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Mississippi parents can opt out of vaccinating their children for school on account of religious beliefs, a federal judge has ruled. 

U.S. District Judge Halil Sul Ozerden on Monday issued a preliminary injunction in a lawsuit, filed last year by parents who said they’ve decided not to vaccinate their children because of religious beliefs, as first reported by Magnolia Tribune.

The plaintiffs filed the lawsuit against State Health Officer Dr. Dan Edney, Attorney General Lynn Fitch and various school officials. They claim that mandatory vaccinations violate the Constitution.

Mississippi led the nation in childhood vaccinations as one of six states without a religious exemption for vaccines. The others are California, Connecticut, Maine, New York and West Virginia, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Kaye Bender, the executive director of the Mississippi Public Health Association, said when a child isn’t vaccinated, the effects extend beyond that child’s personal health. 

“Unvaccinated children don’t put just themselves at risk. They endanger all children they come into contact with as well as some adults and perhaps their entire community. So from a public health prevention perspective, MPHA strongly urges that childhood vaccinations be preserved.”

While the organization does not take a position on the pending litigation or any potential appeals, it has long advocated for full immunizations of all children and adults, Bender said. 

“Childhood immunizations have proved themselves over the years as safe and effective disease preventatives,” Bender said. “They protect children from illness now, from possible complications in the future, and may even save the child’s life.”

The plaintiffs argued that Mississippi already allows for medical exemptions in the case of five vaccinations required for kids to attend school: diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis; polio; hepatitis; measles, mumps and rubella; and chickenpox. 

Attorney General Lynn Fitch agreed that the law must allow the same right for families with religious beliefs that prevent them from vaccinating their children, according to documents.

The ruling will likely conclude the lawsuit, filed by parents Amanda Bosarge, Jaquelyn Butler, Kimberly Harrell, William Morgan, Paul Perkins, Brandi Renfroe, and Jeana Stanley, unless the attorney general’s office appeals the injunction or Ozerden does not enter a written order consistent with his ruling from the bench – both of which are unlikely. 

“We appreciate the judge’s thoughtful ruling from the bench and will give full consideration to his written order when provided,” said Debbee Hancock, communications director for the Attorney General’s office, in an emailed statement. “General Fitch has always been of the belief that there is a religious liberty exemption, as stated in our filings in this case, and we look forward to working with the Department of Health to ensure faithful execution of the judge’s order.”

Ozerden is giving the Mississippi State Department of Health until July 15 to come up with a process to allow people to request religious exemptions. 

Liz Sharlot, communications director of the department of health, said it was the agency’s long-standing policy to avoid commenting on pending litigation, but added that “the Mississippi State Department of Health continues to support strong immunization laws that protect our children.”

In a recent state board of health meeting, state officials touted Mississippi’s high childhood vaccination rate, saying the state led the nation with 98.9% of children entering kindergarten with complete vaccinations for the 2020-21 school year. 

John Gaudet, past president of the Mississippi Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said Mississippi’s high vaccination rate should be preserved and protected.

“We’re at the bottom of the heap in many health metrics, but at the top of the heap in protecting our children from vaccine-preventable illnesses,” he said. “There are a lot of reasons for that, and of them is because when we send our kids to kindergarten, we require them to be vaccinated, to not only protect them but to protect the other children in the classroom.

“I think that comes from a sense of community, and it’s endured for decades — that we take care of ourselves and we take care of those around us.”

Gaudet, who currently teaches pediatrics and clinical medicine at William Carey University’s College of Osteopathic Medicine, said deaths from measles and similar illnesses are rare because of the state’s high vaccination rate. That’s why Gaudet said he’s disappointed in the ruling — the outcome could prove fatal.

“When the number of vaccinated individuals at a school starts going down, kids who are susceptible, kids who have cancer or take immunosuppressant drugs, are more likely to get sick,” he said. “Not only that but more kids who are vaccinated are likely to get sick if numbers go down. This is something we need to continue to keep as a high priority.”

Jean Cook, chief of communications at the Mississippi Department of Education, said that the education department requires that schools have documentation on file regarding vaccines, but the department of health sets the policy regarding vaccine requirements. 

