippi politicians appear afraid to let the public vote on abortion.
It would, no doubt, be embarrassing to those politicians if voters in the state that brought to the U.S. Supreme Court the case that overturned the national right to an abortion ended up approving abortion rights at the ballot box.
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Slightly more Mississippi students passed state tests than before the pandemic in nearly all grades, a result education leaders celebrated Thursday when test scores were released.
The Mississippi Academic Assessment Program measures student performance in English, math, science, and U.S. history. Results for the 2022-23 school year were released Thursday and showed the state average in most subjects increasing one or two percentage points since 2019. The U.S. history assessment was reworked during the pandemic, so pre-COVID comparisons are not available.
Last year, students approached pre-pandemic levels but did not meet them. Education officials lauded the new scores for both improving over last year and the 2019 scores, which had previously been the highest scoring year.
“We were very pleased with the test scores,” said Paula Vanderford, chief accountability officer for the education department. “We saw increases from last year to this year across all subject areas at all grade levels, and that’s what we’re looking for is continuous improvement.”
The Mississippi Department of Education sets a goal of having all students meet proficiency, which refers to students who scored a level 4 or 5 (proficient or advanced) on a 1 through 5 scale. Many school districts also use the number of students scoring a 3 (passing) or above to measure their performance.
The 2023 test scores show more students hitting both passing and proficient over 2019. The number of students hitting passing increased a little across the grades and subjects, while the number of students meeting proficiency increased more significantly.
Referencing the education department’s goal of having all students meet proficiency, Vanderford said the goal is to carry on the momentum the state regained since the pandemic, using the tools already in place.
“We need to continue to do what we’re doing because we are continually seeing those gains,” Vanderford said.
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New data shows Mississippi children could be the group most affected by Medicaid’s continuous unwinding.
According to the Mississippi Division of Medicaid’s monthly enrollment reports, 18,710 children have recently been dropped from Medicaid, most of them due to unwinding.
“It’s very troubling to see that children are the vast majority of those losing Medicaid coverage in Mississippi,” said Joan Alker, executive director of Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families.
Federal law prohibited state divisions of Medicaid from terminating beneficiaries starting in March 2020, due to the COVID-19 public health emergency. However, the emergency order ended in May, and agencies are now reviewing their rolls for the first time in more than three years.
During the most recent wave of disenrollments in July, more than 22,000 Mississippians were dropped, joining more than 29,000 terminated during the first wave in June. New data shows that more than half of the people dropped in June were children.
July’s enrollment numbers, which reflect disenrollments that occurred in June, shows that the number of kids enrolled in Medicaid plummeted from 456,314 in June to 437,604 in July.
In the meantime, the number of children in Mississippi enrolled in Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) remained relatively stable, increasing by 120 children during the same time period.
CHIP provides health care for children whose families are low-income but do not qualify for Medicaid. Medicaid coverage is determined by family income, but the threshold for Mississippi kids to qualify is higher than their parents and other adults.
“This suggests that many of these children will become uninsured because their parents are working in low wage jobs that don’t offer affordable health insurance for their children,” Alker said.
Medicaid spokesperson Matt Westerfield confirmed that most of those terminations were due to the unwinding.
Federal research predicts that children and young adults will be affected disproportionately during Medicaid unwinding nationwide, and the majority of those children may still be eligible.
Mississippi has a high percentage of procedural terminations, meaning many people have been dropped because of failure to return paperwork or similar reasons — reasons that have nothing to do with their eligibility.
Kids in low-income families make up more than half of Mississippi’s overall Medicaid beneficiaries.
In a state without Medicaid expansion, such as Mississippi, it’s especially devastating, Alker said.
“Children are the single largest group, and procedural terminations for children are a problem because they’re mostly still eligible,” she said.
According to Alker’s organization, only four states, Connecticut, Kansas, Missouri and West Virginia, have reported the number of kids disenrolled for procedural reasons, even though they’re at high risk of becoming uninsured during unwinding. Mississippi’s monthly unwinding reports do not show what number of terminations were children.
Enrollment numbers for August, which will reveal how many children were dropped in July, won’t be posted until early September, Westerfield said.
So far, about 50,000 Mississippians in total have been dropped from Medicaid during the unwinding, which is set to continue until May 2024. Millions have been dropped nationally, with those numbers predicted to steadily rise.
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The Mississippi Division of Medicaid removed another 22,000 Mississippians from its rolls in July in the second wave of disenrollments after the end of pandemic-era protections.
