| Monday, March 18, 2024 |
| Drones to get blasted by wind, rain in new first-of-its-kind weather lab | |
 | Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night is supposed to stop the US Mail. Someday, inclement weather may no longer be a barrier for deliveries via drones either. Mississippi State University is creating a first-of-its-kind weather laboratory where flight researchers will be able to test drones' ability to survive various simulated weather conditions, the university announced this month. Researchers say their work will better equip autonomous air transportation to handle dynamic changes in the weather. "Which will become even more important in the future as we rely on drones for product deliveries and personal air transport," says Jason Keith, dean of MSU's Bagley College of Engineering. The Raspet Flight Research Laboratory will allow researchers to simulate various stormy conditions such as strong wind gusts, wind shear, heavy rains and turbulence. Later updates will allow testing for fog, dust and snow. The data will help agencies like the FAA establish drone vehicle safety and performance standards. The lab, located at George M. Bryan Airport in Starkville, is expected to go live later this year and will allow testing of full-scale drones, not just small-scale models, researchers said. The team has even bigger plans for the lab's future, expanding beyond aerospace testing into other research fields such as sensor developments, agricultural spray coverage and pathogen spread. |
| Bull sharks thriving off Alabama despite rising sea temperatures, study says | |
| Numbers of bull sharks, one of the largest and most aggressive ocean-dwelling predators, are thriving even as rising sea temperatures kill off other marine species, a study says. Researchers at Mississippi State University (MSU) found that the number of individual sharks, all juveniles, recorded per hour in Mobile Bay was five times higher in 2020 than at the start of the study period in 2003. The sea temperature there rose from an average 72.1F (22.3C) to 73.4F from 2001 to 2020, suggesting that bull sharks are beneficiaries of the climate emergency, according to the findings published this week in Scientific Reports. This news comes even as experts are warning of a "cataclysmic" mass-extinction event caused by record heat in the oceans. "It's a really exciting study because it's sort of contrary to that narrative we normally think, which is that for many species, warming water is a detriment," Lindsay Mullins, the study's lead author from the university's coastal research center, told ABC News. The MSU researchers analyzed data from 440 bull sharks caught, tagged and released by Alabama's department of conservation and natural resources during the 17-year period, and matched it to climatic information collected by remote sensors in Mobile Bay. Mullins also credits a robust and decades-long program of shark management by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) for keeping numbers buoyant in the face of growing environmental challenges. |
| 'Call of the Wild' comes to MSU Riley Center March 26 | |
 | The MSU Riley Center is presenting special performances this month for school children as part of its annual educational programming. Next up for young students is Jack London's classic tale "The Call of the Wild: Illustrated Edition," a Tuesday, March 26, 10 a.m. show for children in grades 3-6. Participating schools can apply at www.msurileycenter.com for free tickets for their students through the Phil Hardin Education series. This effort, which includes lesson plans to educators in grades K-12 complementing the underlying performance themes, encourages arts education among area school children. Tickets also are available for home-schooled children. More than 500 area students in grades K-2 attended the lighted performance of "The Ugly Duckling" earlier this month. "The educational shows are our favorite day here at The Riley Center. We get to see young faces and future creators. And they're so excited, happy and adorable," said Morgan Dudley, director of conferences, events and operations. "We had schools from West Point, Eupora, Laurel, Philadelphia, Louisville -- from all over to see 'The Ugly Duckling.'" Terry Dale Cruse, MSU-Meridian associate vice president and head of campus, said these performances are carefully selected for the positive and profound impact they have on young minds. "The Phil Hardin Foundation has long been an endowment-level supporter of MSU-Meridian, and we have heartfelt gratitude for the role they play in sustaining our ability to extend the arts to all children," Cruse said. |
| Proposed plan could net Starkville 40 years in overall road life this year | |
 | A proposed $3.5 million road plan for this year could net 40 more cumulative years of lifespan to city roads. City Engineer Cody Burnett said he's ready to put the plan into action. At Friday's aldermen work session, Burnett presented a draft list of about 45 priority roads to work on in 2024. Repairs range from major overlays to minor maintenance. The long-term goal is to bring bad roads up to good condition while preserving better roads before they deteriorate. Over time, the entire road system will be improved while the city's road maintenance costs shrink. Last year, aldermen approved a partnership with Southaven-based Civil-Link to assess the condition of every road in the city. Each road was assigned a 1 to 10 rating for each 50-foot segment. A score of 1 designates a road in need of total repair, while a 10 describes a road in pristine condition. The study's results were presented in January, and Starkville's average road score was 5.5. Burnett's draft list is based on Civil-Link's assessment and includes the section of road in need of repair, the road's score and the recommended work type. For example, a section of Goldfinch Lane has a score of 1 and is recommended for asphalt overlay. Burnett said of the $3.5 million total estimated cost to repair all roads on this year's list, about $2.4 million is for major and minor asphalt overlays as well as patching. The remaining $1.1 million is for preservation methods like microsurfacing, a thin, tough layer of asphalt emulsion blended with finely crushed stone. Burnett said microsurfacing can add between 8 to 10 years to a road's lifespan. |
| Ask The Dispatch: What is going on with the old Felix Long Hospital building? | |
| Since at least spring 2022, Oktibbeha County leaders have planned to tear down the old Felix Long Memorial Hospital building located off West Lampkin Street behind Welch Funeral Home. The building has sat empty since May of that year. Supervisors commissioned Columbus-based Major Design Studios to design the building's demolition to make room for a new county facility that would host administrative offices and some court operations. Even the legislature threw in $1 million in 2023 to help with the demolition to jumpstart the process. So why is the building still there? Why does nothing seem to be happening? What exactly will be done, and when will that work get started? While some of those answers remain unclear, officials unanimously credit the Mississippi Department of Archives and History for the holdup. "Under normal circumstances, we would have moved forward on this project and could be so far along as getting ready to complete it," District 2 Supervisor Orlando Trainer said. "Because of unforeseen concerns of theirs, we haven't gotten started yet." Built in 1950 and dedicated to the son of the founder of Oktibbeha County Hospital who died working as a physician in World War II, the Felix Long Memorial Hospital began serving as a county office building after OCH Regional Medical Center opened in 1973. The building is listed Downtown Starkville Historic District on the National Register of Historic Places. That means, before it is torn down, MDAH must assess whether it should be given state landmark status. |
| C Spire announces fiber internet expansion in Meridian | |
| C Spire, a telecommunications and technology services company, is expanding its 20,000 miles of fiber infrastructure and will soon offer multi-gigabit home fiber internet with speeds up to 8-gig to thousands of homes in Meridian, the company announced Wednesday. This new construction will add 90 additional miles of fiber and supporting infrastructure in Meridian. Progress in the first of 34 neighborhoods is underway with construction slated for completion in June 2024. The other neighborhoods are expected to be completed over the next 12-18 months. Since 2021, C Spire has invested $1 billion in part to accelerate the deployment of fiber across Alabama and Mississippi. Part of that initiative included a 243-mile, long-haul fiber initiative from Meridian to Homewood, Alabama, bringing service to a rural areas that are underserved. "We are thrilled about the addition of C Spire's ultra-fast fiber service to our community," said Bill Hannah, president & CEO of East Mississippi Business Development Corporation. "Fiber infrastructure throughout our community is critical to our economic landscape, addressing various needs from education and healthcare to business expansion, while enhancing home values." |
| City of Bruce hosts inaugural 'National Ag Day' event | |
 | In the classroom, students are taught math, science, and English, but they do not learn much about agriculture. This is why the city of Bruce held a "National Ag Day" event. The event taught children about tractors, crops, and the history of farming. Several tractors were lined up and local farmers were ready to teach others about agriculture. "We are having a National Ag Day celebration to celebrate the impact of agriculture in our county and specifically here in the town of Bruce Mississippi," said Calhoun County Farm Bureau Women's Chair Sylvia Clark. The Calhoun County Farm Bureau Women's Chair Sylvia Clark says today's event was a great way to teach the youth about a part of Mississippi's history. "We wanted to give the kids some exposure to agriculture because the curriculum in schools is so mandated now, so they do not have a lot of time to talk about agriculture," Clark said. "Agriculture is the foundation of our country and our community. Specifically here in Bruce, we have the largest sweet potato producer in the state, we have the sawmill that provides very good jobs. We have things that make a big economic impact, right here in the town of Bruce." Darrell Bray is a farmer in Calhoun County. He says this event was a great way to pass his knowledge about farming down to the next generation. |
