Make no mistake, Southern Miss has made the correct — and probably long overdue — decision to exit Conference USA and enter the Sun Belt Conference. The move was made official at a press conference in Hattiesburg on Tuesday.
Any businessman would understand the logic: cut expenses, increase revenue and deal with partners — in this case, universities — that are more like-minded.
Rick Cleveland
Conference USA made sense for Southern Miss back when the Golden Eagles were competing and winning against conference mates such as Memphis, Tulane, Houston, Louisville and others. It makes no sense now when the competition is as far flung as El Paso, Miami and Coral Gables, Fla.
Southern Miss already has a history with Sun Belt teams such as South Alabama, Troy, Arkansas State, Louisiana-Lafayette and Louisiana-Monroe. Those rivalries are something to nurture and built upon.
Don’t take it from me. Listen to Wright Waters, who has a history with both Southern Miss and with the Sun Belt. Early in his career, in the late 1970s, Waters worked in athletics at USM when Bobby Collins and M.K. Turk were building strong programs that competed at a high level as an independent. Later on, from 1999 until 2012, Waters was the commissioner of the Sun Belt. He knows both entities well enough to know they are fit.
Southern Miss, Waters says, brings a rich history of winning and a historically strong fan base to the Sun Belt. In return, the Sun Belt provides a much more comfortable and sensible home for Southern Miss.
“I’ll put it to you this way,” Waters said, “Southern Miss can use all that money they’ve been spending on jet fuel and spend it on things that make you better. I’m talking about things such as facilities, coaches’ salaries and recruiting budgets. Good coaches and good players are what make you better. The Sun Belt, in my opinion, gives them a better chance to have both.”
Conference USA has become a jet league. The Sun Belt will be more of a bus league. Jeremy McClain, the Southern Miss athletic director, believes the annual travel expenses for all athletic programs will be reduced between $500,000 and a million dollars.
That might sound like chump change to Southeastern Conference fans, but it is a huge deal to athletic programs that don’t collect millions upon millions of dollars from their league’s TV and bowl revenue.
To be sure, TV revenue won’t be that much higher in the Sun Belt than it was in CUSA, but TV exposure will be much more broad. The Sun Belt is an ESPN league with national exposure. CUSA’s main TV partners are CBSSports Network — not to be confused with CBS — and Stadium.
No matter what conference Southern Miss plays in, it must do better at the gate. That is, sell more tickets. Again, the Sun Belt gives them a better opportunity to do that.
“Division games will be drive-able,” Waters said. “Mobile, Lafayette, Monroe and Troy are easy drives from Hattiesburg. Jonesboro (Ark.) is doable. Build those rivalries and fans will travel.”
Again, a game against, say, Louisiana-Lafayette or South Alabama is far more interesting for Southern Miss fans than, say, a game against UTEP or FIU.
McClain is well aware of all that. He came back to Southern Miss from Troy where he served as athletic director for nearly four years. He knows what life is like in both leagues. Clearly, he prefers the Sun Belt where the leadership, under commissioner Keith Gill, a rising star in college athletics, appears more sharply focused.
For years now, Conference USA, which Southern Miss joined in 1995, has seemed almost like a bicycle without handle bars: unsteady at best, direction-less at worst. When Memphis, Houston, Tulane and others left, CUSA went after other large-market schools in belief they would give the league more TV appeal.
The truth, however: North Texas does not really give you the Dallas-Fort Worth TV market, any more than Florida Atlantic and Florida International give you the south Florida market. In Dallas, fans still tune in to watch Texas and Texas A&M. In Miami, they still turn the dial to watch the Gators, Seminoles and Hurricanes.
TV market-size is how Southern Miss got left behind in CUSA in the first place. Despite beating Memphis, Tulane and Houston consistently on the field, the Golden Eagles got passed by during conference re-alignment because of the relatively small amount of TV viewers in south Mississippi.
Competition will be stiff. Just last season, on one September Saturday, three Sun Belt teams played three Big 12 teams (two of those ranked) on the road. All three Sun Belt teams — Arkansas State, Louisiana-Lafayette and Coastal Carolina — collected huge checks for playing on the road. All three Sun Belt teams won. Both Louisiana-Lafayette and Coastal finished in the top 15 of the Associated Press’s final 2020 Top 25 poll.
It’s not just football either. The Sun Belt is intensely competitive in the spring sports of baseball and softball. Coastal Carolina baseball, which won the 2016 College World Series, finished last in its own division last season. South Alabama, Louisiana-Lafayette and Georgia Southern are all traditionally strong programs. Southern Miss will add much to the league. Four Sun Belt softball teams earned NCAA Tournament berths last season. Only the SEC and Pac 12 had more.
Basketball? My take is that the Sun Belt and Conference USA are quite similar as far as competition. Says McClain, “Sun Belt basketball is under-rated. I’ve seen it up close. It’s a grind.”
For Southern Miss, one potential stumbling block in switching leagues has been the exit fee, long reported to be $5 million.
On Tuesday, McClain said his school and others who leave CUSA are contracted over two years to pay the equivalent of what a share of CUSA distribution would be for those two years.
“We believe that it will be in the neighborhood of $3 million,” McClain said. “We have a plan for that.”
In the long term, the move should be worth far more than $3 million to Southern Miss. Said McClain, “This move just makes sense geographically, for our fan base and, most of all for our student-athletes.”
Gill nodded as McClain spoke, and later added, “The Sun Belt has gotten a lot better in recent years. Today, we got better.”