Vaccine requirement opponents have been unsuccessfully lobbying the Legislature for a religious exemption provision for years. Mississippi hasn’t had a religious exemption for child vaccinations since 1979.

Nationally, the rate of childhood vaccinations has fallen since the COVID-19 pandemic. Mississippi does not require the COVID-19 vaccine for school entry.

The post Mississippi has the highest childhood vaccination rate in the country. That may be about to change. appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Gov. Tate Reeves in a ceremony Wednesday signed into law the last three of a handful of bills he said shows Mississippi’s commitment to helping mothers and children post abortion ban.

He said Mississippi’s lawsuit that overturned Roe v. Wade abortion rights nationwide was only a first step, but that Mississippi is “walking the walk … delivering on our promise to mothers and babies.”

Reeves on Wednesday signed three bills, two aimed at helping Mississippi adoption and foster care and a third increasing tax credits for those who donate to state crisis pregnancy resource centers. He also recounted multiple bills he’s signed recently, creating a task force to improve adoption and foster care laws, to provide more funding and autonomy for the state’s Child Protection Services agency, and expanding use of “safe haven” boxes where parents can leave babies for adoption without fear of endangering the child or facing legal repercussions.

When asked, Reeves said he is also hopeful the extension of postpartum Medicaid coverage for mothers from 60 days to a year that he signed about a month ago will also help.

“I believe there’s a good chance that it will help,” Reeves said of the extended Medicaid coverage for mothers, but said the state lacks good data on that and many other health care issues. He said it “stands to reason” that if mothers receive more and longer-term care their health outcomes will improve.

But Reeves, up for reelection this year, reiterated his opposition to expanding Medicaid coverage for the working poor as most other states have done. He was asked by media to respond to Democratic gubernatorial challenger Brandon Presley vowing to expand Medicaid and saying it would be a pro-life move and help Mississippi hospital closure crisis.

Presley has vowed to expand Medicaid his first day in office.

“We’ve turned back billions of dollars in Mississippi,” he said. “Not because of policy. Only reason we’ve turned down federal dollars for health care in Mississippi is petty, partisan, cheap politics.”

On Wednesday Reeves said, “I have not changed my position on the expansion of Obamacare. Adding 300,000 additional people to welfare in our state is not the right path for Mississippi.”

Reeves said his plan to help the health care crisis in Mississippi is to help create jobs for people to have “more opportunity to be in the workplace.”

Reeves was flanked by several lawmakers as he signed the bills, and the room was packed with church representatives and pro-life advocates, who applauded the governor frequently.

Andrea Sanders, director of state Child Protection Services, thanked Reeves and lawmakers at a press conference after he signed bills.

“I would like to thank Gov. Reeves for his constant refrain: Being pro life means more than just being anti-abortion,” Sanders said. “We right now have 3,706 live souls on board, in the custody of the state … This year we have seen an unprecedented, early focus on families and children … the state is prepared to focus on the work that this agency does, which is different from any other in the state.”

Bills signed into law Wednesday by Reeves are:

House Bill 510: This establishes a “foster parents bill of rights,” aimed at increasing transparency for foster parents and providing them with more help from the Department of Child Protection Services.

House Bill 1671: This expands the cap on tax credits for pregnancy resource centers across the state from $3.5 million a year to $10 million. Reeves said this will help the centers, which prior to the abortion ban helped counsel expectant mothers against abortion, hire more people and expand services.

Senate Bill 2696: This creates an income tax credit for adoption expenses. It covers a maximum of $10,000 of qualified expenses for Mississippians who adopt children from Mississippi and up to $5,000 for those who adopt children out of state.

Sen. Nicole Akins Boyd, R-Oxford, was among the lawmakers who attended Wednesday’s bill signing. Starting last year, she headed up a special committee created by Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann to direct post-Roe legislation to help mothers, children and families.

Boyd said she is proud of the measures lawmakers passed and Reeves signed this year. She said task forces on foster care and adoption and on early intervention have major tasks ahead in informing policy and funding in Mississippi, and she expects her special committee will continue.

“There is a lot of work still to do — lots of work,” Boyd said.

The post Reeves signs ‘culture of life’ post-Roe bills, says Mississippi is ‘beacon on the hill’ for other states appeared first on Mississippi Today.