| Upgrade in downtown: Vicksburg's Main Street Program to benefit from USDA funding | |
| The Mississippi Main Street Association (MMSA) has received funding from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Rural Community Development Initiative (RCDI) to implement the Mississippi Real Estate Redevelopment Game Plan project in 18 Designated Main Street communities, including Vicksburg. MMSA will provide technical assistance and capacity building for 18 Designated Main Street communities focused on developing a streamlined approach for evaluating Main Street districts' potential for key property redevelopment. Site visits for this project will occur from March 2024 to September 2024. Participating communities include Cleveland, Columbia, Crystal Springs, Hattiesburg, Kosciusko, Leake County, Louisville, Meridian, Moss Point, Natchez, New Albany, Gulfport, Ripley, Starkville, Tunica, Vicksburg, Water Valley and Woodville. "Redeveloping under-used or vacant properties is a crucial step in downtown revitalization," MMSA Executive Director Jim Miller said. "The RCDI Real Estate Redevelopment Game Plan project will provide each of the participating communities with customized information to identify and redevelop key properties in their downtown districts." MMSA will work with nationally recognized downtown real estate and economic development firm Place + Main Advisors, led by Joe Borgstrom. |
| Childcare, workforce retention inextricably tied, experts say | |
 | A key reason Mississippi's workforce participation rate is among the lowest in the nation is the challenge of finding effective, available child care workers can afford. Economic development professionals agree it's a quandary. Large local employers like Toyota are leading the way by establishing child care centers on site where necessary. For others, there is hope state or federal legislation may help. "Lee County is a child care desert," said Tiffanie Hedin, corporate communications manager for Toyota's Blue Springs plant. The company broke ground in November on a child care facility of its own at its campus in Blue Springs. It's expected to open in late January 2025 and will oversee the care of around 100 children ranging in age from infancy to 5 years. Toyota also has child care facilities at its facilities in Kentucky and Indiana. The company uses national child care vendor Bright Horizons to provide both supervision and vital early learning for the youngsters in its care. "It's really surprising to come into Mississippi and see the difference and the need (in the child care market)," Hedin said. "We don't have child care centers at every plant, but our workforce here needs that. We offer other amenities like our health center with on-site medical staff, a cafeteria, on-site banking and workout facilities. child care is the next logical step." The issue of connecting employees needing child care with competent child care providers is two-fold. The service must be available in a way that allows employees to deliver their children ahead of their workday, then collect them after their workday ends without missing work to do so. First, though, the service has to be available at all, and at a price potential customers can afford. |
| A new kind of hospital is coming to rural America. To qualify, facilities must close their beds | |
 | As rural hospitals continue to struggle financially, a new type of hospital is slowly taking root, especially in the Southeast. Rural emergency hospitals receive more than $3 million in federal funding a year and higher Medicare reimbursements in exchange for closing all inpatient beds and providing 24/7 emergency care. While that makes it easier for a hospital to keep its doors open, experts say it doesn't solve all of the challenges facing rural health care. People might have to travel further for treatments for illnesses that require inpatient stays, like pneumonia or COVID-19. In some of the communities where hospitals have converted to the new designation, residents are confused about what kind of care they can receive. Plus, rural hospitals are hesitant to make the switch, because there's no margin of error. The designation is aimed at a very specific population, said George Pink, deputy director of the Sheps Center's Rural Health Research Program, and that's rural hospitals on the brink of closure with few people getting inpatient care already. That was the case for Irwin County Hospital in Ocilla, Georgia, which was the second rural emergency hospital established in the U.S. Irwin County Hospital became a rural emergency hospital on Feb. 1, 2023. Quentin Whitwell, the hospital's CEO, said it was an ideal candidate. That lifeline has proven difficult to hold onto for Alliance Healthcare System in Holly Springs, Mississippi, another one of Whitwell's hospitals and the fourth facility in the country to convert. Months after being approved as a rural emergency hospital in March 2023, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services reneged on its decision. |
| Lawmakers pass bills prohibiting state from investing in companies boycotting Israel despite challenges to constitutionality | |
| Amid conflict in the Middle East between Israel and Palestine, Mississippi lawmakers have moved to extend an existing law that bars the state from investing in companies that boycott the Jewish State. Following the passage of companion bills in each chamber, protestors levied upon the grounds of the state capitol on Wednesday and asked lawmakers to reconsider the legislation. Emad Al-Turk, the co-founder of the International Museum of Muslim Cultures in Jackson, helped organize the rally as the Israel Support of Act of 2019 is set to expire at the end of this year. "If somebody wants to support Israel, they can support Israel. This is not about Israeli support. This is about curtailing Mississippians' and Americans' rights to freedom of speech, freedom of protest, and boycotting in a peaceful way," Al-Turk explained. When the legislation was originally passed and signed by then-Gov. Phil Bryant in 2019, it created a law prohibiting Mississippi's public employees' retirement system and the state treasury from investing in companies that boycott the Jewish State or those of Jewish descent -- something Al-Turk and others deem a Constitutional violation. "Are we really going to be boycotting people for expressing their opinions and expressing what groups they can and cannot support? That's really why we're against it," Al-Turk said. While the bills still have to make it through conference, it is unlikely that enough lawmakers will backtrack at this point. With Gov. Tate Reeves being an outspoken supporter of Israel and critic of Palestine, the Republican is expected to follow in the footsteps of his predecessor and sign the Israel Support Act back into law. |
| State senator named in new Oasis Lounge lawsuit | |
| A Clay County attorney and state senator has been named in the fourth civil negligence lawsuit following a March 3 mass shooting that killed one and injured a dozen at a nightclub just north of West Point. The newest lawsuit was filed Friday afternoon in Clay County Circuit for Jaylyn Herron, a 19-year-old Monroe County woman who attended a party at the Oasis Lounge. The complaint does not detail her injuries but says she suffered "financial loss and has incurred medical expenses." Like the previous lawsuits, Tony Harris and Elmer Harris are listed as owners and defendants, as is McKenzie Rogers and his security firm Elite Warrior Security. This complaint also lists as a defendant Shelant Enterprise LLC, which holds the beer permit for Oasis. According to filings with the Mississippi Secretary of State, the registered agent of Shelant is state Sen. Angela Turner-Ford, and the form lists the principal addresses as 10514 Highway 45 (the Oasis Lounge) and Turner-Ford's East Street West Point law office. The lawsuit says the defendants were negligent by not providing a safe environment for guests, despite advertising that said security would be strictly enforced. The club reportedly had 14 security guards on duty for the event. Turner-Ford served as both the Clay County prosecutor and the West Point prosecutor until January 2013, when she won a special election to fill the Senate District 16 seat of her late father, Benny Turner. |
| Republicans would put half of climate funding into commodity subsidies, says Stabenow | |
| Senate Agriculture chairwoman Debbie Stabenow rejected on Thursday a Republican proposal to move several billion dollars of climate funds into the commodity title of the farm bill. "No, the answer to that is no," Stabenow said at an expo on climate-smart agriculture practices. "We can't be in a situation like some want [of], 'We'll give you half of it, and we want to take the other half and put it someplace else,' " said the Michigan Democrat. During a brief speech, she praised on-farm efforts to sequester carbon and reduce greenhouse gas emissions as a way to slow global warming. On Wednesday, Republican staff workers on the Senate Agriculture Committee said $13 billion in climate funds, provided by the 2022 climate law, could be leveraged into a long-term increase in USDA stewardship accounts. They suggested moving the climate money into the conservation title of the farm bill to create a higher baseline for conservation spending, which would be carried forward under congressional bookkeeping rules. "While disagreements remain regarding climate requirements ... Senate Republicans stand ready to reach a bipartisan consensus to protect these funds," said the staffers in a two-page blog. Stabenow said she liked the idea of fattening the conservation baseline for years to come. "Those resources are outside the conservation title of the farm bill right now. I would love to move all those dollars into the conservation baseline and stretch that out and make it go even further. But we have to do it within the language that was put in [the statute] around climate-smart agriculture." |
| 'He can be Churchill ... or Chamberlain': House Speaker Mike Johnson urged to speed aid to Ukraine | |
