If Mississippi Lawmakers Won’t Deal With the Flag, Students Will
Sierra Mannie
3:39 PM ET
The University of Mississippi boasts impressive credentials—it has the only school of medicine and dentistry in the state, and its schools of business, pharmacy and law are highly regarded. But the state’s flagship university stands against an equally busy historical backdrop. Since its founding in Oxford, Miss., in 1848, the school has been steeped in Confederate history.
Its entire student body joined the ranks of the Confederate army in 1864 and never returned. The school’s nickname, Ole Miss, is a direct reference to the name that plantation slaves would give the mistress of a Southern home. Its prior mascot was a bearded plantation owner called Colonel Rebel. The world’s largest Confederate flag used to be unfurled to stretch the length of the field at football games, and the marching band used to blare Dixie from the stands at football games as recently as 2009.
So when Associated Student Body Senator Allen Coon put forth a resolution with the backing of the University of Mississippi’s NAACP and Black Student Union chapters, I admit that I wasn’t optimistic.
But on Tuesday night, with a vote of 33 to 15 to 1, the University of Mississippi Associated Student Body shocked me when they .. requested the removal of the state flag of Mississippi on the university’s campus. Mere hours afterward, the University of Mississippi Staff Council passed its own resolution in support of the university removing the state flag. If the Faculty Senate acts similarly, hopefully the administration of the University of Mississippi — who has the final say — will concur, and the flag will come down ...
http://time.com/4081622/university-of-mississippi-confederate-flag/
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