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They are called the Partin Tables, named for Dr. Alan Partin, the renowned Johns Hopkins urologist who created the ground-breaking medical reference material. Partin developed the tables when he wasn’t performing hundreds and hundreds of often life-saving prostate surgeries a year.  

And you may wonder why a sports writer would write about such an obscure (if invaluable) medical reference. It is because Partin, who died on March 28 at age 62, grew up in Grenada and played college football at Ole Miss.

“Smartest damn guy I ever met,” said Madison resident Tim Bell, who was a student trainer for the Ole Miss football staff during the early 1980s when Partin played in the offensive line for the Rebels.

“Most guys played college football hoping to get to the pros,” Bell said. “Alan Partin knew he was gonna be a doctor, knew he was going to be a surgeon, knew he was going to study at Johns Hopkins. He was super, super intelligent and he was driven.”

So much for the hackneyed image of offensive linemen as dumb jocks. Partin, a chemistry and pre-med major, made straight A’s at Ole Miss. He was brilliant. He was far from alone among offensive linemen, and we’ll get to that.

Just google “Partin Tables” if you want to learn how smart Partin was. Developed in 1993, the tables are based “on thousands of nerve-sparing radical retropubic prostatectomies…” 

Asked to put the Partin Tables in layman’s terms, Dr. Charles Pound, division chief of urology at University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMMC), said, “It was a big deal. It is a big deal. For many years, it was the best tool you had to help doctors and patients make decisions on prostrate treatment. It gave you the info about the stage of your disease. It is still very helpful today. I still use it.”

As it turns out, Pound studied under Partin at Johns Hopkins and they were good friends. Indeed, Pound was the best man in Partin’s second wedding.

“I met him when I was a student and he was a resident at Johns Hopkins, and then we worked together for three or four years,” Pound said. “Clearly, Alan was really, really intelligent, but I’m not so sure that his drive and determination were not his greatest assets. He would take on anything with sheer determination and nearly always succeed. He was special.”

Dr. Theodore L. Deweese, CEO of Johns Hopkins Medicine, worked closely with Partin for years and issued a statement at the time of his cohort’s death. “Throughout his career as a researcher, clinician and a leader, Alan Partin was consistently at the heart of discovery and innovation in the filed of urology, always keeping a singular focus on improving the outcomes for our patients.”

Football, Partin often said, helped prepare him for his medical career. In a 2016 interview, Partin  talked about the correlation. “You think you’re running to the right, then the defense changes and now you’re going left. Everything can change in a split second…” Partin said. “As a surgeon, you have to do that non-stop. No surgery is the same.

“Everybody has anatomical variations,” he continued. “I remove men’s prostates when they have cancer. There are literally 387 well-defined maneuvers in that operation. Then you get inside a patient and notice an artery that isn’t supposed to be there is running across the area where you are operating. You have to change what you are doing. You have to adapt to that moment. That’s like coming up to the line and expecting to see one defense and they’ve shifted into another other. You still want to move the ball forward, so you have to think quickly, change up what you were doing and run the play.”

There’s one other striking similarity between playing in the offensive line and being a doctor. Put it this way: An offensive lineman is the only position in which the ultimate goal is to protect someone else. 

More than half a century of experience covering the sport has led this writer to this conclusion: Offensive linemen are often not only the smartest, but also most diligent and most selfless players on the field.

Selfless might be the most important of those traits. An offensive lineman toils mostly in obscurity, noticed only when an umpire throws his flag, and the referee announces over the loudspeaker, “Holding, number 75, 10-yard penalty, repeat first down.”

Quarterbacks, running backs and wide receivers get the headlines; offensive linemen – often referred to as the Big Uglies, for goodness sake, simply pave their way. Certainly not all become nearly as successful as Dr. Alan Partin, but let’s take a quick look at some of Partin’s Ole Miss teammates. Hoppy Cole, Partin’s roommate, owns banks. Murray Whitaker became a cardiologist. David Traxler runs a highly successful technology company in North Carolina. Greg Jeffcoat became a college registrar. Bobby Dye runs a successful resource management and financial planning company. Marc Massengale is another successful financial adviser. And then, of course, there’s Partin. That’s all from one team’s offensive line. Amazing.