 | As a Soviet citizen in August 1991, 17-year-old Roman Rubchenko illegally jumped ship in New York, applied for asylum and ended up replacing Shaquille O'Neal as center for the LSU basketball team. Now a businessman in Kyiv with degrees from LSU, Michigan and Harvard, Rubchenko last week returned to the U.S. from Ukraine and visited Capitol Hill hoping for a chance to lobby House Speaker Mike Johnson, the Benton Republican who was attending LSU at the same time in the '90s. Rubchenko wanted the speaker to schedule a vote in the House on an aid bill that passed the Senate overwhelmingly. "It feels like we're being abandoned. It's very scary," Rubchenko said. "We cannot do this without that support. It has already been delayed for four months, and it's a death sentence for Ukraine." Both Johnson and Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-Jefferson, trumpet their LSU connections -- often dressing in purple and gold in a city that questions the color combination, namechecking Tiger stars and dropping LSU sports references in their speeches. But in visiting Capitol Hill, Rubchenko learned what many Americans already know: conversations about controversial subjects tend to be inconclusive. "These are politicians, and they don't speak clearly," Rubchenko said. "My sense here is that this topic is not a priority." The former LSU center wasn't the only one on Capitol Hill pressing Johnson to fund the Ukrainian war effort. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, speaking in Polish to reporters after meeting Johnson on Tuesday, said he scolded the speaker for taking so long to bring Ukraine funding to a vote. |
| 'I wish these were jokes': Biden jabs at Trump at Gridiron | |
 | President Joe Biden took pointed aim at Donald Trump during a speech Saturday at the Gridiron Dinner, joking repeatedly about his rival's mental fitness and warning that he poses a grave danger to democracy at home and abroad. "One candidate is too old and mentally unfit to be president," Biden said, in one of several jabs directed at Trump across his roughly 10 minutes of remarks. "The other is me." The president called out Trump for failing to recognize a photo of his own wife during a deposition and for alluding on multiple occasions to running against Barack Obama in 2024 -- jokingly urging the crowd not to correct him. But Biden turned serious when he accused Trump of "destroying the economy" in 2020 and "embarrassing" the US on the world stage, criticizing him for more recently suggesting he'd let Russian leader Vladimir Putin invade NATO allies. "I wish these were jokes but they're not," Biden said, vowing that on his watch, "we will not bow down." The president also decried the "toxic cycle of anger and conspiracy" in politics supercharged by Trump, cautioning that while the attempt to overturn the election in 2020 failed, "you all know the threat remains." Biden during his speech also took shots at the Republican Party writ large, mocking the House GOP's impeachment effort as a "joke" and criticizing the party's refusal to pass a bipartisan immigration bill. "Republicans would rather fail on impeachment than succeed in anything else," he said. |
| Why Trump's White House Record Mattered More Than DeSantis's Culture-War Fights | |
 | John Monroe's booth at the annual Strawberry Festival here was full of carved-antler knives and knickknacks, but he said he gets chuckles and plenty of customers for a wooden paddle inscribed with the words, "Make Kids Great Again." Monroe, 70 years old, said he is in line with former President Donald Trump's agenda, but he would have supported Gov. Ron DeSantis's presidential bid this year if the governor hadn't abandoned his campaign before Florida's March 19 primary. Part of the attraction: DeSantis's laws on education, a component of an agenda that led the governor to declare that Florida is "where woke goes to die." The problem for DeSantis was that, unlike Monroe, many Republican voters haven't had these kinds of culture-war issues at the top of their minds when choosing the party's nominee for president, according to recent interviews The Wall Street Journal conducted for its "Chasing the Base" podcast series. DeSantis's record includes restrictions on the teaching of gender identity and sexual orientation in schools; the stopping of funding for diversity programs; roadblocks to transgender medical care; and laws barring minors from lewd performances that some say unfairly target drag shows. Most Republicans generally agreed with the policies and said they supported DeSantis for pursuing them. But most also said his championing of those issues wasn't enough to dislodge their support for Trump, largely because of the former president's handling of immigration issues and the economy. |
| Former Vice President Mike Pence says he's not endorsing Trump | |
| Former Vice President Mike Pence says he will not be backing Donald Trump in the 2024 election. "It should come as no surprise that I will not be endorsing Donald Trump this year," Pence said in an interview with Fox News Channel Friday, weighing in for the first time since the former president became the presumptive GOP nominee. Pence ran against Trump for their party's nomination but dropped his bid before voting began last year. The decision makes Pence the latest in a series of senior Trump administration officials who have declined to endorse their former boss's bid to return to the Oval Office. While Republican members of Congress and other GOP officials have largely rallied behind Trump, a vocal minority has continued to oppose his bid. It also marks the end of a metamorphosis for Pence, who had long been seen as one of Trump's most loyal defenders but broke with his two-time running mate by refusing to go along with Trump's unconstitutional scheme to try to remain in power after losing the 2020 election. When Trump's supporters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, trying to disrupt the certification of Joe Biden's win, Pence was forced to flee to a Senate loading dock as rioters chanted, "Hang Mike Pence!" outside. Pence declined to say whom he would be voting for -- "I'm going to keep my vote to myself," he said -- but made clear it wouldn't be Biden. "I would never vote for Joe Biden," he said. "I'm a Republican." |
| Covid-Era Case on Free Speech to Test Supreme Court | |
| When Hank Aaron died in 2021, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suggested in a tweet that the baseball legend's death was caused by a Covid vaccine.The next day, a White House employee asked Twitter, now known as X, to take down Kennedy's post. "Wondering if we can get moving on the process for having it removed ASAP," the White House's Covid-19 digital director wrote to two Twitter employees. The social-media platform did so. Meta Platforms went further, later suspending Kennedy, a nephew of John F. Kennedy and now a long-shot presidential candidate, from Instagram and Facebook. The exchange was emblematic of the White House's strategy for fighting what it said was misinformation about vaccines, Covid lockdowns and other public-health efforts in a time of crisis. Dozens of federal officials were in contact with online platforms about removing or demoting posts, according to court documents. The Supreme Court this week will consider whether the administration's zeal crossed a constitutional line, the latest in a series of cases this year that could set important ground rules for digital free speech and content moderation. Essentially, the justices will try to navigate two starkly competing views: Did the government use its powers of persuasion in a permissible way to advance its policies? Or did it illegally coerce private companies into suppressing speech that the government couldn't silence on its own? |
| Supreme Court decides when public officials can block critics online | |
 | The Supreme Court laid out a new test Friday for when government officials violate the free speech rights of members of the public by removing comments or blocking access on their social media accounts. The justices, in a unanimous opinion, ruled those officials must have authority to speak for the government, and then purport to use that authority on social media, before they could face liability for those deletions or blocks. Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote the decision for the court that determined the outcome in two First Amendment cases, one brought against two California school board members and one brought against a Michigan city manager. Lower courts ruled differently in the two lawsuits, which hinge on when a government official's personal social media account becomes an official government account and should come with protections for access. Barrett wrote that courts should look at details such as whether an account is labeled as personal or official, or whether it is controlled by the government and passed down between office holders to determine whether it satisfies the new test. Barrett wrote that government resources or labels can be an indicator that an account is a government one with the attached free speech protections, but it isn't determinative. The same could be said for labeling an account "official" or "personal," Barrett wrote. "The distinction between private conduct and state action turns on substance, not labels: Private parties can act with the authority of the State, and state officials have private lives and their own constitutional rights," Barrett wrote. |
| Supreme Court again refuses to intervene in drag show controversy | |
 | The Supreme Court on Friday declined to get involved in a First Amendment challenge to a drag show ban. It was the second time the court has refused to step into a drag controversy this term. Students at West Texas A&M University went to the high court after two lower courts refused to act in time to save a student drag show scheduled on campus for March 22. They asked for emergency intervention, claiming a clear violation of their rights to free speech. Last November, Supreme Court also refused to intervene when the state of Florida asked it to temporarily reinstate its anti-drag show law. At that time Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch dissented. This time there were no noted dissents. The student group will likely have to move its show off campus this year while it waits for a hearing from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, widely viewed as the most conservative federal appeals court in the country. University President Walter Wendler first blocked the LGBTQ+ student organization from using a campus performance hall to host a drag show last March. In an email to the student body explaining his decision, Wendler called drag contrary to the "basis of Natural Law," as well as "derisive, divisive, and demoralizing." He said the "ideology" underlying drag shows is demeaning to women and could not be condoned by the university. |
| Bill to study W, MSMS dies on Senate calendar | |