That brings the agency up to 51,967 disenrollments total during the unwinding process, with those numbers set to increase.
Beginning in March 2020, federal law prohibited state divisions of Medicaid from removing people from their rolls due to the COVID-19 public health emergency.
The emergency ended in May, and now agencies are reviewing the eligibility of their beneficiaries for the first time in more than three years.
According to one expert, Mississippi’s total number of disenrollments is not the most concerning statistic: It’s the fact that 80% of the people dropped so far have been disenrolled because of issues with their paperwork, which could mean many of them were still eligible.
“It’s very high,” said Joan Alker, executive director of Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families. “Yeah, that’s very problematic.”
Many of the people who have been procedurally disenrolled could be children. Kids in low-income families make up more than half of Mississippi’s overall Medicaid beneficiaries.
According to Mississippi Medicaid’s enrollment reports, 18,710 children have lost Medicaid coverage from June of this year to July. It’s unclear how many children have been dropped since — the agency has not yet updated its August numbers.
Mississippi is one of only three states that does not have Medicaid online accounts as of January 2023, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, though people do have the option to complete their renewal online.
According to a July press release, Mississippi Medicaid enrollment increased by 187,894 people, or 26%, from March 2020 to June 2023, bringing Mississippi’s Medicaid rolls over 900,000 people for the first time in the agency’s history.
In June, Mississippi Medicaid was set to examine the records of 67,695 Mississippians whose coverage was up for review.
It found that a little under half of those, or 29,460, were no longer eligible. According to the agency, about 60% of the people who were removed had remained insured during the pandemic because of the extended eligibility rules.
The latest data release shows that of the 75,110 Mississippians who had their eligibility evaluated in July, 22,507, or 30%, were unenrolled.
The majority of those were terminated because of “procedural reasons,” meaning they lost coverage for not returning paperwork or related reasons.
That means many of the people dropped so far could be people who are still eligible.
Alker said Mississippi’s ex-parte rate was “relatively low” — ex-parte renewals are automatic renewals, and the best case scenario during unwinding. Mississippi Medicaid spokesman Matt Westerfield said that the agency is focused on increasing those ex-parte approval rates.
“If individuals qualify for Medicaid coverage, we’d rather make that determination without having to mail a form that they have to fill out and that a Medicaid specialist then has to process,” he said.
Combined with the high rate of procedural terminations — only 11 states have higher percentages, according to Alker’s organization — it’s cause for concern, she said, enough that she suggested Gov. Tate Reeves should step in.
“The governor should absolutely pause these procedural terminations and figure out what’s going on,” Alker said.
According to Westerfield, the Division requested permission from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services on Aug. 7 for “four additional flexibilities that could help reduce procedural disenrollments while increasing ex-parte renewals.”
A letter provided to Mississippi Today by the Division shows that those “flexibilities” included permitting managed care plans to help beneficiaries submit renewal forms, renewing coverage for people whose information “is not returned or is not returned within a reasonable amount of time” and reinstating eligibility for people who were previously unenrolled more quickly. These allowances have not yet been approved, but Westerfield said the agency anticipates that soon.
People who were dropped because they didn’t submit the needed information can be reconsidered without a new application if they submit that information within 120 days of the disenrollment.
Though Mississippi Medicaid launched the “Stay Covered” outreach campaign that included postcard mailing, flyers and text and email blasts to make people aware of the unwinding process, the leader of a local health advocacy organization that has partnered with the agency previously told Mississippi Today that he doesn’t believe Mississippi Medicaid is doing enough to inform beneficiaries. Additionally, it’s not clear how many emails or letters have been disseminated — Westerfield previously did not respond to that question.
Westerfield did say the Division did not process renewals for a few months for beneficiaries in the Delta affected by tornadoes this spring, though it’s not clear if the agency is doing anything in particular to reach those people — who may be displaced — now.
The new data also reveals a growing backlog in Mississippi.
In June, about 5,000 renewals that were up for review were not completed. The new numbers show that an additional 15,000 reviews went uncompleted last month. Westerfield blamed it on the larger review group in the July reporting period compared to June.
Alker says the backlog isn’t uncommon, and it’s neither good nor bad news.
“We want states to take their time, and they still have a lot of time,” she said. States have until May 2024 to complete the unwinding process.
“But it speaks to the backlog and the system, and the fact that they don’t have enough staff to begin with in many states, including Mississippi,” Alker said. “The backlog will keep getting bigger, and that’s going to be a problem.”