A federal judge has ruled in favor of the University of Mississippi Medical Center over litigation against three former employees who stole patient medical records for their own use and then lied about possessing them for years.
U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves on Oct. 8 issued a default judgment in the federal trade secrets lawsuit, saying the defendants’ “clear, persistent pattern of perjury, evidence destruction, and concealment” warranted the default judgment.
The case centers around Dr. Spencer Sullivan, who UMMC hired in July 2014 to head its Hemophilia Treatment Center. As part of his employment, Sullivan agreed to refrain from taking or using patient information for his own benefit, including soliciting patients for his own independent practice. However, in January 2016, Sullivan began arranging to start his own for-profit hemophilia clinic and pharmacy.
Over the course of the next few months, Sullivan coordinated with other UMMC staff —namely co-defendants Linnea McMillan and Kathryn Sue Stevens — to prepare for the new clinic’s opening. This included compiling UMMC patient records into a spreadsheet they called “the List.” This spreadsheet included patients’ birthdate, diagnosis, prescriptions, dose and frequency, insurance, pharmacy and home and mobile telephone numbers.
Sullivan resigned from his position at UMMC in June 2016, and then used the records stolen from UMMC to solicit these patents to continue their treatment at Sullivan’s new clinic in Madison called Mississippi Center for Advanced Medicine. Sullivan recruited at least 20 UMMC employees to work for him at his new clinic, and the majority of UMMC’s hemophilia patients followed their physicians to his clinic.
During the course of both state and federal lawsuits brought on by UMMC, Sullivan, McMillan and Stevens lied multiple times under oath, denying they had ever taken the patient records from UMMC. The existence of “the List” came out following a 2018 Clarion-Ledger article. After reading the article, defendant Linnea McMillan’s ex-husband, Aubrey McMillan, provided UMMC’s legal council with a copy of “the List” he found in his ex-wife’s car.
All three defendants continued to deny taking or possessing “the List” until March 2020, when Harris admitted to lying in her deposition and produced 1,469 pages of text messages sent by herself and fellow defendants that revealed they had conspired to shred the stolen documents, violating the clinic’s policy against destroying patient information.
Sullivan also committed perjury multiple times, and as recently as April 2021, by denying he possessed a hard drive containing files and emails from UMMC. He only admitted possessing the files on a hard drive and a thumb drive after a Magistrate Judge forced him to choose between producing the hard drives or his computer.
“Defendants’ lies and evasions, particularly Dr. Sullivan’s recent conduct in relation to the long-sought hard drives, suggest that nothing less than the full exercise of this court’s inherent power will command the defendants’ respect for the judicial process, or secure their commitment to telling this court the truth,” Reeves wrote.
With a default judgment issued, a trial on damages will now take place on the date previously set for jury trial on Feb. 16, 2022.
CLEVELAND — As students, educators and parents adjust to the newly consolidated Cleveland Public School District, what began as rumblings of discontent with the new administration has escalated into a movement.
Mississippi Today spoke with more than a dozen parents and current and former employees about their concerns, which range from what they say is a lack of transparency, incompetence and irresponsible spending on the part of the administration and the school board. The administration says the community is just resistant to change.
But many, including current and former employees, parents and community members, say it’s not change they’re resisting. They question whether the new superintendent is qualified for the job and take issue with decisions he’s made since coming to the district.
First he cut pre-K classes. Then the district delayed handing out new devices to students to take home during the pandemic. And as the district reeled from a reduction in force and budget cuts, the school board approved a $22,500 raise in the superintendent’s salary and hired an outside public relations firm for $80,000 a year.
Otha Belcher began his tenure as superintendent of the Cleveland Public School District in June of 2019 after serving two years as an assistant superintendent in Jackson Public School District. He worked for several years in the Vicksburg Warren and Hinds County school districts prior to that.
At a recent community meeting at the middle school, Belcher touted his “history of turning around schools.”
“I have a long history of turning schools and districts around,” he told the 60 or so parents, teachers and community members in the audience. “A lot of it.”
He served his longest stint as an administrator when he was an assistant principal at Byram Middle School from July of 2010 to December of 2013. Over the course of his time there, the district did increase from a “successful” school to a “high performing” school, or the equivalent of a C to a B in today’s accountability model.
Superintendent Otha Belcher Credit: Cleveland School District
But while the principal at Vicksburg Junior High from January 2014 to June 2015, the school didn’t see any improvement in its accountability rating. In fact, without the waiver granted by the state in the 2014-2015 school year due to a change in the accountability rating system, the school would have fallen from a C to a D.
While Belcher was curriculum director in Vicksburg, it remained a D-rated school district, though Jackson Public School District did increase from an F to a D during the two years Belcher was an assistant superintendent.
Evans, the board president, said the board hired Belcher because he was “young and vibrant” and the district needed a change.
“He was positive, and we were tired of the same old results we were getting over the past 10 to 15 years, so we decided it was time for a change,” said Evans, who has served on the school board for 20 years.
When asked if there was something in particular about his experience that stood out to Evans or made him think he would be a good fit for Cleveland, he responded, “No.”
One of Belcher’s first major actions as superintendent was to cut the district’s pre-kindergarten classes.
Belcher instituted a “reduction in force” in the 2020-2021 school year in an effort to save $1.7 million as a result of fewer students enrolling in the district that year. When he announced he’d be cutting some pre-kindergarten classes in an attempt to save money, parents were outraged.