| A bill proposing a viability study of Mississippi University for Women and the Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science died on the Senate calendar Friday. Senate Bill 2715 has placed MUW's future in jeopardy since its introduction in February – first as a bill proposing MSMS be relocated from The W campus to Mississippi State University in Starkville, then changing to propose The W merge with MSU. In a statement released Friday on social media, MUW President Nora Miller thanked the legislature, the Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning and invested community members for supporting the university throughout the process. Thank you, once again, to our legislative leaders and the numerous individuals across the entire state who have fought to ensure the legacy of the Long Blue Line," her post reads. District 43 Sen. Dennis DeBar, R-Leakesville, chairman for the Senate Education Committee, authored the original bill, introducing the substitution March 5 seeking to give control of MUW to MSU and create "The W at Mississippi State University." Prior to DeBar letting it die on the calendar Friday, a spokesperson with Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann's office telecasted the bill's fate to The Dispatch. "My understanding is that the chairman (DeBar) has indicated the bill will not be moved forward," Hosemann's deputy chief of staff Leah Rupp Smith wrote in an email to The Dispatch. |
| Hilton acquires Graduate Hotels for $210M | |
| The Graduate Hotel in Oxford will soon be a part of the Hilton group. Hilton recently announced an agreement with Adventurous Journeys Capital Partners (AJ Capital) to acquire the fan-favorite Graduate Hotels brand, adding a significant growth opportunity for the global hospitality leader in the fast-growing lifestyle hotel market. Hilton will pay $210 million to acquire all rights to the Graduate brand worldwide, enter into franchise agreements for all existing and signed pipeline Graduate Hotels, and become responsible for the brand's future development and growth. "Adding Graduate Hotels to our portfolio of award-winning brands accelerates our expansion in the lifestyle space by pairing an existing much-loved brand with the power of Hilton's strong commercial engine to drive growth," said Chris Nassetta, president and CEO, Hilton. Since its inception in 2014, the brand has grown to span the United States and the United Kingdom, including locations in Ann Arbor, Michigan; Knoxville, Tennessee; Palo Alto, California; State College, Pennsylvania; and Oxford and Cambridge, United Kingdom, with new hotels opening soon in Austin and Dallas, Texas; Auburn, Alabama; and Princeton, New Jersey. The Graduate Hotel in Oxford was built in 2015 and is located where the old Downtown Inn stood for many years until it was demolished in 2013. |
| More than 1,500 runners take part in Run the Rainbow for Children's of Mississippi | |
| The second annual Run the Rainbow race took place Saturday in Downtown Jackson. "This is so much bigger than last year. I think the word got out about it," Garrett Masers, a Belhaven cross country runner. The race began at Hal and Mal's and included the first-ever Run the Rainbow Marathon. The race went through downtown Jackson, Belhaven, Eastover, and the University of Mississippi Medical Center, where you can see the Kathy and Joe Sanderson Tower at the Children's of Mississippi. "They had a lot of the kids lined up on the road cheering us on. I don't know, I just thought that was really inspiring," Masers said. The registration fee and all of the event proceeds go to Children's of Mississippi, the only children's hospital in the state. According to Selena Daniels, the race director for Run the Rainbow, more than 1,500 people participated this year, doubling last year's numbers. "Oh my gosh, does it not just want to bring tears to your eyes? These people are out here doing it for the kids. They are racing for the kids every time it's for the kids," Daniels said. The race comes just a week before the Hal and Mal's St. Paddy's Day Parade. The overall winners in each category get to sit atop the Children's of Mississippi float. |
| Mississippi Teacher Shortage Program Could Be Extended | |
| Mississippi could continue a program to help retain and attract educators to the state amid an ongoing teacher shortage after the House and Senate both advanced competing bills to extend the Mississippi Critical Teacher Shortage Act. The program provides incentives to attract qualified teachers to certain geographic areas of the state, such as the Delta, and to specific subject areas designated by the Mississippi Board of Education. Teachers can receive a one-time reimbursement of up to $1,000 for relocation expenses. They can also receive a grant of up to $6,000 to pay closing costs on a home inside the same county as the school where they are teaching. The bills, which passed the Senate on Wednesday and the House on Thursday, would both extend the Mississippi Critical Teacher Shortage Act beyond its July 1, 2024, repealer date to July 1, 2027. "It is important for the state to provide every possible incentive to recruit excellent teachers to areas of the state that have extreme teacher shortages," Parent's Campaign Executive Director Nancy Loome told the Mississippi Free Press on March 7, signaling support for the effort. Mississippi's teacher shortage has been a critical issue in the state for years. The Mississippi Department of Education already has several alternate-route teacher education programs in place and has begun working with the state's colleges and universities to expand teacher preparation programs. |
| Lawmakers pass bill looking to get more assistant teachers into the classroom | |
| It's no secret that Mississippi is seeing a teacher shortage, especially when it comes to assistant teachers. Lawmakers are hoping to do something about it. Representatives passed House Bill 1669, which expands the qualifications for assistant teachers. This will allow more of them to come into the classroom to teach your children. The author of the bill is Representative Kent McCarty, who represents the 101st District. Representative Justis Gibbs, who represents the 72nd District, introduced the legislation on the floor. The House unanimously passed the bill 118-0. "Education is something that's very important to me," Gibbs expressed. "When I grew up, I had an assistant teacher in the classroom." Gibbs said this legislation is important to him because he knows the value having an assistant teacher adds to the classroom and to students. Although the bill expands the qualifications to get more assistant teachers in the classroom, Gibbs said it doesn't mean the quality of teaching will go down. "We already have individuals in our classrooms now with people who have these qualifications," Gibbs explained. |
| Does This University Senate Have Too Much Power? | |
 | A controversy over who gets to make policy and how much power trustees should wield at the University of Kentucky is roiling the campus. The dispute revolves around the composition and efficiency of the University Senate, a body of faculty and staff members, students, and administrators; two-thirds of its members are professors. While no formal proposal to remake the senate has yet been made, faculty members have criticized the process that has unfolded thus far -- particularly an analysis by a working group and the consulting firm Deloitte -- as rushed, incomplete, and shaped in a way that casts shared governance as bloated, inefficient, and endowing professors with too much control. Kentucky's president, in turn, said he's executing trustees' policies and that the current makeup of the senate shuts out too many voices. For now, faculty members have asked the president, Eli Capilouto, who is due to propose changes at the end of the month, to pause the process. Capilouto plans instead to forge ahead in order to meet a mid-summer deadline imposed by Kentucky's Board of Trustees. Stirrings of shared-governance changes began in the fall of 2023, when Kentucky's Board of Trustees introduced a plan to examine institutional priorities. Called Project Accelerate, the plan formed work groups to study each of five areas in which the university is expected to make "significant progress" by June 2024. |
| UGA students help rescue 3 people from vehicle that rolled into creek | |
 | Five University of Georgia students were given major kudos by the Burke County Sheriff's Office. According to a post on the sheriff's office Facebook page, the students saw a vehicle roll into a creek on Ellison Bridge Road in Sardis and "without hesitation jumped in the water and pulled the driver and two children out of the vehicle." The Facebook post said the 'heroes' were Jane McArdle, Mary McCollum, Eleanor Cart, Clarke Jones and Kaitlyn Iannace. Sardis is located about an hour south of Augusta. "The quick thinking and bravery of these women is absolutely admirable," the Facebook post reads. "We are grateful you were in the right place at the right time." |
| Mastering the Match: South Carolina med students come out on top in choice of residencies | |
 | When she was 7 years old in Beirut, Nour Hijazi got a book about American cities, and one in particular captured her heart. "Ever since then, my dream has been to live in New York City," she said. On Match Day at the Medical University of South Carolina, her dream came true, along with the dreams of many of her medical school classmates. Match Day is an annual ritual when tens of thousands of senior medical students across the country, and the world, simultaneously find out where they will spend the next several years in a medical residency training program learning a specialty and honing their craft. Nearly 45,000 students submitted a ranked choice list for 41,503 positions at 6,395 programs this year, according to the National Resident Matching Program. A computer then compares that to the program's ranked list of students and a "match" with the student's highest choice is selected. The residency for each student is then sent to the schools, who often place them into envelopes for students to open at noon on Match Day. While many at MUSC will get their top choice, some won't, and College of Medicine Dean Terry Steyer left them with this thought before they opened their envelopes and students then came up before a packed audience at Charleston Music Hall to share where they are going. "Remember, that program wants you," Steyer said. "They see something in you that they want to take and train and mold." For Hijazi, it was all about the vascular surgery residency at Mount Sinai in New York City. |
| A new chapter begins for U. of Missouri medical graduates on Match Day | |