Cole, who lives in Ellisville, was Partin’s college roommate for three and a half years.

“Big Al is what we called him,” Cole said. “Such a great guy, such a great friend – funny, kind, thoughtful and so, so smart.”

“Big Al and I made T-shirts that said we were part of the 30-30-30 club,” Cole said.

30-30-30?

“Yeah, that meant we played when we were either 30 points ahead, 30 points behind or there were 30 seconds left,” Cole said, chuckling.

That’s an exaggeration. I covered those Ole Miss teams. They played far more more than that.

The record will show that those Ole Miss teams (1979-82) lost more games than they won.

Thankfully, far more meaningful and lasting measures of achievement exist, which don’t always get reported. And in those measures, Dr. Big Al Partin and his partners in the Ole Miss offensive line, proved smashing successes.

The post Alan Partin: From Ole Miss football to a remarkable medical career appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The United States Supreme Court has postponed for the eighth time this year a decision on whether to hear a case challenging the constitutionality of a Mississippi provision enacted in 1890 with the intent of preventing African Americans from voting.

The case is an appeal of a decision last year by the U.S. 5^th Circuit Court of Appeals upholding a provision imposing a lifetime ban on voting for many people convicted of felonies. The lifetime ban was imposed on certain crimes that the framers of the 1890 Mississippi Constitution believed at the time Black people were more likely to commit, the 5^th Circuit conceded in upholding the provision.

It is not known what the eight postponements in deciding whether to hear the case might mean.

“The Supreme Court takes about one of every hundred cases it’s asked to take,” said Rob McDuff, director of the Impact Litigation Project at the Mississippi Center for Justice, and part of the group asking the nation’s high court to hear the case. “But the troubling racial history of this provision makes it a more likely candidate for review than most of the other cases. I assume the repeated postponements mean the justices are considering this one very carefully. We will see.”

The Supreme Court justices are scheduled to meet in conference on Friday to decide if they will take up any of the cases currently pending. Before this latest postponement, the Mississippi case was supposed to be among those cases discussed during the Friday conference.

The Mississippi felony suffrage case had been on the schedule to be taken up at seven past conferences of the Supreme Court this year. In each of those instances, like this week, the justices opted to postpone a decision on the case.

Four of the nine judges must agree to take up a case on appeal in order for the high court to hear it. According to the U.S. Courts webpage, “the Court accepts 100-150 of the more than 7,000 cases that it is asked to review each year.”

The Mississippi Center for Justice and others filed the lawsuit currently pending before the Supreme Court on behalf of Mississippians who lost their voting rights after being convicted of felonies. Mississippi is among a handful of states — less than 10 — where people do not regain their voting rights at some point after completing their sentence.

Those challenging the lawsuit say the 1890 provision is unconstitutional because it was enacted for a discriminatory purpose, thus having a “racial taint.” State Attorney General Lynn Fitch argued the “racial taint” had been removed because of action in more recent times, and a majority of the 5th Circuit agreed.

In 1950 the Legislature passed a proposal approved by voters to remove burglary as one of the disfranchising crimes. And in the 1960s, the Legislature and ultimately the voters approved a provision making murder and rape disenfranchising crimes.

Those changes, the majority found, removed the “racial taint” from the original 1890 language. But McDuff pointed out that those changes were made during an era of intense racial conflict and discrimination in the state. Perhaps, more importantly, the changes did not allow Mississippians to vote on whether to remove lifetime bans from voting on people convicted of other felonies.

Or as Court of Appeals Judge James Graves wrote in his dissent, “Mississippians have simply not been given the chance to right the wrongs of its racist origins. And this court … deprives Mississippians of this opportunity by upholding an unconstitutional law enacted for the purpose of discriminating against Black Mississippians on the basis of race.”

Fitch’s office also argued that state commissions pondered changing the felony suffrage provision in the 1980s and opted not to do so, thus removing the racial taint.

Those crimes placed in the 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.

Under the original language of the 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.