Many pointed out the inequity of the decision, which put the pre-K classes at the two higher performing elementary schools, and took them away from Nailor and Parks Elementary schools, which are lower performing and have more low-income students.
Todd Davis, a parent of a child in the district, said his and other parents’ attempts to work with Belcher to identify other ways to cut costs turned into “a fire.” He said they identified several places to cut costs, including at the parent resource center, which Davis said had a full staff but no measurable objectives or outcomes.
Davis said cutting those pre-K classes put up barriers for poorer families who can’t afford to drive to the remaining classes, which are further away from the city of Cleveland.
When asked if pre-K access concerns him, Belcher said no.
“No, I mean the parents at those two schools that we did get rid of — they had a chance to go to either one of those (other schools),” he said.
There are 110 pre-K students in five classes this year, up from 105 students last year, according to Belcher. He also said the district is planning to add an additional class in the 2022-2023 school year back at Parks or Nailor Elementary Schools.
At the same time the debate was heating up over pre-K, Belcher was working on other methods to cut costs. In late 2020, he asked principals to identify ways to save money, a former principal said.
“I literally spent my Christmas break going through numbers, looking at my teacher units, class sizes, and seeing where I can cut,” the former principal said.
Belcher told Mississippi Today the funds were ultimately saved by not filling open positions in the school, among other measures. He said he did not believe any of the cuts impacted students’ academics and resources.
The principal, who spoke anonymously because of fear of retribution at his job in a new school district, said that was not the case.
“When you’re in a high poverty school, you need those additional supports to build up your academics … and that was being taken away,” he said. “It was just very detrimental to us.”
While the district was still reeling from the budget cuts and reduction of the pre-K program, the school board extended Belcher’s contract and issued him a substantial raise.
In July of 2021, the school board approved a $11,200 raise for Belcher for the 2021-2022 school year. The addendum to his original contract also shows the board approved another $11,300 raise for the following school year, bringing his annual salary up from $117,500 in 2019 to $140,000 in the 2022-2023 school year.
George Evans, the board president, said the board was simply bringing Belcher’s salary in line with superintendents of similarly sized school districts in the area.
“There’s been unrest for a few years, but the big turning point was when he was signed on to a new contract,” said Gabby Hays, the parent of an elementary school student in the district.
Teachers who spoke to Mississippi Today said when they heard of the contract renewal and raise, they were furious.
“What warrants him getting the raise? We got our $1,000 extra a year (from the state-funded teacher pay raise), but our insurance goes up, deductible goes up — we don’t see it (the money),” one said.
When asked when the last time teachers received a district-issued raise was, Evans and another school board member, Todd Fuller, did not respond.
Current and former district staff say there were other problems that led to large turnover.
Morgan Dean, a former principal at two schools in Cleveland, had been in the district nine years before he resigned in December of 2019.
Under Belcher’s leadership, he said, principals were being micromanaged.
He said the administration changed the teacher observation process to a tedious series of tasks. The process required principals to complete three teacher observations a week and write a two-page report for each, one of which would be submitted to the central office for review.
“We had to include references to articles and theory, and we were given a rubric as administrators” they would be judged by, said Dean.
“I don’t have any problem with being critiqued but that particular process was laborious and served very little purpose in improving schools or teachers. Teachers don’t have a lot of time to read two-page essays, so that’s really not best practice.”
Dean, who is one of a number of principals who have left the district since Belcher arrived, said he felt targeted by the new administration.
“There’s a habit in education where you force people out by making them extremely uncomfortable while making it clear they’re not wanted,” he said.
Another former principal, who spoke to Mississippi Today anonymously to protect his new job, echoed Dean.
The principal said he often asked for programs which never came about. Then, when he would ask about their status, it was as if the conversation had never occurred.
“We were doing a lot of stuff I would call window dressing,” he said. “It looked good, but it didn’t mean anything. When we’d bring concerns, they were completely discounted.”
Both said they’d never struggled to work with former superintendents before Belcher.
Dean, along with several other current and former employees who spoke with Mississippi Today, said they saw many administrators and teachers leave after Belcher arrived.
“I have never seen that kind of turnover,” one former employee who’d been with the district more than 30 years, said.
But Belcher said staff turnover is no more than in previous years. When asked for the numbers, the district said it does not have them on hand, but this reporter could go through monthly meeting minutes to calculate resignations and terminations.
“There hasn’t been an abnormally large turnover,” he said. “People are retiring, people changing professions because of the pressure, and we’ve had people leave for better opportunities,” he said. “But we’re doing fine. Actually, some of the superintendents around have asked me ‘How do you keep the people?’”
Parents say they became frustrated with the administration during the pandemic. When schools first closed, students learning virtually struggled without access to devices to take home from the district. Despite the rollout of enough devices for every student in the state, there was a major lag in the district’s distribution of the devices.
A few months into the pandemic, Lindsey Wright had three school-age children at home. She was unemployed after she lost her job as a result of the virus, and money was tight.
Take-home paper packets from teachers stopped being an option for her kids, all of whom are students in the district, in April of 2020. So she tried purchasing a late generation iPad for $80, but it didn’t work. She ended up borrowing the money to buy one laptop for her children to share and used her phone’s hotspot for Internet connection.
As the months of 2020 rolled on, the district still didn’t issue its students the devices that were delivered in the fall of that year.
Throughout the school year her children were distance learning, Wright kept asking administrators at Pearman Elementary School and Cleveland Central High School where the laptops were.
All three of her children failed that school year.