 | On Friday, medical students across the United States experienced a significant milestone on their journeys to becoming doctors -- Match Day. This event, steeped in anticipation, determines where students will serve as resident physicians, shaping their professional paths for years to come. At the University of Missouri School of Medicine, the atmosphere was mixed with nervousness and excitement as students gathered, each holding an envelope that contained the key to their future. This year, MU distinguished itself with a 97% match rate among its medical students, surpassing both the national M.D. match rate of 93% and the overall applicant match rate of 80%, according to a news release. Of the students matched, 26% will continue their training on the MU campus. As the students held their envelopes, Laine Young Walker, the associate dean for Student Programs, reminded them not to open them just yet, building suspense and excitement for the collective reveal. "This is the goal that you've been trying to get to, and now you're here. I hope that everybody is excited and rejoices this time, and really thinks about all the blood, sweat and tears that you went through to get here," Walker said. |
| Virginia Officials Scrutinize Two Universities' DEI Course Syllabi | |
 | Republican politicians have targeted diversity, equity and inclusion in state after state. They've passed laws to limit, defund or outright ban related programs. They've demanded information on universities' DEI expenses and their numbers of DEI positions. Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin, a Republican who won office in 2021 after campaigning against the alleged teaching of critical race theory in K-12 schools, is diving into the details. His education secretary's office has requested to review syllabi from upcoming diversity-themed courses at two public universities: George Mason, which has been planning a broad "Just Societies" mandate, and Virginia Commonwealth University, which has been planning a new "Racial Literacy" requirement. The universities say they have complied with the unusual requests. Kristin Reed, assistant professor in the focused inquiry department at VCU and co-founder of VCU's chapter of the United Campus Workers union, called Youngkin's request to scrutinize just these courses a "targeted attack" on teaching about race and racism. "I have seen how these culture wars play out in K-12 education -- they start with these symbolic gestures and they lead to book banning and censorship and the firing of teachers," Reed said. Faculty members at both institutions have been planning for years to launch the requirements for new undergraduates, and were hoping to do so this fall. Now, some worry that Youngkin's requests may be a prelude to violations of academic freedom and shared governance that will quash the new criteria. Youngkin's first executive order as governor was to root out critical race theory and other "inherently divisive concepts" from public K-12 schools. |
| FAFSA applications crater after rocky rollout | |
 | The number of students who have applied for the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) is far behind previous years, leaving experts concerned many may opt out all together after a tumultuous rollout of the new system by the Department of Education. Around 5.7 million students have applied for FAFSA, a fraction of the average 17 million at this point in the cycle. While there is still some time for the numbers to rise, advocates are skeptical and pointing to the delays and confusion during the release of this year's revamped forms as a cause. "I do think that because the FAFSA became available so much later than it did in a normal year and there were so many glitches at the beginning of the process that needed to be resolved, some of those folks who would normally file a FAFSA earlier in the process may have decided to set it aside temporarily to wait for all of those things to be resolved and worked out before they come back to complete it," said Karen McCarthy, vice president for public policy and federal relations at the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators. The worry is "that maybe some of the glitches and the late rollout and limited availability when it first became available -- that all of that may have turned some people off to completing the FAFSA entirely," McCarthy said. "So I think that does remain to be seen. Hopefully they will be able to catch up for last year. I don't know if that's possible." |
| House Republicans Float Bill to Require Free Speech on Campuses | |
| House Republicans are seeking to end the use of "political litmus tests" at public colleges and universities in a wide-ranging bill released Friday that aims to ensure students' First Amendment rights are protected. Institutions that don't comply would face a serious penalty -- losing access to federal financial aid for a year. The Respecting the First Amendment on Campus Act is the third in a series of GOP bills aimed at updating the Higher Education Act of 1965. So far, Republicans on the House Education and Workforce Committee have considered bills that would overhaul the financing of higher education and require colleges to report more foreign gifts. With this latest measure, lawmakers are turning their attention to what they see as the "long-standing and pervasive degradation of First Amendment rights" on college campuses. "Occurrences like shout downs from angry mobs, disinvitations of speakers, and 'cancellations' have become commonplace at our colleges and universities, often because taxpayers are forced to subsidize woke faculty and administrators," the bill summary says. "This trend threatens students' constitutionally guaranteed rights at a public institution and the ability of campuses to maintain a civil educational environment." Republican Virginia Foxx, the North Carolina representative who chairs the House education committee, co-sponsored the bill with New York representative Brandon Williams. Foxx and the committee have regularly criticized the state of campus free speech over the last year, arguing that colleges are hostile to conservative speakers and have double standards in what speech they'll allow. The legislation, its authors said in a joint statement, will address the issue by ensuring students are educated about their rights and requiring concrete, transparent campus free-speech policies. |
| Qatar's ties to US universities scrutinised amid rise in antisemitism | |
| The congressional Republicans who spearheaded investigations into antisemitism on US college campuses are turning their focus on the Qatari government, one of the largest donors to American universities over the past decade. The line of inquiry, led by Republicans on the US House's education committee, focuses on suggestions among conservative activists that Qatari funding has influenced attitudes towards Israel at elite US universities, which have come under intense scrutiny since Hamas's October 7 attacks. Virginia Foxx, the conservative North Carolina Republican who chairs the committee, has asked three Ivy League schools -- Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia -- to disclose any Qatari donations since January 2021. Foxx has also requested information about enrolment data for Jewish students and various other details about the universities' responses to antisemitic incidents. Qatar is the only nation mentioned in the inquiries about funding from "foreign sources". A person close to the committee said the goal was to determine "what is innocuous and what is bleeding into what's happening on campus". The focus on Qatar comes amid a campaign by activists and alumni donors to scrutinise elite American universities after a surge of anti-Israel protests following the October 7 attacks and Israel's subsequent offensive in Gaza -- including demonstrations of outright support for Hamas. The protests have come at the same time as a rise in reports of harassment and intimidation of Jewish students. Qatar has emerged as the largest foreign donor to US universities, contributing $5.1bn since 1986, according to one study. Most of the donations were made in the past decade. |
| As states eye college consolidation, leaders should draw from previous lessons learned | |
| Martin Kurzweil, vice president of educational transformation at Ithaka S+R, a non-profit higher education research organization, and Elise Miller McNeely, senior program manager for educational transformation at Ithaka S+R, write for The Hill: In today's politically polarized environment, it is notable that the Republican governor of Oklahoma and the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania announced similar major higher education policies within weeks of each other. The proposed course of action on which Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro seem to have aligned: consolidating public higher education within their respective states. In Oklahoma, this means combining colleges and universities, shrinking the total number of institutions in the state. Pennsylvania -- which has already merged several public institutions -- is looking to create a new governance structure that would bring the state's community colleges and publicly-owned state universities under one umbrella. In Oklahoma, Stitt is hoping to share administrative costs among small institutions and eliminate duplicative programs, while in Pennsylvania, Shapiro plans to better align the state's community colleges and universities' offerings with the state's workforce needs. Both governors seem to agree that these measures are needed to ensure a strong future workforce for their states. ... While it is important for higher education leaders to face the financial realities in front of them, what should not be overlooked is the impact these decisions to reorganize have on the students and communities served by higher education institutions. Thankfully, leaders aren't left to make these decisions in a vacuum. |
| One small surprise and one dead surprise last week | |