And as unwinding continues and a mounting number of Mississippians are potentially without health care coverage, stress continues to mount on Mississippi’s health care infrastructure.
As Reeves and other Republican state leaders continue to oppose expanding Medicaid to the working poor, one report puts almost half of the state’s rural hospitals at risk of closure, and data from Alker’s organization shows that rural populations will be the ones most affected by unwinding.
“If there’s a big unwinding problem, it’s going to be really devastating for these rural communities,” she said.
CMS sent letters to all state Medicaid division directors last week, including Mississippi’s director Drew Snyder. Because Mississippi started disenrollments in June, CMS did not have comments about Mississippi’s procedural termination rate — they analyzed states’ May numbers in their letters.
However, the letter indicated they would continue to keep an eye on deficiencies in individual states’ unwinding processes.
“I think what was important about the letters is that CMS, this is the first time that they’ve done something publicly like this,” Alker said. “I took it as a sign that they’re stepping up their enforcement.”
As of August, almost 5 million people have been disenrolled from Medicaid nationwide, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. The organization says up to 24 million people could end up losing coverage during the unwinding.
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Brandon Presley, the Democratic nominee for governor, hammered Republican Gov. Tate Reeves on Thursday for not doing enough to prevent the state’s massive welfare scandal while Reeves served eight years as lieutenant governor.
Speaking in front of the state Department of Human Services building in downtown Jackson, Presley told reporters that Reeves could have used the lieutenant governor’s role as state Senate president to push lawmakers to conduct more robust hearings over state agencies, including MDHS, which was at the center of the scandal.
“Because it’s politically convenient for him, Tate Reeves now wants to deflect blame on his own failure to protect millions of dollars that were under his so-called watch as lieutenant governor,” Presley said. “He will say or do anything to get elected.”
Reeves’ campaign did not respond to a request for comment, but the governor has repeatedly said that he had no role in the roughly $77 million previous state agency leaders squandered and that the misspending occurred before he was elected governor.
READ MORE: Gov. Tate Reeves airs ad responding to Brandon Presley welfare scandal attack
But Presley said the very fact that the misspending occurred before Reeves entered the Governor’s Mansion deserves an explanation on why elected officials within the state Capitol never discovered the impropriety.
“When he first ran for lieutenant governor, Tate Reeves said a watchdog is exactly what they’re about to get,” Presley said. “The truth of the matter is, in 12 years of Tate Reeves’ reign in state government, he’s been a lapdog for his buddies, special interests and his campaign contributors.”
State and federal prosecutors have not charged the first-term governor with a crime. But as lieutenant governor between 2012-2020, Reeves served a pivotal leadership role in the Legislature — including during the years of 2017-2020, when the bulk of the known welfare misspending happened.
Legislative committee leaders have broad power to conduct oversight of state agencies and compel state agency leaders to testify about their organizations.
To date, no legislative committee has held a hearing to scrutinize the actions of the state welfare agency, though some Democratic lawmakers have organized their own hearings.
Though Reeves was never a member of the legislative committee created by state law to provide oversight of the Department of Human Services, he has often boasted about his direct control of the state budget during his time at the Capitol. Reeves served as chair or vice chair of the powerful Legislative Budget Committee that does provide oversight of agency budgets.
Presley has seized on the state’s welfare scandal and used it as a focal point of his gubernatorial campaign. He previously said he would call lawmakers into a special legislative session to reform state ethics laws to prevent a similar scandal from occurring in the future.
READ MORE: New Brandon Presley ad claims Tate Reeves helped ‘rich friends’ in welfare scandal
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A Lincoln County judge declared a mistrial in the case of a white Brookhaven father and son accused of chasing and shooting at a Black FedEx driver last year.
The ruling came Thursday during the third day of the trial of Brandon Case and his father Gregory Charles Case, who were charged with attempted first-degree murder, conspiracy and shooting into a delivery van that D’Monterrio Gibson drove as he delivered packages Jan. 24, 2022.
Judge David Strong ended yesterday’s court session early because Brookhaven Police Detective Vincent Fernando said under oath, while the jury wasn’t in the courtroom, that he hadn’t previously given the prosecuting and defense attorneys a video statement police took from Gibson after his encounter with the Cases, AP reported.
“In 17 years, I don’t think I’ve seen it,” Strong said Thursday about the errors.
As of late Thursday morning, Strong had not issued that ruling in writing.
Attorney Carlos Moore, who represented Gibson, said it was concerning that the police withheld a potentially crucial piece of information, which necessitated a mistrial.