Her neighbor Tanisha Lewis faced the same challenge with her third grader. When she went to purchase a device for her virtual learner, the stores were out of stock.
Each day, Wright had to “choose which child I wanted to have an education, and it was wrong,” she said.
Lewis said her daughter’s grades dropped “dramatically.”
Belcher told Mississippi Today the devices weren’t distributed to any students to take home because they didn’t arrive “white gloved,” or tagged and cased with packaging materials removed and devices already joined to the district network. He later clarified that a majority of the computers were white-gloved but did not have cases.
The devices that arrived without proper tags and cases were ordered independent of the Mississippi Department of Education’s program, which delivered devices ready to be distributed.
“We were already short on our technology department, so what we had to do was make it all inventoried,” said Belcher. That included three technology staff members manually tagging the more than 2,000 devices.
He said he chose to only distribute the devices to the schools, and not make them available for students to take home, in the spring of 2021 due to an upcoming audit by the state education department. The Chromebooks were just made available for students to take home — for a $25 annual fee — in September 2021.
“We were just not sending anything home because we knew MDE was coming to do an audit.”
But according to the Mississippi Department of Education, there was no audit of the district.
“I have no idea what that is,” said John Kraman, chief information officer for the department, said when asked about what the district said was an “MDE Chromebook audit” that occurred in May. “We don’t do Chromebook audits.”
Concern about the new administration’s decisions reached its summit in mid-September this year when two students were arrested on the Cleveland Central High School campus after organizing a protest of the district’s dress code and cafeteria food.
Parents questioned why law enforcement was involved, and the district defended its decision. It’s unclear what the students were charged with, but a statement put out by the district said a school resource officer called in back-up from the Cleveland Police Department “due to the continued breach of the peace and use of insulting/profane language.”
After the incident, a group of five parents and community members started a Facebook group called “Reform Cleveland Schools.” Within weeks, the group had grown to nearly 700 members.
LaDonne Sterling, a former employee of the district and parent of two children in the schools, said there has been a breakdown of trust.
Cleveland Public School District Superintendent Otha Belcher, right, at a district-wide community meeting in late September. Jesse Johnson, left, of the Carter Malone Group, facilitated the question-and-answer session. Credit: Kate Royals/Mississippi Today
“Now that the disconnection is known, it’s noticeable. It’s hard to go and gain that trust back from the parents and the community,” said Sterling.
But the purpose of the Reform Cleveland Schools group is to try, she said. And there are positive things happening — notably, that Belcher has agreed to meet monthly with the leaders of the group.
Voters will also get the chance to elect a new school board member Nov. 2.
Candidates running to replace current board member Tonya Short held a question and answer session with community members last week. Short was not present at the meeting.
Before the session ended, one audience member asked the candidates: ”What are we going to do to get back to effective schools, period? To make sure our schools are ready to run and the school board won’t have to constantly fix it, fix it, fix it?”
Candidate Paulette Howze’s answer focused on the importance of quality leadership.
“It starts at the head. As plain as I can say it,” she told the crowd. “… And it all goes back to accountability — whether we, as a board, are holding that person accountable.”
More than 10 months into his first term, President Joe Biden has yet to announce his nominees for the two U.S. attorneys slots in Mississippi.
When asked recently for an update on the nomination process, Ike Hajinazarian, a regional White House communications director, said “no news to share on this right now.”
Early in his tenure, Biden asked for the resignations of the two Trump-appointed U.S. attorneys in Mississippi, Mike Hurst in the Southern District and William C. Lamar in the Northern District.
Currently serving as interim U.S. attorneys are Clay Joyner in the Northern District and Darren LaMarca in the Southern District — both longtime prosecutors.
U.S. attorneys oversee the prosecutions for violations of federal crimes. Traditionally in Mississippi, they have placed an emphasis on pursuing public corruption cases. The people ultimately appointed to the posts by the president will face U.S. Senate confirmation.
Those being rumored as possible contenders for the posts include former state Attorney General Jim Hood, state District Attorney Scott Colom of Columbus, state Sen. Derrick Simmons of Greenville, state District Attorney Jody Owens of Jackson, Ole Miss law professor and MacArthur Justice Center director Cliff Johnson, former Southern District U.S. Attorney Gregory Davis and others.
Davis was appointed U.S. attorney by former President Barack Obama. Obama appointed Davis to the Southern District seat and Felicia Adams to the Northern District post during his second year in office.
Trump appointed Hurst and Lamar in June of his first year in office.
According to a September news release from the White House, the president has named 25 nominees for U.S. attorney slots. There are 93 U.S. attorneys across the natino, and it is customary for an incoming president to replace most, if not all, of the U.S. attorneys named by his predecessor.
Generally speaking, the state’s federal elected officials, especially senators, have influence in such presidential appointments on the state level. Since Mississippi has no Democratic senators, it is likely that U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, the lone Democrat in the state’s congressional delegation, will have influence with the Biden administration in making such appointments.
Correction: An earlier version of this story inaccurately reported on the death of a federal judge. U.S. Magistrate Judge John C. Gargiulo recently died. Federal magistrates, unlike federal judges, are not presidential appointees.
If ever there were a political odd couple, it’s former Republican Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant and former Obama administration Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.
This seems strange from two who were deeply entrenched in partisan politics in education policy during their tenures.
Bryant and Duncan were particularly diametrically opposed on national Common Core public education standards. Duncan was pushing for states to adopt the standards. Bryant called them a “bureaucratic federal education scheme” and issued an executive order in 2013 that, in his words, “affirmed that Mississippi, not the federal government, has the right and responsibility to define public education standards.”