In Mississippi, most people with felony convictions who lose their voting rights must petition the Legislature to get a bill passed by a two-thirds majority of both chambers to regain voting rights. Normally only a handful (less than five each year and none in 2023) of such bills are successful each session. There is also the option of the governor granting a pardon to restore voting rights, but no governor has granted pardons since Haley Barbour in 2012.

Editor’s note: The Mississippi Center For Justice President and CEO Vangela Wade serves on Mississippi Today’s board of trustees.

The post For the eighth time, U.S. Supreme Court delays hearing state’s felony suffrage case appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Only in Mississippi would you find the last two college baseball national champions playing a regular season game that draws more than 16,000 in attendance for one game and more than 43,000 for a weekend series. The Clevelands discuss the weekend’s Egg Bowl baseball series at Starkville, USM’s weekend sweep of James Madison and more in college baseball. As a bonus, Tyler tells Rick about the football spring games, which Rick was all too happy to miss.

Stream all episodes here.

The post Podcast: Only in Mississippi… appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Double murderer James Williams III is set to walk out of a Mississippi prison May 16.

The state Parole Board has agreed to release Williams, who was convicted in 2005 of shooting to death his father, James Jr., and stepmother, Cindy Lassiter Mangum, after failing to poison them to death. He was 17 at the time of the killings in south Jackson.

“He murdered ‘em, threw ‘em in trash bags, put them in Rubbermaid trash cans and threw ‘em out like the trash,” said Magnum’s son, Zeno. “We are concerned not only for our personal safety, but also for the safety of anyone who may come in contact with this psychopath.”

Parole Board Chairman Jeffrey Belk said he was limited in what he could share, “but I can tell you all facts and information was considered and he received the majority number of votes required to be paroled.” He said the parole received no objection from the family or others.

Williams’ lawyer, Jake Howard, called his client “an exceptional candidate for parole.  He has served over 20 years in jail and prison — more than half his life — for the tragic crimes he committed on December 28, 2002, when he was just 17 years old. Since then, he has worked tirelessly to better himself and atone for his crimes.”

Originally given two life without parole sentences, Williams, now 38, qualified for parole after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2021 that juveniles should be eligible for parole.

Mangum’s sister, Barbara Rankin, said it may have been more than 20 years since the 2002 killings took place, but it seems like yesterday to her and her family.

She said Williams presumed by killing his father and stepmother he would inherit $850,000 in life insurance benefits. Their bodies were found a week later in the woods.

“My husband and I saw the bodies,” Rankin said. “The investigator said it was the most horrific thing he’d ever seen.”

Williams initially denied that he killed them before telling police that his father beat him and pulled a gun on him for missing work days earlier, according to court records. 

Williams then got a gun from his room and shot his father, and when Mangum walked in the room and started screaming, he shot her, too, according to records.

At trial, Williams gave a different version of events. He testified that his father accidentally shot Mangum and that a friend shot his father.

A jury convicted Williams of murdering the couple, and the judge sentenced him to life without parole.

Mangum’s son, Zeno, said each time Williams has become eligible for parole, the family has flooded the Parole Board with letters and has appeared before the board.

Last year, the board assured her and her family that Williams would never be paroled, Rankin said.

On her birthday, April 15, she opened something from the mailbox. It was a letter from the Parole Board.

“We understand this decision may come as a disappointment to you,” Stephanie Walters, the board’s executive secretary, wrote. “However, the board believes that Offender James Williams is able to be a law-abiding citizen and that parole supervision would be more beneficial than further incarceration.”

Rankin said she couldn’t read past the first line before she was overcome with emotion.

Former Parole Board Chairman Steve Pickett said he and the Parole Board had reviewed Williams’ case “numerous times, and he was previously denied for parole multiple times.” 

Pickett worked at the time in the Hinds County Sheriff’s Department. “Because it happened in Hinds County,” he said, “I was familiar with the case.”

Asked why parole was denied, Pickett replied that Williams gave varied stories to the board “about the circumstances that led to the deaths of his father and stepmother.” There was also “community opposition all along,” he said.

Belk told Mississippi Today that Mangum’s family “admittedly chose not to reply or schedule a meeting with the Parole Board.”

Zeno Mangum responded that he received no notification.