“I share the deep disappointment and frustration expressed by Circuit Judge David Strong over this development,” Moore said in a Thursday statement. “A mistrial represents not just an administrative setback but also a delay in justice for Mr. Gibson and his family.”
He has asked the U.S. Department of Justice to look into the Brookhaven police’s conduct as potential obstruction of justice.
During opening statements Monday, District Attorney Dee Bates told jurors Gibson was driving a rental van with the Hertz logo on three sides when he dropped off a package at a home on a dead-end road.
That was when Gregory Case drove a pickup to try and block Gibson from leaving, and his son came outside with a gun, Bates said. Three rounds hit the van as Gibson drove around the pickup.
The elder Case’s attorney told jurors he saw a van outside his unoccupied mother-in-law’s house and went to see what was happening. He wanted to ask the van driver what was happening, but the driver didn’t stop. The sun had set and Case thought someone was in the wrong place, the attorney said.
Gibson, who was 24 at the time of the incident, was not injured in the shooting.
Moore, who also represented Gibson in a federal lawsuit, has compared what happened to his client to the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man who was chased by three white men and shot while exercising in 2020.
U.S. District Judge Daniel Jordan on Aug. 10 approved motions to dismiss the $5 million lawsuit against FedEx, the city of Brookhaven, its police chief and the Cases last week. He said Moore failed to prove the company discriminated against Gibson based on race, according to court records.
AP reported that Moore said he plans to sue in state court. The attorney added that Gibson is still a FedEx employee and is currently out on workers’ compensation leave.
“We remain committed to seeking justice for D’Monterrio Gibson and ensuring that the legal process is fair, transparent, and accountable,” Moore said in the Thursday statement.
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A slim majority of the governing board for Mississippi’s eight public universities voted to allow Elayne Hayes-Anthony, Jackson State University’s temporary acting president, to apply for the permanent role.
According to executive session minutes released Wednesday, seven trustees voted for the motion and five voted against, including Dr. Steven Cunningham, the only Jackson State alumnus on the board and the trustee who is leading the university’s presidential search.
Cunningham, a Hattiesburg-based radiologist, told Mississippi Today that he didn’t want to dissuade outside candidates from applying for the role. In recent years, the IHL board has tended to hire interim presidents instead of conducting a full-blown national search at the state’s universities.
“I just didn’t want anybody to be scared off,” Cunningham told Mississippi Today.
The vacancy at Jackson State, a historically Black university and the largest university in Mississippi’s capital city, comes after Thomas Hudson, who had been interim before getting the permanent position, became the third president in a row to resign earlier this year.
Though Hayes-Anthony said she was interested in the permanent post shortly after the board appointed her to the temporary position in March, trustees did not vote to allow her to apply until June, the minutes show. She could not be reached for comment by press time.
If the board hires Hayes-Anthony, the Jackson native and former chair of the university’s Department of Journalism and Media Studies would be the third consecutive internal hire within the state’s universities system. The tenures of the past two presidents at Jackson State — William Bynum, Jr., who was hired from Mississippi Valley State University, and Hudson — both ended in resignation.
Cunningham said he was voting for a thorough national search.
“It all comes down to the process,” he said. “As long as the process is an even process.”
Earlier this week, the Jackson Advocate’s Ivory Phillips reported that IHL Commissioner Al Rankins said the presidential search committee is working to make a hire by the end of the calendar year. A high-profile alumnus and a previous applicant that was highly rated are among the current applicants.
Cunningham told Mississippi Today that the search committee has received about 45 applications and is expecting more by the Aug. 21 deadline.
At a March press conference, Hayes-Anthony said she would be in the role as long as she is needed.
She also acknowledged the board has imposed various stipulations on her role. She said she could hire and fire people in coordination with Rankins. An IHL spokesperson said the board has not placed more restrictions on Hayes-Anthony than any other temporary or interim president in the system.
Last month, Hayes-Anthony wrote in a campus-wide email that Brandi Newkirk-Turner, the associate provost, had been reassigned but would remain as a faculty member in the Department of Communicative Disorders. Newkirk-Turner was among the administrators who received a no-confidence vote from the faculty senate earlier this year.
Hours later, Hayes-Anthony sent another email that Newkirk-Turner’s reassignment had been rescinded and she would remain associate provost.
READ MORE: ‘As long as I’m needed’: JSU acting president has no timetable from IHL for appointment
UPDATE 8/17/23: This story has been updated to include the IHL board response to restrictions on Elayne Hayes-Anthony as acting JSU president.
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