| Columnist Bill Crawford writes: No surprises in the March 12th congressional and presidential primaries. Well, maybe a small one. Political neophyte Ghannon Burton carried nine northeast Mississippi counties against incumbent Sen. Roger Wicker in the Republican primary. Only Alcorn County in that neck of the state stuck with him. Guess the robocalls from Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy didn't help much up there. Burton, a retired Marine colonel and former F/A-18 pilot with Top Gun credentials, carried the counties of Tippah, Prentiss, Union, Lee, Itawamba, Pontotoc, Calhoun, Chickasaw and his home county of Tishomingo. Wicker carried all other counties, but Burton's 25% vote statewide was respectable. He also ran ahead of State Rep. Dan Eubanks in most counties. It will be interesting to see if he rides these results into a future race. Eubanks finished third with 14% and lost his home county of DeSoto two to one to Wicker. Burton was a distant third. In the November general election, Wicker will face Ty Pinkins who was unopposed in the Democratic Primary. Former President Donald Trump easily won Mississippi's Republican delegates with 92% of the vote. President Joe Biden was unopposed in the Democratic Primary. All incumbent congressmen advanced. One day later, March 13th, the big surprise in the Mississippi Senate died. Sen. Dennis DeBar's bill to "save" Mississippi University for Women by giving it to Mississippi State University died. |
| Halftime in Medicaid Expansion fight: where do things stand? | |
| The Magnolia Tribune's Russ Latino writes: In Super Bowl LI, the Atlanta Falcons opened up a commanding 28-3 lead over the New England Patriots. TVs across America turned off. Giddy "Dirty Birds" fans high-fived and began ordering Super Bowl champions apparel. Unfortunately for Atlanta, football games have four quarters and the Patriots had other plans. By the time the clock ticked to zero, Tom Brady's boys had mounted an improbable comeback to win the title 34-28. Passing legislation is a lot like playing football. There are phases of the game. Both the House and Senate must pass a bill independent of the other. Assuming there are disagreements, both chambers must reconcile those differences. If they can manage that, the governor gets to decide whether to sign or veto in the fourth quarter. If he vetoes, the game heads to overtime with the legislature deciding whether to override the veto. Along the way, there are jarring hits and unexpected bounces of the ball can quickly change the trajectory of the game. When the Mississippi House of Representatives voted to fully expand Medicaid at the end of February, fans of the progressive policy started high-fiving in the streets. Producers at MSNBC's Rachel Maddow Show ran congratulatory pieces. The Mississippi Democratic Party took to X, formerly Twitter, to dunk on Gov. Tate Reeves. Ole Miss professor James Thomas, who gained some public notoriety for comparing Trump supporters to Hitler youth, asked "did we turn Mississippi blue and just not know it?" In a recent flurry, second place gubernatorial finisher Brandon Presley, who mounted his failed Democratic challenge to Gov. Reeves on the back of Medicaid expansion, wrote "you can write it down and etch it on concrete, Medicaid Expansion will happen in Mississippi this year," before comparing himself to David slaying Goliath. Proponents of Medicaid expansion may yet win the contest, but their celebrations are premature. |
| Fight over school funding formula could lead to big bucks for schools | |
| Mississippi Today's Bobby Harrison writes: A battle is brewing in the Mississippi Legislature over education funding. A good old game of one-upmanship could break out between the House and Senate over which chamber is going to commit to more education funding. That would be welcome news for educators, who, like everyone else, have been beset with inflation and higher costs for their schools. The House wants to rewrite the Mississippi Adequate Education Program, which is the objective formula that determines the amount of state funds needed to provide the basics to operate an adequate school district. The House plan has many features supported by public education advocates but many of those advocates are concerned that the rewrite does not include an objective formula, but instead depends on a committee of education professionals to make recommendations to the Legislature on the amount of money needed. The House has passed an appropriations bill to pump an additional $250 million into K-12 education -- perhaps in an effort to garner support for the rewrite. The Senate wants to make changes to the Adequate Education Program, but maintain the objective formula. With the Senate changes to MAEP, it will take about $210 million more than appropriated by the 2023 Legislature to fully fund the formula, and Senate leaders have committed to doing that. |
| PERS board is conflicted | |
| The Greenwood Commonwealth's Tim Kalich writes: There are lots of problems with the retirement system that covers Mississippi's public employees. The pension plan's benefits are too generous. It has too many people drawing out and too few paying in, thanks to both longer lifespans and fewer state workers. And the default response whenever future benefits appear in danger is to jack up the amount that taxpayers are forced to kick in. Another problem is that the board that oversees the Public Employees' Retirement System is controlled by folks who currently draw benefits or will in the future. All 10 seats on that board are held by current or retired public employees, who are unavoidably conflicted between what's best for them and what's best for the taxpayers. A bill that passed the House this past week would break up that arrangement. It would instead transform the PERS board from one in which beneficiaries call the shots to one in which non-beneficiaries do. ... This change would mirror a suggestion made more than a dozen years ago by a commission appointed by then-Gov. Haley Barbour to study PERS and offer ways to strengthen it. Most of those suggestions were ignored by the Legislature at the time, but the worsening financial condition of PERS has forced lawmakers to take another look ... with about 1 out of every 7 adults in PERS, that's a powerful voting bloc to anger. Still, 6 out of 7 adults don't benefit from PERS but are being asked to pay a steadily rising cost to fund it. They deserve some consideration, too. |
SPORTS
| Men's Hoops Makes It Consecutive NCAA Tournament Trips, Faces Michigan State | |
| Mississippi State men's basketball secured its second straight NCAA Tournament bid under Chris Jans and will take on Michigan State during Thursday's NCAA Tournament Round of 64 as announced Sunday by the NCAA Selection Committee. The Bulldogs, the No. 8 seed in the NCAA West Region, were one of eight SEC schools chosen among the NCAA's Field of 68. The Maroon and White are joined by SEC regular season champion Tennessee and SEC Tournament Champion Auburn along with Alabama, Florida, Kentucky, South Carolina and Texas A&M. Mississippi State (21-13, 8-10 SEC) and Michigan State (19-14, 10-10 Big Ten) will meet in Thursday's NCAA Round of 64 from the Spectrum Center in Charlotte, N.C. All NCAA Tournament games are televised by CBS, TBS, TNT and truTV in addition to be streamed online courtesy of the NCAA March Madness (all games), MAX (TBS, TNT, truTV) and Paramount Plus (CBS) apps. In total, Mississippi State has secured nine of its 13 NCAA Tournament selections dating back to the 2001-02 season. The Bulldogs advanced to the 1996 NCAA Final Four under Richard Williams when Mississippi State defeated VCU, Princeton, Connecticut and Cincinnati. |
| Mississippi State men's basketball selected for NCAA Tournament | |
| For the second time in as many years under Chris Jans, Mississippi State is going to the NCAA Tournament. And this time, the Bulldogs won't have to play in the First Four. MSU (21-13) earned a No. 8 seed in the West region and will play No. 9 seed Michigan State in a first-round game on Thursday in Charlotte, N.C. "I wasn't as nervous as last year, but when they wait until the last bracket, you start thinking some crazy thoughts," Jans said. "All the chatter about how difficult it was for the committee to leave some teams that were deserving in most years out of the tournament. When you start seeing some teams that you thought you were ahead of getting these seeds, your mind plays tricks on you, but it certainly made it more gratifying to see our name come up there." Without star post player Tolu Smith, who was sidelined until late December with a foot injury, the Bulldogs opened the season with six straight wins, including victories on consecutive days in Uncasville, Conn. against Washington State and Northwestern. Mississippi State then lost two in a row, including a Quadrant 4 home loss to Southern, before winning its last five non-conference games. "We wouldn't be here without (other post players) Jimmy Bell and Gai Chol," Smith said. "What got us through those stretches was just staying together. We put a lot of work in over the summer and preseason." |
| Why Mississippi State can reach Sweet 16 in our 2024 March Madness predictions | |
 | A year ago, Mississippi State basketball coach Chris Jans was filled with uneasiness as the Bulldogs watched the revealing of the NCAA Tournament field. The Bulldogs were a bubble team, but they snuck into the field of 68 as one of the last four teams in. A trip to Dayton, Ohio, for the First Four awaited them. On Sunday, Jans didn't feel as stressed watching the bracket unveiling − though MSU (21-13) was part of the last region shown. Mississippi State made the cut as a No. 8 seed slated to face No. 9 seed Michigan State (19-14) in the first round of the West Region. The Bulldogs will play at the Spectrum Center in Charlotte, North Carolina, on Thursday (11:15 a.m., CBS). "It was cool," Jans said of the unveiling. "It was fun. That's one of those moments that you never forget, to get to see (players') joyful reaction." If Mississippi State can get past Michigan State, it likely face No. 1 seed North Carolina (27-7) -- unless the winner of a play-in game between No. 16 seeds Howard (18-16) and Wagner (16-15) pulls off a stunning upset. As the Bulldogs prepare for a March Madness run, here's a look at why Mississippi State will -- or won't -- make the Sweet 16. |
| Examining, predicting NCAA Tournament clash between Mississippi State, Michigan State | |