Belk disputed that claim, saying that the board and Victim Services of the Mississippi Department of Corrections “made numerous attempts months ahead of the hearing to notify all registered victims. They admittedly chose not to reply or schedule a meeting with the Parole Board.”

He added that Williams’ parole also received no opposition from the sheriff, district attorney or judge.

Howard pointed to Williams’ achievements as proof of change: a GED and a bachelor’s degree in Christian ministry as well as completing numerous other educational and rehabilitation programs.

“James has devoted himself to serving God and his fellow inmates,” Howard said. “He has been affiliated with MDOC’s faith-based programs since 2008, began tutoring students in 2012, became a field minister in 2018, and served as the Minister of Music for Parchman’s Koinonia Church from 2020 until 2022.”

At that time, Williams voluntarily agreed to transfer to the Marshall County Correctional Facility as a missionary and field minister, served as pastor for the Living Waters Baptist Church, taughta “Fundamentals of the Faith” class and provided counseling services to other inmates, Howard said.

Williams has received glowing letters of support for his release from chaplains, the seminary director and the Parole Board’s own psychologist as well as dozens of others, Howard said. Upon release, Williams hopes to serve as a chaplain at the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility.

If Williams is truly changed, Rankin asked, why hasn’t he reached out to the family?

“He has never shown an ounce of remorse,” she said. “In 20 years, he has never reached out to Zeno and said he’s sorry, because he’s not sorry.”

Howard responded that Williams “is deeply remorseful, makes no excuses for his crimes, and understands why members of his father’s and stepmother’s families oppose his release on parole.”

He pointed to Williams’ letter to the Parole Board, where he wrote, “I will have to live the rest of my days knowing that I took the lives of two people I loved. I could give reasons for my state of mind at the time, but I know that nothing can ever justify taking lives. I also know that there is nothing I can do to lessen the pain of those I deprived of loved ones. I sincerely wish I could change the past, but I cannot.”

Howard said Williams is “truly a model of what our correctional system hopes to accomplish. I’m honored to call him a friend, as well as a client. If James Williams hasn’t earned the privilege of supervised release on parole, then I’m not sure who could.”

Rankin said it would be one thing to parole someone for a drug offense or a nonviolent offense, “but when you have somebody who threw away bodies, and we can’t even see the bodies at the funeral because it’s so bad. No family should have to go through that.”

She has never missed a single parole hearing, but one of her sisters had to recently enter the intensive care unit, she said. “I don’t know if she’s going to die up in that hospital.”

She hopes the Parole Board will rescind Williams’ parole, just as the board has done before.

She choked back the tears. “I’m devastated to say the least, because it’s like living the thing over and over,” she said. “I feel like I’ve failed Zeno.”

The post Convicted killer of two set for May release appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Read the story behind the cartoon here.

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Staff members of the American Civil Liberties Union of Mississippi and other Southern states are unionizing. 

Workers of the nonprofit in Mississippi, Louisiana and Kentucky joined under the name ACLU Southern Affiliates United and are requesting joint union recognition from their employer, according to a Tuesday news release. 

The staff are looking to bargain jointly and urge leadership from each affiliate to commit to setting new standards for the Southern affiliates by negotiating a common agreement across the organizations. 

McKenna Raney-Gray, staff attorney for the LGBTQ Justice Project at the ACLU of Mississippi, said she wants to unionize to create more stability. 

“I am not interested in doing this because this is the worst job I’ve ever had. I am interested in doing this because it’s the best job I’ve ever had,” she said in an interview before the announcement. “If people have a say in what they’re working conditions are, they’re more likely to put down roots and stay.”

The workers organized with the Washington-Baltimore News Guild, which represents news, information and nonprofit employees, and is a local chapter of The NewsGuild. 

The announcement comes a week after staff from the ACLU of D.C. requested union recognition with the news guild. 

Other Southern affiliates including Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia have formed unions, and in recent years, ACLU national staff and other affiliates have organized, according to the news release. 

Jaclyn Maffetore, member of the ACLU-NC union, said organizing has helped establish policies that make work sustainable and align with their values, which helps support staff 

as they work to protect and advance civil rights. 

Yvonne Slosarski, a member of ACLU-D.C. Staff United, said they are excited to join the growing labor movement with the Southern affiliate staff. 

