"It’s Ole Miss; what do you expect?"

November 6th, 2008 @ 9:39 am - by lotus · 33 Comments

What an embarrassment.

Filed Under: Herald & Examiner

33 Responses so far ↓

GlitterGirl says:

November 6, 2008 at 9:59 am

Hopefully this is just a small minority of narrow minded white students, but nevertheless, it is sad. Saddest of all for the white students because it is they who will get left behind as the rest of us take joy in and follow the forward movement.
Ben Cole says:

November 6, 2008 at 10:16 am

An embarrassment for those kids’ mommas and daddies, but not for the school. The law says, in effect, that Miss colleges have to admit just about anyone who can substantially complete an application form, and that apparently includes the Great Unwashed. Every open admission school has some of these. Let’s see how UM deals with these perps.
Madge says:

November 6, 2008 at 10:21 am

Sometimes the ‘Washed” and pampered are actually worse at this. Ignorance knows no class boundries…
Jax-Relief says:

November 6, 2008 at 10:28 am

At least the DM and some ole miss students had the balls and integrity to report the incidents.
BlackBear says:

November 6, 2008 at 10:28 am

Let me first say that I love Ole Miss.

As compared to other colleges and universities I have attended, there is an inordinate amount of ignorance and polarization based on class and race at the school. Admittedly, the situation seems to be improving but the roots of the problem are not found on campus – they run deep in socioeconomic, geographic, and historical directions. I hate to pin the blame on any one group because the thread goes through the whole fabric, but the campus, in certain large, popular segments of the life here, are unapologetically segregated. It happens elsewhere no doubt, but at Ole Miss the line of demarkation between the have’s and have-not’s (in a broad context) is more rigid, brutal, and revered than I have ever seen anywhere else. There are people working to change it and it is not a problem of epic proportions, but when a condition so hateful and divisive is present, notwithstanding its size or transparency, it affects every single moment and life on that campus.

With that said…Hotty Toddy!
rogerwilco says:

November 6, 2008 at 11:04 am

I was there for five years in the nineties doing graduate and law school. These little ignorant shits never failed to infuriate me.
Pam says:

November 6, 2008 at 11:52 am

The same thing was recorded on a you-tube video in Pennsylvania in a crowd of ADULT, white, ignorant, racists waiting in line to see Sarah Palin. They carried stuffed monkeys, called Obama a terrorist muslim, shouted for him to go back to Africa and other slurs too numerous to list. These people were ugly, figuratively and literally. It’s clear where the kids are getting it from. It’s not just Miss, it’s in Penn too. Oh well….. 52% of the population wants to move forward. Shouldn’t it be more than that?
Crispin Garcia says:

November 6, 2008 at 11:56 am

One step forward and two steps back. “[T]hree generations of idiots is enough.” Until the sorority bow-head and fraternity date rapist culture is extirpated we’ll have decades of such shame to endure.
jack says:

November 6, 2008 at 12:11 pm

The actions of these people just goes to show a good picture of what they have been taught a home. On the news yesterday was another example of home enviroment that happened at at a high school, Caladonia.
a friend of the law says:

November 6, 2008 at 12:16 pm

Some of you are painting here with a mighty broad brush.
rogerwilco says:

November 6, 2008 at 12:21 pm

I’m talking about a very specific subset of students who think it’s still 1962. They exist.
Clerkette says:

November 6, 2008 at 2:12 pm

I’m in law school now, rogerwilco, and that set of undergrads most aptly described by Crispin Garcia @8, is still here. They are all about privilege and exclusion, so most reasonable people never get anywhere near them. And trust me, these things would not be said out loud if they did not believe their hate would not be backed up by other members of their little society Notice that there were three of them to one African-American student in that article.

Several of my friends who’ve moved out of state have expressed dismay at some of their high school acquaintances’ facebook status updates. Aside from all the ones who say they are moving to Canada or committing suicide, there are plenty of hateful, ignorant status updates that they are apparently not ashamed to put on the internet.