| On3's Andy Staples and Bracketologist James Fletcher III took some time to debate one of the more interesting matchups during the first round of the 2024 NCAA Tournament. "Let us go to the No. 8, No. 9 matchup. Michigan State vs. Mississippi State," Staples said, via Andy Staples On3. "I saw stat about Tom Izzo. Tom Izzo has won 65% of the games where he is the lower seeded team. I've seen a few of those games in the NCAA Tournament myself. It feels like they just rock up and out tough teams in those situations. And then they end up finding you know, a more talented team down the road and lose, but this feels like it'll -- look No. 8, No. 9. It's not that big of a difference. "This feels like a Tom Izzo spot to get into the second round, where maybe he has something for North Carolina." In making his prediction, Fletcher III revealed he's rocking with the Spartans, but he's not willing to count out Mississippi State as the game approaches. "Yeah, like I said early on, this is the game that I looked at and I just had to debate and debate. I could not figure out who I wanted to pick here. I ended up going Michigan State," Fletcher III revealed. "But the question that kept popping in my mind, as I went Michigan State over Mississippi State is, 'Am I betting here on Tom Izzo,' and like you said, 65% when he's a lower seeded team. He's Mr. March. He's known for these big runs. He's known for these tough teams that are gonna come up and punch you in the mouth, and just take over the game. Or am I betting on this Michigan State team, which has not really been any of those things for a majority of the season? And so, trying to figure out, can they be that for at least one game? Can they get through this matchup with Mississippi State?" |
| Diamond Dawgs Tame the Tigers and Claim the Series Over LSU | |
| For the first time since 2003, the Mississippi State Bulldogs took the series from the LSU Tigers at Dudy Noble Field. The Diamond Dawgs run-ruled the Tigers 15-5 in eight innings. The Diamond Dawg offense showed up in the Sunday series finale against No. 2 LSU, pounding out 15 hits. Two of those 15 hits were back-to-back homers by Dakota Jordan and Hunter Hines. Aaron Downs had a day at the plate, going 4-for-5 with a pair of RBIs. Dakota Jordan continued to make his power known, collecting his 10th home run of the season. Jordan's home run in the fifth added three runs to the score to give the Dawgs the lead. Hunter Hines pounded out another home run and went 1-for-3 at the plate. David Mershon and Connor Hujsak cleaned up the bases for the Dawgs, combining for four hits through nine at-bats. Jurrangelo Cijntje earned the start on the mound. Cijntje tossed 5.0 innings and punched out six to grab his fourth win of the season. Cam Shuelke grabbed an inning of relief work and struck out a pair. Tyler Davis put in 2.0 innings of work and struck out two. Mississippi State is back in action for a midweek matchup against Memphis at Dudy Noble Field on Tuesday. First pitch is set for 6 p.m. CT and will be broadcasted on SECN+. |
| Mississippi State baseball thumps LSU, wins first home series vs. Tigers since 2003 | |
| LSU pitcher Christian Little is a familiar face for Mississippi State baseball. In the 2021 College World Series, while he was at Vanderbilt, Little allowed five runs in two innings as MSU evened a series it went on to win for its first national title. Now in Tigers gold, Little was on the wrong end of another piece of history against the Bulldogs. Mississippi State defeated No. 2 LSU 15-5 in eight innings at Dudy Noble Field on Sunday, giving MSU its first series win at home against the Tigers since 2003. The Bulldogs won Friday and lost Saturday. Little was charged with all five runs allowed in the sixth inning as Mississippi State (15-6, 2-1 SEC) pulled away after it jumped to a 7-3 lead in the fifth. Dakota Jordan again was part of the destruction from the MSU lineup, collecting two hits and four runs driven in. In the fourth inning, he hit his 10th homer of the season, a three-run blast to center. He was followed by Hunter Hines, who hit a solo shot for his fourth homer of the season and third of the series. In five tries, MSU coach Chris Lemonis has won three series against LSU (17-4, 1-2). |
| State Battles Back To Claim Series Finale Against No. 13 Texas A&M | |
| The Bulldogs had an answer for everything. After falling behind twice on Sunday, No. 21 Mississippi State rallied to defeat No. 13 Texas A&M, 6-5, in the series finale. The Aggies (25-3, 5-1 SEC) took a 3-0 lead on an Aiyana Coleman homer in the first, but Madisyn Kennedy responded with her own three-run blast in the bottom of the inning. Kennedy now has seven homers across her last six games. "I'm just really proud of this squad, and the way they came out," head coach Samantha Ricketts said. "I think, after yesterday, we knew we were going to learn a lot about ourselves and really just in the way that we responded. Win, lose or draw it was going to be about our response and did we come out ready to fight or were we going to be discouraged by the outcome yesterday. I thought they did a great job. Even after getting down early, there was no panic. It was just a lot of trust. Let's do it together. Let's answer back, and really I just thought a great team effort all the way around." The Bulldogs hit the road next week for four games. Though originally scheduled to travel to Montgomery, Alabama, for a doubleheader at Alabama State on Wednesday, March 20, the Bulldogs will now play just once at 3 p.m. CT due to injuries in the Alabama State program. State then heads to Fayetteville, Arkansas, to meet the No. 20 Razorbacks for three games on March 22-24. |
| Mississippi State Hosts Georgia Tech In WBIT First Round | |
| Mississippi State women's basketball will host Georgia Tech in the first round of the inaugural Women's Basketball Invitation Tournament inside Humphrey Coliseum on Thursday. Tip off times will be announced at a later date. The WBIT will be televised on ESPN platforms with the host site contests on ESPN+, the semifinals on ESPNU and the finals to be aired on ESPN2. All seating will be general admission priced at 15 dollars per ticket. First round action is scheduled for Thursday, March 21, followed by the second round on Sunday, March 24 and the Quarterfinals on Thursday, March 28. The first three rounds on the tournament will be played at campus sites with the highest-seeded team serving as hosts. Mississippi State is one of three SEC teams in the field and is joined by Arkansas and Florida. Mississippi State enters the tournament 21-11 on the season and 8-8 in the SEC. State is making its 20th overall postseason appearance and its second-straight under head coach Sam Purcell. Thursday will be the first time that Georgia Tech and Mississippi State have faced since 2007. The two programs have played five total times in program history with the Mississippi State leading the series, 4-1. |
| Mississippi State women to face Georgia Tech in WBIT after missing March Madness | |
| Mississippi State women's basketball will participate in a new women's college basketball postseason tournament after missing out on March Madness. The Bulldogs (21-11) will play in the Women's Basketball Invitational Tournament, the new next-tier event for teams that didn't receive an NCAA berth. MSU earned a No. 2 seed in the WBIT and will host No. 7-seeded Georgia Tech (17-15) on Thursday at Humphrey Coliseum. Game time has yet to be announced. The winner will face either No. 3 TCU or No. 6 North Texas. The WBIT is a new tournament that is operated by the NCAA and tiered below the NCAA Tournament, but above the WNIT. The first four left out of the NCAA Tournament are given bids to the WBIT, plus any conference regular-season champions that did not make March Madness. The remaining spots in the 32-team field are determined by a selection committee. The first three rounds are played on campuses, with the semifinals and final played at Butler's Hinkle Fieldhouse in Indianapolis. |
| How Nick Saban, Jim Harbaugh helped shape Mississippi State football's Coleman Hutzler | |
| Coleman Hutzler's office overlooks the Mississippi State football practice field, but around the corner, there's another reminder of how far the first-year defensive coordinator has come. Through his window, Hutzler can catch a glimpse of Dudy Noble Field -- the baseball team's stadium that holds all but two of the NCAA's top 25 all-time on-campus attendance records. For a former football and baseball player at Division III program Middlebury College, one glance away from his computer reminds him that he's arrived in the SEC. "It's really fun to be able to see it, to be able to be part of it," Hutzler told the Clarion Ledger. Inside his office, though, are reminders of room to grow. It's sparsely decorated with the exception of a few photos of his family – his wife Cobey, son Micah and daughter Leila. Hutzler is clearly new to Starkville, and he's a rookie in his role. A co-defensive coordinator stint at Texas in 2020 is the closest thing he's had to this job, and he joins new coach Jeff Lebby's staff after spending the last two seasons as Nick Saban's special teams coordinator and linebackers coach at Alabama. But Hutzler is confident about his ability to succeed with the Bulldogs. His history working with elite coaches is a significant reason why. |
| 'The timing is just not right': Chris Beard withdraws Ole Miss basketball from NIT consideration | |
| The Ole Miss men's basketball team's season has officially come to an end with head coach Chris Beard announcing that the team played its last game on Thursday. After falling to Texas A&M in round two of the SEC Tournament, the Rebels officially ended any shot at earning a bid to the NCAA Tournament. While the team was still in a prime position to be featured in the lesser National Invitation Tournament (NIT), Beard nipped any speculation about Ole Miss continuing postseason play in the bud. "I think timing is everything and the timing is just not right for our team to continue the season in any of these tournaments," Beard told the press on Friday. Beard went on to cite personal matters among some of his players, including seven-foot-five center Jamarion Sharp's mother being in critical condition, to justify his decision to withdraw the Rebels from receiving the nod to appear in the NIT. The first-year Ole Miss head coach inherited a program that had finished last season with a 12-21 record. Beard not only flipped the overall record but more than doubled conference wins and built a culture that had fans filing into the SJB Pavilion in record numbers to watch the Rebels play, earning him a contract extension that was signed on Wednesday. |
| Southern Miss basketball coach Jay Ladner details what happened day of his heart attack | |