“Unions are a great way for ACLU staff and management to embody our commitment to civil rights and liberties by ensuring that the workers who are most impacted by the organizations’ policies can shape our working conditions,” she said in a statement. 

Reporter Molly Minta contributed reporting.

The post ACLU workers are unionizing appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Goldsmith, a graduate student at the University of Southern Mississippi, had recently been critical in the student newspaper about a growing controversy on campus: One of the finalists for provost — an administrator and finance professor named Lance Nail — had a checkered past at a former employer, Texas Tech University. A Title IX investigation found Nail reportedly mishandled a report of sexual misconduct and “failed in his responsibility as the Dean of the College.” 

The news touched a nerve on campus where students had called on the university to adopt a zero-tolerance policy toward sexual assault a year and a half ago. More than 750 students, faculty and alumni signed a petition protesting Nail’s possible hiring. Goldsmith, whose pronouns are they/them, just so happened to be the only student quoted in the student newspaper. Still, they knew they were speaking for many when they said that hiring Nail “would communicate that all the university’s claims about diversity, inclusion, and equity were meaningless platitudes.” And, they began helping to plan a protest. 

Days later, the email came through. 

“You do not know me but my name is Chuck Scianna and I am the guy that Scianna Hall is named after,” it began. 

Goldsmith knew of Scianna. The 93,000-square-foot building that bears his name in gleaming gold font faces U.S. Highway 49, a major thoroughfare in Hattiesburg. Scianna, an alumnus and co-founder of a major distributor of oil pipeline products, also happens to be one of USM’s largest individual donors along with his wife, Rita, having given more than $10 million. He is also “lifelong friends” with USM’s new president, Joe Paul. 

But Goldsmith didn’t know why Scianna cared about their protest. 

In the email obtained by Mississippi Today, Scianna wrote that he knew Goldsmith was planning to protest but asked them to consider that USM had hired a search firm, created a search committee and instituted a “process” to vet the candidates for provost and still, Nail had become a finalist. 

“If you are going to protest the interviewing of Dr. Nail, should you not protest Dr. Paul and the search committee, the search firm and everyone else involved in the selection process,” Scianna wrote. “Should we just turn the university over to you and your group to hire the provost and run the university?” 

In his 48 years of business, Scianna wrote, he had been accused of “many things that were not even close to the truth.” He suggested there was more behind the news articles about Nail, who he noted he had worked with “in the past.” 

“I am not advocating that you should not have a voice, but it should be peaceful and armed with the facts, not just a google search,” he wrote, adding “I believe that if you have a conversation with him before you rely only on a google search you might have a different opinion.” 

“You are completing a PhD,” he concluded. “Don’t you have to have an open mind to get the best out of an education? Does your program allow you to get all of your research facts from one source? I am only asking that you go into this with an unbiased opinion of Dr. Nail and let the process pick the best candidate.” 

USM did not return a comment by press time, but Scianna’s email offers a look at how university donors in Mississippi, who have extraordinary access to powerful administrators, view the role of community feedback in the largely confidential search-and-selection process of key university hires. It also speaks to whose voices get results from university administration.

“I do think it’s troublesome to discount the students who are saying they have feelings about this,” Goldsmith said. “This is their campus. Even if we’re going to say ‘majority rules,’ nobody has made a petition to say that we should hire Lance Nail, so it’s not like there’s this loud opposite voice.” 

Goldsmith didn’t reply to Scianna and forwarded the email to their dissertation advisor — their immediate superior — who then sent it up the chain. Scianna’s email soon started circulating among faculty before it ultimately made its way to Chris Winstead, the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. 

Troubled by the message, Winstead texted and called Paul about it, according to another email shared with Mississippi Today. 

“I do think that there is a power dynamic at play,” Goldsmith said. “Perhaps it would not have been unusual if I had had prior overlap (with Scianna) or conversations or a personal connection or even perhaps if I was in the College of Business.” 

Scianna told Mississippi Today that he was just trying to offer Goldsmith some advice — not telling them not to protest. “Read the email. It’s very clear. There’s no threat,” he said.