Immediately after the debate here, several members who appeared to be of the “fraternity date rapist culture” were hanging off the balcony of Rooster’s blues bar screaming, “Hussein Osama!!!” and “F*** Osama!!!” as loud as they could, clearly in reference to Obama. It is SHAMEFUL.
Clerkette says:

November 6, 2008 at 2:13 pm

Oops–”These things would not be said out loud if they did not believe their hate WOULD be backed up…”
Researcher says:

November 6, 2008 at 2:23 pm

Texas Lineman Gets Kicked Off Team for Racist Facebook Message
confounded says:

November 6, 2008 at 2:29 pm

Well the title says it all. It’s Ole Miss, ’nuff said.
GlitterGirl says:

November 6, 2008 at 2:51 pm

I’ll raise a beer to Coach Brown who, by kicking the kid off the team, put out a pretty straight forward message of “this is not tolerated here, so there!”
redneckerbubbams says:

November 6, 2008 at 3:22 pm

Was there not a story here just day before yesterday “Get that a**hole out of here!”? In my opinion that is just as degrading to President Bush as calling President Elect Obama the N-word. None of you thought anything about that.

How far have you become in the last 40 years?

Someone you don’t like you downgrade them and try to quieten them up. That is same as the KKK, Black Panthers, Brown Shirts, and McCarthy.

Think about your actions –and how others perceive what you say and do! Your intolerance is just as bad as ignorant Frat boys at Ole Miss or football players at Texas or radical bombers from Chicago or Brown shirts from Berlin. Words hurt.

Can’t we all just get along? Peace Love and Bill’s hamburgers.
Researcher says:

November 6, 2008 at 3:28 pm

That is ridiculous. Calling someone an a-hole or even Dick Cheney’s “Go f- yourself” is not nearly the equivalent of the n-word and especially when the n-word is used in an intimidating or threatening manner.
Threatening to shoot someone, even in jest, is not the same as saying someone is an ass.
redneckerbubbams says:

November 6, 2008 at 3:43 pm

What YOU think is offensive and what I think is offensive may be TWO different things? How can you tell ME what I think is offensive? How can I tell YOU what you think is offensive? A$$ hole can be intimidating and can be threatening. What YOU think is JEST I make take as serious?
Words have meaning and 2 people may hear the same words and may or may not be offended or threatened and intimdiated by the same words.
If the N-word is so bad , intimidating and threatening why do black comics use it in their routines?
I was offended when the President was called an a$$hole and you are offended when president-elect Obama is called the n-word.

Everyone need to be politcally correct–not just conservatives but liberals also.

Everyone line up to have your mouth washed out with Ivory soap.
Plexix says:

November 6, 2008 at 3:45 pm

The fact is, Ole Miss has had a lot of racial incidents over the years, more than at MSU or USM. Ole Miss has served as a symbol of racial resistance for many people in this state since the early 1960′s, and in fact cultivated that image for many, many years. The current administration rightly sees this as a problem and has taken many steps to correct the problem, i.e., Colonel Reb and Dixie flags. But there still exists a solid culture of privilege, snobbery, and outright racial hostility that I don’t see at our other universities to such a large degree, and I certainly hope strong steps are taken to curtail this type of behavior. It is a stain on our great state.
Tortious Interferance says:

November 6, 2008 at 4:14 pm

As a student presently at the University these comments make me very disappointed and are not reflective of the University that I know and have come to love. That being said, the comments that were said reflect a great ignorance but, so do the comments on this thread. This University has made great strides in the last six years that I have been here, both as an undergraduate and a graduate student. I remember the outcry that occurred when the mascot was removed from the sidelines of athletic events. Now, just six years later nary a peep is heard about it. The University has moved on and left those people behind. Before I came, there was an outrage over the confederate flag in the stadium. Now, there are no flags in the stadium, with or without sticks, nor do I see them in the Grove. The University has moved on and left those people behind. These same people will get left behind again, because the university as a whole is moving on. Those of you that think it is stuck in the past perhaps you should as well.