 | Southern Miss men's basketball coach Jay Ladner nearly died from a heart attack Feb. 6, and on the "SuperTalk Eagle Hour" radio show Friday, he detailed publicly for the first time how that day unfolded. He said he had attended his usual exercise class at the Payne Center on the Southern Miss campus that Tuesday morning and everything felt fine until he returned home and started experiencing chest pain. "It got worse and worse and it began to radiate down both of my arms and my wrist," Ladner said. "I broke out in, and this is probably the most eerie thing, the coldest, coldest sweat that you can imagine. It was like somebody dumped some ice water over me. It was immediate and it just covered my entire head, my hair and whatnot. I was soaking wet and cold. And then I got really nauseated and of course went to the bathroom." Ladner, 58, said he tried to tough it out until his wife drove him to Forrest General Hospital. He had two blocked arteries, causing ventricular fibrillation, otherwise known as V-fib or VF, and needed a defibrillator to restore a normal heartbeat. "They saved my life," Ladner said of the doctors. "They really did." He did not coach the remaining eight games of the regular season. He returned to the bench for last week's Sun Belt Conference tournament in Pensacola, Florida, but Southern Miss (16-16) was upset in its first-round game against Texas State. |
| Public school soccer coaches decry 'reign of terror,' want private schools out of Class I | |
 | More than 15 public school soccer coaches in Mississippi have sent a letter to the MHSAA asking for the reclassification of private schools competing in the Class I level. In a letter forwarded to the Sun Herald by Strayhorn coach Zach Breland, the coaches from public Class I schools outline a competitive disparity between public and private schools in the Class I tournament and call on the MHSAA to remove private schools from state competitions. "There exists a group of private schools that, instead of playing in the MAIS, the league specifically for private schools, prey on the smallest and most disadvantaged schools in the state of Mississippi, and by extension, the entire country," Breland said in the email. Jeff Long, who coaches at Franklin County High School, said he's only ever received the one-word response "noted" from the MHSAA through a decade of lobbying. "As long as MHSAA is receiving money from those private schools, they will do absolutely nothing," Long said. "They simply do not care about soccer whatsoever. It is disgusting. They should be ashamed of the way they approach soccer." It also points out that traditional soccer powers in Class I routinely play higher-level competition during the regular season. According to the letter, the St. Patrick boys played 79 percent of its matches against 4A or higher competition and 43 percent of the schedule came against 7A schools. The numbers are similar for the St. Stanislaus boys program. "The participation of these private academies are, in many cases, an offense to the term 'competition,'" the letter states. |
| SEC's Sankey doesn't envision P5-only NCAA Tournament, but 'things continue to change' | |
| SEC commissioner Greg Sankey does not view himself as commander of the Death Star with his finger on the big red button, ready to annihilate the NCAA Tournament as we know it. Despite recent comments by Sankey to ESPN that sounded some alarms around college basketball, he does not envision a future in which the national championship tournament includes only teams from power conferences. "No, I don't. No, no. That's an overread of the comment," Sankey told The Athletic on Saturday during his league's semifinals. The comment in question, to ESPN's Pete Thamel, came after Sankey pointed out that UCLA made a run from the First Four to the Final Four in 2021 and Syracuse went from the play-in game in Dayton to the Sweet 16 in 2018, demonstrating the potential of power-conference teams on the NCAA Tournament bubble. "That just tells you that the bandwidth inside the top 50 is highly competitive," Sankey told Thamel. "We are giving away highly competitive opportunities for automatic qualifiers (from smaller leagues), and I think that pressure is going to rise as we have more competitive basketball leagues at the top end because of (conference) expansion." Next year, the SEC and Big 12 will both be 16-team leagues. The Big Ten and ACC will have 18 each. If Sankey doesn't want to eradicate mid-major participation altogether, his interest in a larger field certainly isn't about wanting more of them included. In fact, some in the sport fear that whatever play-in games exist in the future will only be those smaller schools fighting among themselves for spots in the traditional 64-team format. |
| Where Alabama and Auburn sports rank in SEC for revenue, spending | |
 | Alabama athletics took in the sixth-most revenue in fiscal year 2023 among the 15 public school programs that are or will soon be in the SEC. Auburn sat eighth in the metric, according to the NCAA revenues and expenses reports for the 15 teams, obtained by AL.com. Teams are required to report their revenues and expenses to the NCAA once a year. The filings were due Jan. 15. Vanderbilt was not counted among the SEC schools due to its status as a private institution and therefore not subject to open records requests. Texas and Oklahoma are listed, though they spent the entirety of FY 2023 in the Big 12. Texas A&M reported the most revenue among the 15 counted teams, at $279.2 million. Its cross-state rival Texas was close behind in second-place, at $271.1 million. Alabama brought in $200 million. Alabama reported $195.3 million for the fiscal year, which ran from July 1, 2022 through June 30, 2023. In addition to the Texas schools, Georgia, Tennessee and LSU finished ahead of the Crimson Tide in total athletics revenue. Oklahoma finished one spot behind UA, just ahead of Auburn. Though TAMU led the way in athletics revenue, it was down the list when it came to actually spending that money. Texas reported the most athletics expenses for FY 2023, coming in at $232.3 million, while the Aggies were fifth at $194.7 million. |
| ESPN's Holly Rowe assigned as Caitlin Clark beat reporter during women's NCAA Tournament | |
| Caitlin Clark's star has risen so high that ESPN is dispatching a reporter to Iowa City to chronicle her every move during the first two rounds of the NCAA Tournament. The reporter who landed this plum assignment is herself a pretty big deal given she's already enshrined in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. Holly Rowe, a 2023 Naismith Hall of Fame Curt Gowdy Media Award recipient, is heading to Iowa City to cover Iowa's opening game (and second-round matchup barring a historic upset). She will embed with the Clark crew. ESPN will formally announce Rowe's tournament role on Sunday. "I am honored to say that I am the Caitlin Clark reporter," said Rowe on Saturday. "We have had a presence on the ground covering the special moments with Caitlin this year and I have been at every one of her games where she set a record. I see it as an extension of the dedicated coverage we have had with Caitlin all year. I think there is an intrigue and appetite for all things Caitlin. I can't tell you how many NBA coaches and players have asked me about Clark this year. (Rowe works as an analyst for the Utah Jazz in addition to her ESPN duties.) For instance, I just had a long conversation with Steph Curry after one of his games in Utah where we talked about her." With the Big Ten Conference media rights moving to CBS, FOX, NBC and NBCUniversal's Peacock, ESPN has been shut out of Clark's games this year. They've had to come up with creative ways to report on the expected No. 1 pick in the WNBA Draft, which is why Rowe has been with the team as much as she has this year. |
| Sources: College Football Playoff agrees to new contract with ESPN | |
| College leaders have struck a deal on a new College Football Playoff contract. Executives from the 10 FBS conferences and Notre Dame agreed Friday to a new contract with ESPN that will begin in 2026, coming to terms on a new revenue-distribution model and protections related to a future playoff format. The news was expected after Big 12 and ACC presidents voted Wednesday to authorize their commissioners to adopt the new framework. The two conferences were viewed as most reluctant to agree to a framework that puts them at a financial disadvantage. Conference commissioners and leaders from Notre Dame signed memorandums of understanding on the concepts previously reported by Yahoo Sports as it relates to revenue and format as well as the new deal with ESPN. The new television contract with ESPN is a six-year extension through the 2031 playoff and will pay the CFP $1.3 billion annually -- about three times the amount the network distributed for the four-team version. Those figures were reported by ESPN itself in a story in January. A playoff format is not expected to be finalized until a later date, though protections and guarantees related to a 12- or 14-team format are part of the agreement. The champions of the four major conferences and the highest ranked Group of Five champion will earn an automatic qualifying spot into any playoff. As detailed in a Yahoo Sports story last Friday, the new revenue-distribution model is heavily weighted toward the Big Ten and SEC. In the past structure, the five major conferences mostly split 80% of the CFP's $460 million in revenue evenly. |
| It's March Madness and more people than ever can legally bet on basketball games | |
| People in North Carolina may have a little more riding on this year's NCAA men's and women's basketball tournaments, as they will be able to legally bet on the games through their smartphone apps and computers for the first time. For the sixth straight year, the number of states allowing legal sports betting has expanded since the last rendition of March Madness. A total of 38 states and the District of Columbia now allow some form sports betting, including 30 states and the nation's capital that allow online wagering. That's up from one state, Nevada, where people could legally wager on games during the 2018 college basketball tournaments, before the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for expansion. The rules for sports betting vary by state. Some states prohibit bets on home-state college teams or the performance of specific players. Others allow bets not only on the outcome of any college games but also on a variety of other things, such as the number of points, rebounds and assists that a particular player will tally. Fans have long filled out NCAA tournament brackets while wagering in office pools or against friends and family. But those casual bets have increasingly been supplemented with more formal gambling. The American Gaming Association estimates $2.7 billion will be bet this year on the NCAA men's and women's basketball tournaments through legal sports books. Mississippi, which legalized casino sports betting in 2018, is considering an expansion to online betting. A bill passed the House last month and is now in the state Senate. |
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