But in their op-ed published last week, the pair said that setting national standards is a key to success in public education.
“The federal government is blocked from setting nationwide education standards, but that doesn’t mean we should have 50 different definitions of success,” they wrote. “On the contrary, all students from Maine to Maui must learn skills and knowledge for our era … regardless of what we call them and how we create them, we need agreed-upon national standards.”
In a 2014 op-ed, then-Gov. Phil Bryant opined, “What we don’t need is a one-size-fits-all program with federal government strings attached.” He said the state should “… implement Mississippi standards and curricula.”
Bryant and Duncan’s piece, which ran in publications across the country, also urged today’s leaders to “Keep politics out of the classroom,” and decried the current, often partisan and racially charged debate over teaching of critical race theory.
CRT — teaching that systemic racism exists in this country, making it more difficult for people of color to succeed — has drawn the ire of mostly Republicans across the country and prompted efforts in many state to ban it. Mississippi’s current Republican leaders, including Gov. Tate Reeves and House Speaker Philip Gunn, have vehemently criticized it and pledged to push legislation to ban it, despite the state superintendent saying it is not being taught in any Mississippi public schools.
Bryant, during his two terms as governor from 2012 to 2020, was not often one to let a partisan social issue pass by or to not join in on a red meat Republican movement, be it education issues or others.
But in the shared-byline op-ed, Bryant and Duncan said that such “politics is threatening to undermine our progress in the classroom.”
“Exhibit A is the misguided debate over critical race theory,” the pair wrote. “Let’s agree to neither deny the painful truths of our ancestors nor blame their descendants. President Reagan once encouraged an ‘informed patriotism’ that is ‘grounded in thoughtfulness and knowledge.’ From our vantage point, that means an education where students can openly and honestly acknowledge the continuing remnants of racism in our society and make sure all children are grounded in the principles of civics and democracy needed to address them fully and finally.”
Duncan and the Obama administration were often at bitter odds with social conservative Republicans such as Bryant. But perhaps the seemingly strange bedfellows have politically mellowed. They called for more collaboration between local and federal government, “the former knows how to invest effectively in education, and the latter has the resource to make it happen.”
And they closed with: “As with so many other issues, progress will come when we move away from partisan bickering and embrace audacious bipartisan goals. The outcome of such collaboration — high achievement, high graduation rates, and more — is something every politician and American can rally behind.”
Weeks after it banned COVID-19 vaccine mandates for the state’s colleges and universities, the Institutions of Higher Learning Board of Trustees voted Monday to direct employees to receive the vaccine.
This comes in response to an executive order from the Biden administration issued two nearly two months ago, which mandates employees of federal contractors get the COVID-19 vaccine.
All employees at Mississippi public universities, except those that work in an “exempt remote workplace” or have a qualified religious or medical exemption, are now required to be fully vaccinated by Dec. 8.
That means employees must schedule their first shot by Oct. 27 if they are getting the Moderna vaccine or by Nov. 3 if they are receiving Pfizer.
Ogletree made the long, eight-part motion, which passed 9-3 over the objections of trustees Teresa Hubbard, Jeanne Luckey and Gregory Rader. They wanted to postpone a vote so they had more time to consider the motion, which Hubbard said the board did not receive until 11:30 p.m. on Sunday.
“I have never received an official copy of this motion from anybody,” Luckey said.
“I personally don’t even know what this motion says,” Hubbard said. “It’s very difficult for me to determine what we’re trying to accomplish with this when we’ve had very little time to process it.”
By directing the public universities to follow President Joe Biden’s executive order, the IHL board is going back on its prior decision to ban the institutions from mandating the COVID vaccine. It was initially unclear if the executive order, handed down on Sept. 9, would apply to colleges and universities. Ogletree said the board “chose to wait for further and more definitive clarification.”
“The IHL board does not support a federally imposed COVID-19 mandate but has been and is supportive of medical and religious exemptions to the mandate,” he said.
By the time the board got clarification from the federal government on Sept. 24, which set the Dec. 8 deadline, it had already already taken a new vote to ban the institutions from mandating the COVID-19 vaccine.
The executive order applies because Mississippi’s public universities have about 120 federal contracts totalling $271 million in funding, Ogletree said at the meeting. All eight institutions have federal contractors or employees working in conjunction with federal contractors.
If Biden’s executive order is stayed or reversed, the IHL board’s motion contains a provision reverting to the Sept. 17 guidance.
After the executive order was announced, Gov. Tate Reeves has said he intended to be among a group of Republican governors who would sue the president to block a vaccine mandate.
Big changes could be coming to state financial aid in Mississippi for prospective college students. The Post-Secondary Board has recommended a proposal, called the “Mississippi One Grant,” that would replace the state’s three existing grants with a single program that would award aid based on a formula of need and merit.
How will you be affected? To help answer that, we used a data analysis by the Office of Student Financial Aid of the proposed grant to create the following calculator.
Before filling this out, you’ll need to know two numbers: Your ACT score and your expected family contribution as determined by the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. If you don’t know your EFC, you can figure that out here. The family income brackets in our calculator are rough estimates and may not give you an accurate result.
Lastly, bear in mind that students who currently receive financial aid will not be affected by this proposal.