This incident is not emblematic of the university as a whole. If it was such a problem, where were the reports of these types of incidents when the debate was going on? You didn’t hear about them because they were not happening. The administration has rightly taken steps to change this university and the image of this university, but so have many of the students, including many in what some here refer to as the "fraternity date rapist culture". Things like this will unfortunately continue to happen, but that unfortunately is the world we live in. These things will not be eliminated until the roots of the problems that raise people to approve of this type of behavior are eliminated.
There are two quotes from one of my favorite bands, the Drive-By Truckers, that illuminate this situation and that if you have the time I believe you should try to find them on Youtube. In their song, The Three Great Alabama Icons they sing,
" Racism is a word wide problem and it’s always been since the beginning of recorded history and it’s not just white and black but ever since George Wallace it’s always a little more convenient to play it with a southern accent"
In the next song, the Southern Thing" they sing
"Four generations, a whole lot has changed; Robert E. Lee; Martin Luther King; We’ve come a long way rising from the flame".
Well it has been two more generations and an African American Just became the president elect. A lot has changed. In good time and when the root cause of this problem are eliminated it will.
a friend of the law says:

November 6, 2008 at 4:41 pm

Well said Tortious.

Trying to paint an entire school as racists and bigots based upon a few isolated incidents by a few jerks, is ridiculous and unfair.

I could use that same broad brush technique to villify any other college in the country, or major city for that matter, where more racial incidents occur daily than would in a year on the Ole Miss campus.

The suggestion that these type of incidents occur more at Ole Miss than at other in-state schools is likewise ridiculous. I would submit that Ole Miss takes a much more proactive stance to such matters, which includes outing such incidents for discussion as opposed to sweeping them under the rug.

Sadly, I have seen this type of unfair drive-by attacks on Mississippi for many years. I am sure I am not the only one who has grown weary of this behavior.
Pam says:

November 6, 2008 at 5:07 pm

well I guess if you were that one black person being call the N-word , it wouldn’t matter how many other cities or universities are doing it. I don’t think that would make you feel any less offended and hated. There is no excuse for it at all, period. And isn’t characterizing it as a “drive-by” the same thing as saying “stay out of our bidniz”?
Ben Cole says:

November 6, 2008 at 5:18 pm

Ole Miss (and other places too) should really crack heads when these things happen. We struggled with these problems on the military for many years, and still do. But getting rid of the overtly racist people proved to be the best cure. It can be done if the institutional will is there.
redneckerbubbams says:

November 6, 2008 at 5:31 pm

Get rid of the racist? Sounds really like Brown shirts now. Get rid of the ones that don’t think like we do.

Does Ole Miss have a Black Student Government Association? That sounds like racism to me. What would happen if there was an exclusive White Student Government Association? I have seen where there are all black beauty pagents that are held on college campus, isn’t this a form of racism? Black Frats/ White Frats–what the difference–both are racist!

Remember the MLK phrase about not judging someone by the color of their skin. How many of those extra millions that voted–voted for Obama because of the color of his skin? I know he would have won anyway but there can be reverse discrimination.

There is free of speech in this country. You may not like what is being said but if it to be free for one group it has to be free for all.

If is OK for a blog author to call the President an a** hole then it must be alright for a Frat boy from Ole Miss to call the President -Elect whatever he wants.
NMC says:

November 6, 2008 at 5:51 pm

A couple of responses:

The comment that this sort of thing characterizes Ole Miss but not USM or MSU is just not so– both in a long and short historical sense. There’s a decent book about it at USM called Exit 13 (a couple of decades old), and it goes farther back (the would-be James Meredith of Southern Miss ended up dying in Parchman on trumped up charges). It didn’t end there, and like other public institutions in Mississippi is all part of the problems of public institutions that we are having to overcome to this day.

Second, the talk of the “problem” students above, as AFOTL paints with a pretty broad brush… but… there are real problems out there. There was a very active Students for Obama organization that did a lot of canvasing and had real and substantial support from all social factions on campus. OTOH, I know through my daughter that the kids in fraternities and sororities often dealt with heavy social pressure to not be involved and even vandalism of stuff relating to the organization (a problem that seems to have been far worse in the fraternities than the sororities.