“The higher up you get in any organization, you’re more susceptible to people finding fault with what you do, finding fault with your decisions and then the narrative gets misconstrued — a lot of times by the media, to be honest, because they don’t go out and get all the facts or look at both sides,” he said.

The controversy started earlier this month after USM announced that Nail was one of four finalists for provost, the university’s chief academic officer. Students at USM promptly dug into his history — and had concerns about what they found. 

Nail became dean of Texas Tech’s business college in 2012, after spending four years at USM’s College of Business. In 2015, Nail let go of a business school professor, reportedly a friend of his, who had been accused of sexual misconduct, according to KCBD. But the Title IX investigation, which Nail said had “inaccuracies,” found that he still invited the former business professor to a university trip to Chile, where the professor harassed a female student. 

Later that year, Nail resigned from Texas Tech after the university determined he had broken its grading policies. 

Nail, who was visiting the USM Gulf Park campus on Monday, didn’t return an inquiry from Mississippi Today before press time. In a comment to SM2, the student newspaper, Nail wrote that “the many Southern Miss colleagues I worked with” could attest to his character, particularly his former students and “those who served on the Business Advisory Council who supported my mission to graduate ethical business leaders from Southern Miss.” 

Scianna told Mississippi Today that he is one of those colleagues who served on USM’s Business Advisory Council, which advises the dean of the business college. He said he worked closely with Nail, reviewing the college’s curriculum to see how it “would be beneficial to my company” and recruiting students for internships or non-profit projects that he declined to share more details about. 

But perhaps the biggest project Scianna and Nail collaborated on was the construction of Scianna Hall, a more than $30-million project. At the time, Scianna’s $6-million donation was the USM Foundation’s largest one-time gift from an alumnus. 

As dean, Nail had a key hand in stewarding the campaign to build the business school. He lists the project as one of his significant professional accomplishments on the first page of his resume. 

“He didn’t just walk in one day and say ‘Will you write a check?’” Scianna said. 

After Nail left USM, Scianna said the two stayed “acquaintances.” He said he didn’t recommend Nail for the position or express a preference for Nail to anyone on the search committee. 

“I’m not impartial,” he said. “I want the very best candidate, but I want the process to work out. My email to Emily has nothing to do with Lance Nail. It’s with the way that it’s being approached. … Don’t make your decision based on Google searches.” 

Scianna has served on search committees for key hirings at USM before, most recently last year when he was on the committee convened by the Institutions of Higher Learning Board of Trustees to select the university’s next president. When it comes to the hiring process, he said that unlike the majority of students, faculty and alumni, the search committee has access “to all the facts.” 

“Shouldn’t their decision weigh more?” he said. “I mean, we don’t like chocolate ice cream. Let’s have a protest. Should we ban chocolate ice cream? Should we have the facts? And that’s all I’m saying.” 

He said he wasn’t sure what a protest — no matter how large — could accomplish when the university ultimately makes a hiring decision based on the help of the search committee and the headhunting firm. 

“What if a thousand people got together and said your newspaper was dishonest, didn’t report the truth?” he said. “Should there be an investigation? You know, I don’t know. That’s, that’s, I’m just not smart enough, I guess, to figure that out.”

USM’s provost 13-person search committee does include two student voices — the SGA presidents of the Hattiesburg and Gulf Park campuses — but Goldsmith said the process should be more transparent so that all students can be heard. They suggested the university share the steps that were taken to vet Nail before he became a finalist. 

And while they don’t plan to ask Nail any questions when he visits campus Tuesday, they will attend the protest they helped organize in USM’s designated free speech zone in the middle of campus.

“I do think generally that undergrad and graduate students should be made more aware of administrative hiring,” they said. “There isn’t always a ton of transparency in higher education. Sometimes students don’t even know to look at this stuff … but I have learned through this process that many undergrad students do care. They’re not thoughtless, they’re not uninvolved. They are thinking, they are thoughtful, they are involved.” 

Scianna, who is back in his office in Waller, Texas, after visiting Hattiesburg this weekend, doesn’t plan to see the protest for himself because his philanthropy shows his dedication to USM.

“I don’t have to be part of this,” he said. “They can do what they want to do. I mean, talk, beat your drum, do whatever. But let your actions speak for yourself.” 

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