These are estimates based on the board’s current proposal and could be subject to change depending on the Legislature this session. About 1,800 more students are expected to qualify for aid under the Mississippi One Grant compared to the new programs. But the average aid award is going to decrease — especially for the poorest students.
The “Mississippi One Grant” will replace Mississippi’s three current financial aid programs:
the Mississippi Tuition Assistance Grant (MTAG), which awards between $500 and $1,000 a year
the Mississippi Eminent Scholars Grant (MESG), the state’s merit-based grant, and
the Higher Education Legislative Plan for Needy Students (HELP) program, the state’s only need-based grant that covers all four years of college.
To learn more about the proposed grant and its implications for prospective college students, read our prior coverage below.
State Sen. Brice Wiggins, a Jackson County Republican, announced on Monday he is running for Congress in south Mississippi’s 4th Congressional District.
Wiggins, a former prosecutor who is currently serving in his third term representing Senate District 52, is the sixth Republican to announce a run for the seat held by incumbent Congressman Steven Palazzo.
Palazzo has been the subject of a House ethics investigation for allegedly misspending hundreds of thousands of dollars of campaign funds. A congressional ethics report made public in March alleged that Palazzo misspent campaign and congressional funds, and said it found evidence he used his office to help his brother and used staff for personal errands and services.
The congressman, who has denied wrongdoing, has not yet filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission to run for reelection in 2022.
On his congressional campaign website, Wiggins has already taken aim at the incumbent, calling Palazzo part of the “D.C. swamp.”
“We should all be angry that our own member of Congress is under investigation for misappropriating funds as well as using his position to provide unethical and immoral favors to family and friends,” Wiggins said.
If elected, Wiggins promises to “fight the D.C.-oriented socialist agenda” and advocate for a litany of conservative policy priorities, including cutting federal spending and taxation, securing the southern border and defending the Second Amendment, among others.
“I have been honored to serve the great people of Jackson County and the interests of South Mississippi for the past 10 years as a state senator,” Wiggins said in a press release. “During that time, as a Senate leader working with state-wide and other legislative leaders, Republicans gained a super-majority in the legislature and South Mississippi has seen its influence grow. As a Congressman, I’ll have an even larger platform to make a difference for all south Mississippians.”
Mississippi Today political reporters Bobby Harrison and Geoff Pender discuss with House Judiciary B Chair Rep. Nick Bain, R-Corinth, the state provision imposing a lifetime voting ban on some people convicted of felonies and whether it could be changed without going through the burdensome process of amending the Mississippi Constitution.
Adam Ganucheau: Welcome to The Other Side, Mississippi Today’s political podcast. The Other Side lets you hear directly from the most connected players and observers across the spectrum of politics. From breaking news to political strategy to interviews with candidates and elected officials, we’ll bring you facts, perspectives and context that helps you cut through the noise and understand all sides of the story.
Bobby Harrison: I’m Bobby Harrison, political reporter for Mississippi Today. I’m here with my colleague, Geoff Pender, also political reporter. Geoff, how you doing, man?
Geoff Pender: Hey Bobby.
Bobby Harrison: Well, we’re going to talk about something other than medical marijuana, so I hope we can hang to do that. We’re going to talk with Representative Nick Bain from up from Corinth.
He’s the House judiciary B chair. Representative Bain, how you doing?
Rep. Nick Bain: Hey, Bobby, Geoff, how are y’all? Thanks for having me.
Bobby Harrison: Thanks for doing it. Look, the primary thing we want to talk about— we may touch on a lot of subjects, but the primary thing we want to talk about is you have a hearing coming up soon on what is it? Is it the 28th?
Rep. Nick Bain: Yeah, next Thursday, October 28, 10 o’clock we’re going to have a hearing on suffrage, disenfranchisement of individuals that have committed a crime. We’re going to talk about it and see what, if anything, we can do as a legislator to legislative body to really take this out of the hands of the Legislature.
Bobby Harrison: Yeah. For background, the state constitution, there’s a certain number of crimes. I can’t remember how many— you may know precisely how many— that where if you commit those crimes and then convicted of committing those crimes, you lose your right to vote forever unless it is restored by two-thirds vote of both chambers of the Legislature and signed into law by the governor or the governor issues a pardon. Right now, that issue is in court. It has been challenged on its constitutionality in court, but what’s your thoughts on the whole
Rep. Nick Bain: issue?
Yeah, my thoughts boil down to the fact that I don’t think this is a legitimate function of the Legislature. I don’t think it’s something that we should be doing. But does that mean that people who are felons should have their rights restored? I don’t know.
I think that’s certainly an issue to be debated, but I don’t think it belongs in the Legislature. I think it’s an issue for the judicial branch of government, if you will. We allow judges to restore gun rights. We allow them to expunge records of people, and I think it’s more consistent. And it should be more readily available through the judicial system than the legislative body, and that’s the biggest concern that I have about it is I just don’t think the Legislature should be in this business.
Geoff Pender: Chairman Bain, if you could for those who maybe, you know, don’t watch the Legislature and probably certainly haven’t seen a disenfranchisement or suffrage bill, explain cause I think maybe a lot of people don’t understand. I mean, this is typically is pretty rarely done, but when it’s done, it’s a cumbersome process in the Legislature, is it not?
Rep. Nick Bain: Yeah, it really is. It’s very convoluted. Bobby alluded to it earlier about the crimes that are disenfranchised, and I think that’s a problem. A lot of people think, “I get a felony. Well, I can’t vote anymore.” But that’s not the case. There’s only about 23 that the attorney general has identified as disenfranchising felonies. Those range from arson, armed robbery to a bad check to some type of theft, a timber larceny, something like that.