The Students for Obama had a tent in the grove in front of the Union at each home game, and a table in front of the union off and on. Up until the last game, it went pretty smoothly; at the last game the atmosphere and name calling and obnoxiousness reached the point of being physically threatening when my son-in-law was at the tent after the game.

When it reaches the point of being physically threatening it’s not speech any more.

The Mississippian story is not clear enough to completely understand what was happening, but was clear enough to make it appear that there were physical threats and probably more. I have no question that should be disciplined, and doing so isn’t a first amendment issue.

Beyond that, the university needs to tread with great care. Just Monday, the clueless UPD shut down a public reading on campus as not being within the ‘free speech’ area on campus. The administration acknowledged this should not have occurred, and they are looking to get sued if they keep that up.

Students yelling at each other in a non-physically-threatening way is just part of first amendment excercise, and should not be the subject of prosecutions (I view hate speech codes as a threat to free speech, and have disagree with some liberal friends about that).

Finally, I don’t see any way remotely to compare people who believe in campus speech codes (which I don’t) that allow disciplining students for racist speech with “brown shirts.” Not remotely comparable.

There was some anger in the air on Tuesday night in town, too. My son encountered it on the way home when he stopped by one of the gas stations.
lotus says:

November 6, 2008 at 5:51 pm

rnb, if you want to keep embarrassing Mississippi, go do it on Y’allPolitics or somewhere. You just wore out your welcome here.
confounded says:

November 6, 2008 at 6:25 pm

nmc: the daily Mississippian endorsed McCain. What does usm or msu have to do with that. UM is much more republican than USM IMO. I ain’t talking about Meredith. I’m talking today’s demographics.
confounded says:

November 6, 2008 at 6:40 pm

never mind I see you were responding to a post. Oops.
Ben Cole says:

November 6, 2008 at 7:14 pm

“If is OK for a blog author to call the President an a** hole then it must be alright for a Frat boy from Ole Miss to call the President -Elect whatever he wants.”

Redneckerbubbams: I think you did a great job of self-identifying the problem. Trust me … there truly is a world out there beyond the end of your own nose. That’s precisely what education seeks to impart … and that apparently is where education failed you. Or you failed education.
Researcher says:

November 6, 2008 at 11:38 pm

USM has its bigots but it also has a very different campus culture than Ole Miss, in good and bad ways.
USM has more black students than Ole Miss, especially in on-campus housing, the black and white students in dorms seem to mix well, the fraternity culture is not as dominant, and many of the students who might cause trouble tend to live off-campus where they can be more private about their stupidity.
Also, the Coast and most of the rest of South Mississippi do not have segregated private academies. Kids coming out of the Coast public schools or the Catholic schools have had to learn how to get along and not be openly offensive. I am not saying they are not prejudiced, but they are not likely to be confrontational about it. It’s not cool.
Evell Snoats says:

November 7, 2008 at 8:13 am

You have to remember one thing

Daily Mississippian = Yellow Journalism

The story about free speech? No mention was made that the “reading” was amplified and occurred right outside of classrooms which were being disrupted, which is why the police were called.
Plexix says:

November 7, 2008 at 11:44 am

I hope no one took my comments to mean that this only happens at Ole Miss. This state has no shortage of bigots at any of its universities.

But it does seem that Ole Miss has had more than its share of these types of incidents – the black fraternity arson in the 80′s, the white students dropped off at Rust College with racial slurs painted on them, the fights between black and white fraternities, the relatively low percentage of black students at Ole Miss (as Researcher pointed out above), even the name “Ole Miss” itself.

The University has come a long, long way – and Khayat deserves a lot of credit for it. But the bitter fights over racial symbolism are only in the recent past, and incidents like the one described in the DM are still too common.

NMC, I read “Exit 13″ many years ago. In fact, it was assigned to me as a college reading assignment at USM. But I just don’t see as many racial incidents in Hattiesburg or Starkville as I do at Ole Miss. Maybe they’re just not reported as widely.

folo

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"It’s Ole Miss; what do you expect?"

November 6th, 2008 @ 9:39 am - by lotus · 33 Comments

33 Responses so far ↓

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