What’s not on that list is stuff like child pornography or fondling or some of that stuff. So first off, the one problem is people don’t know. I think that’s a big issue. People don’t know if they could vote or not. I’ve had people, constituents of mine, that have asked me to do a suffrage bill for them, and then we go through the process. The way that happened— and I’ll explain it —somebody contacts me for a suffrage bill. I then fill out the information with the Department of DPS, Department of Public Safety, and they can do a background check on everything to see if first off, if they are disenfranchised. This one constituent I’m talking to, he had a felony 20 years ago and come to find out he never really lost his right to vote, so he didn’t even know. For 20 years he didn’t vote because he thought he couldn’t, so that’s a problem. But then they contact us, and we fill out this information. Then we file a bill, and that bill is then sent to the respective chamber.
In my case, in the House typically we take those up in the last week of session, as you guys know. I think last year in the House we passed 18 or 19 of these, and then it went over to the Senate and they passed two or three. I can’t really remember.
Bobby Harrison: So what you’re saying is two or three got to the governor’s office to actually get through the process.
Rep. Nick Bain: That’s right. And that’s a, you know, that’s a very minute number. It’s very cumbersome as Geoff said. You have to know a legislator first to do that, and not everybody lives in a rural area like I do where we’re pretty accessible. Not saying that the other members aren’t, but just saying with my more rural area, people tend to know their legislators more. But again, people got to know a legislator to be able to file that bill for them.
And then it’s got to go through the whole process of getting it done. In my 10 years, I’ve filed a dozen or suffrage bills, and I can only remember really one making it through. So it is cumbersome. It is time-consuming on the legislative process. I know we take them up in the last throws of the session, and really it shouldn’t be a place for the Legislature to be in this.
So like I said, expungements are a way that goes to a judge. Somebody will hire a lawyer. That lawyer will take it to a judge, and I think that same process should be done with these. But that is the problem. This is, as y’all alluded to, is constitutional. So it’s not just changing a statute or filing a bill to change the statute. It’s a constitutional issue that requires a whole lot, a greater burden to go.
Geoff Pender: Sure. Chairman Bain, back to the list of disqualifying felonies or whatever, at least the original list in the constitution it dates back to Jim Crow, and a lot of people pointed out that it was engineered to disenfranchise disproportionately Black people.
Rep. Nick Bain: I don’t think that that’s up for debate. I think that that’s true of my understanding. I think we’re the only state in the union that does it this way. I did an interview last week with The Guardian, Sam Levine at The Guardian, and he’s following this issue too. And he told me, you know, this is the only way that it’s done in the union, which is outdated. The crimes themselves are crimes that are typically those of some type of theft outside of your murder and the violent offenses which we get. But some of these crimes, like there’s one, that’s disenfranchised. I mean, it’s bigamy. I’ve been practicing law for 15 years. I don’t know that I’ve ever represented anybody on the charge of bigamy. So it is outdated and obsolete.
Bobby Harrison: Yeah, I’ve said this before, but you know, under our system, you could be a major drug dealer serving time in Parchman and vote and write a bad check and lose your right to vote forever.
Rep. Nick Bain: That’s exactly right. And that inconsistency gives me a lot of heartburn on this. It’s just not fair. And I think it’s unAmerican, the way that we go about this.
Geoff Pender: Chairman, you mentioned the judiciary being in charge and I guess something like expungement, but I mean is this something you could just set up a framework of, you know, just make a list and, you know, once you’ve done your time if you’ve done these crimes, then you have the right to vote automatically restored or does there need to be some other process?
Rep. Nick Bain: Yeah. And that’s sort of what the hearing is going to be about next week is what can we do with this being a constitutional provision? What can we do? But yeah, Geoff, that’s sort of what I have in mind is. You know, something happened either what your crime is, be it a bad check or false pretenses or something, a minor non-violent offense that maybe you have your rights restored by operation of law.
And then as you go up the ladder all the way up to some type of grand larceny or burglary or something like that, you have to petition the court and have to show good fitness and character, and that you’ve been rehabbed or whatever the case may be. Or you could just do it similar, very similar to our expungement statute, which is that you petition the court, show them that you’ve had good character for the past five years since you’ve been off probation or your sentence has been complete and you take that to the judge and you make your case in front of the judge. But in any event, I think it’s a more accessible for people if they’re able to go to a court to do that. I think it’s more efficient. And again, it’s more of a proper place that the court system has followed an individual for the most part from the beginning of the process until the end. There’s no reason to shift over to a legislative branch to continue this.
Bobby Harrison: Yeah. To me the $64,000 question, if you will, and you alluded to it, I mean, what can you do by general law without having to go through a constitutional amendment? I mean, several years, I don’t know if you remember, but you were in the Legislature. I looked this up. Several years ago, the House did pass a bill and sent over to the Senate that restored rights for most felonies. I think not murder and rape, but for other felonies and they just said they were doing the bill, doing for everybody what you do for each individual. I think is the way it would be. Are you familiar with that bill?
Rep. Nick Bain: Yeah, you can do it. The Legislature could restore rights to individuals convicted of a crime, like felony shoplifting, through a two-thirds vote if I’m not mistaken without the need of constitutional amendment. Nothing prevents the Legislature from restoring rights to large groups of people. The issue I think is I think that can only be done retroactive. That’s a question that will be answered at the hearing.
I don’t know that that could be done for those future convicted. Does that make sense?
Bobby Harrison: Yeah. Yeah. So it would be, you could do sorta some type of carte blanche law that restored rights to tens of thousands of people, but you can’t go out in the future and say, “People who commit crimes in the future will have their rights automatically restored,” or whatever system you came up with.
Rep. Nick Bain: Right. That’s the question that I don’t have the answer to right now.
Bobby Harrison: Yeah, the House passed that bill in I think it was 2008. It probably would not have withstood judicial scrutiny, but you know, y’all have passed bills before that might not, you know, might not withstand scrutiny too. Who knows what the scrutiny is going to be these days, but who all is going to be testifying at the hearing?
Rep. Nick Bain: Yeah, I’ve got a list of right here. I’m going to have Dennis Hopkins, who was someone this would affect, someone who has had their rights disenfranchised; Ryan Burns, who’s a former district attorney now in the private sector who does a lot of expungement law and a lot of restoring gun rights, stuff like that; Roy Harness, and this is another one that has had his rights disenfranchised; Paloma Lu. She is the deputy director of impact legislation with Rob McDuff’s group. She’s going to come and talk to us and help us determine where we are and what we can do. And then forgive me on this last guy’s name, Neal Aubryany. He is with the Center for Secure and Modern Elections.
Again, he’s going to give us ideas. I’ve talked to them at length a couple of times, and they have provided us with some materials on what other states have done, other conservative states like Florida, Louisiana, with some other states, what they’ve done. He’s going to talk about that and where we can go with this constitutional provision, you know, sort of stuff that we talked about, allowing suffrage back to large groups or even ideas like requiring the secretary of state to provide a database for people who have been convicted. A felon needs to just to go on there to look to see if they’re disenfranchised. So that’s the people right now. There may be one or two more, but right now that’s who I have.
Bobby Harrison: And you mentioned Rob McDuff’s office, and I forget the name of the person who’s going to testify but they have a lawsuit pending, them and some other folks, pending in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals that would challenge the whole constitutionality of the suffrage process in Mississippi. So that’s going on at the same time.
Rep. Nick Bain: Right. And they’re going to talk to the extent that they’re able about some of that.
Geoff Pender: Sure. Chairman Bain, you being in the Legislature I think we these days have to ask you. And at this point, this is still in limbo, but what are you hearing on a potential special session and the whole medical marijuana issue right now?
Rep. Nick Bain: Yeah, you know, I don’t hear anything. Honestly, the speaker was up here this week, and we talked about it and he’s of the same mindset. You know, it’s in the governor’s purview.
The governor told us to get an agreement. My understanding there is basically an agreement between the House and the Senate, and there may be some minute stuff that’s out there, but for the most part there’s an agreement and the Legislature stands ready to come back and handle the issue. We’re just waiting on the call.
I’m of the personal opinion at this point, you know we’re at the end of October. We’re running out of time, so to speak. So I don’t know. I’m not hearing anything more than what I guess you guys are, but I will say to your listeners and to y’all that the Legislature, especially the House stands ready to go back and do the work if the governor calls us.
Bobby Harrison: Just to get you on the record, you would support some type of medical marijuana legislation.
Rep. Nick Bain: Yeah, I would. And you know, my district supported it. Overwhelmingly people in Mississippi support it. So yeah, I think it’s time for us to go down this road and make this product available.
Geoff Pender: Are you pleased with what you’ve seen in the agreement draft?
Rep. Nick Bain: You know, there’s no perfect deal, but for the most part, I think it’s on par with most of what the rest of the country is. It certainly does have some stuff that I don’t favor. You know, there are some issues about the churches that I’d like to see tweaked a little bit. There’s some issues about maybe the levels, but again, I can live with some of the levels and stuff like that.
I would like to have a little bit more information about what remedies are out there for some of your business owners and landlords and stuff. But for the most part, the overall product I think is pretty good.
Bobby Harrison: Is there anything else you want to cover today with us? Anything standing out to you that you want to talk about?
Rep. Nick Bain: Not off the top of my head. You know, we’re looking forward to sessions around the corner.
Bobby Harrison: Y’all got a lot off stuff on the agenda.
Rep. Nick Bain: We do, and it’ll be interesting to see what happens. You know, it’s the third year of the term. Y’all know what that means. We always try not to be as controversial, but I don’t know if that’s going to be the case this year.
Bobby Harrison: Well, Representative Nick Bain from Corinth, is it District Two? That’s right, isn’t it?
Rep. Nick Bain: District Two, uh huh.
Bobby Harrison: You used to go into Tishomingo County a little bit, didn’t you?
Rep. Nick Bain: No, I’ve only been in Alcorn my whole time. I’ve lost a little bit of East Alcorn population, which we’ll see that’s a big issue, you know, coming up with redistricting, so we’ll see what happens.
Bobby Harrison: Yeah. There’s a lot of stuff going on up there that a lot of people in Mississippi don’t know about. But Corinth is one of my favorite places in the whole wide world just to visit.
Rep. Nick Bain: Come visit us and bring the checkbooks. Spend a lot of money.
Geoff Pender: And eat a slug burger.
Rep. Nick Bain: That’s right. Eat a slug burger and some tamales and, you know, drink a Coke. That’s it.
Geoff Pender: Okay. Well, Chairman Bain, thank you again for joining us today. Really appreciate you talking with us.
Bobby Harrison: Thank you.
Rep. Nick Bain: All right, guys. Thank you.
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