I have taught women’s history at Mississippi University for Women (The W) for 15 years and can report that the past few months have been some of the most difficult. We continue to teach classes, help students plan internships and prepare another year of graduates for the work ahead. However, the name change has dominated every other issue on campus and produced nothing but misery just as it did in 2009.
Personally, the administration’s process has been frustrating and deeply disappointing. Being alienated from our alumni weighs on us all—faculty, staff and students—because our alumni are our family members and friends, our mentors and our former students. They mean the world to us, and as anyone who has struggled with fights in their family knows, it is impossible to feel good when an issue divides you from loved ones. So, our spirits have been low.
As March began, though, I was focused on the university’s re-accreditation, as the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges team was on campus reviewing our plans and giving us feedback. I was still feeling down, but I also enjoyed the opportunity to show the accreditors the good work happening at The W every day. It was exciting and felt good to focus on academics and how to be even better at what we do. Our reaccreditation visit went beautifully, because when it comes to academic preparedness measures, The W has no difficulty.
In the middle of that work, on March 5, 2024, the news hit about Sen. Dennis DeBar’s committee substitute—transforming Senate Bill 2715 from moving the Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science from The W campus to Mississippi State University, into a proposal for MSU to completely absorb The W altogether. I was stunned.
I heard from colleagues and students who are deeply concerned about personal implications that could derive from the legislators actions. Would they be able to afford MSU tuition or continue athletics if this bill passed? Would they have jobs? Would The W maintain its identity?
There was fear in our initial responses, but we recognized immediately, too, that this move was low down. It was a calculated move meant to capitalize on our troubles and our fatigue. Decorum and respect were discarded as our President Nora Miller did not receive the early morning courtesy call given to her male counterpart at MSU. For days I was desolate, but on Friday morning I woke up with something closer to rage in my heart.
Protect The W’s ‘Unique Legacy’
The first week of March was full of campus events celebrating Women’s History Month, but in March 2024, The W will be living its history as men in Jackson try to shut us down once again. One of the many things lost on Sen. DeBar and other overwhelmingly male legislators—as Mississippi vies for the lowest number of women representatives in the country—is the incredible legacy we have as a historically female institution and the resulting power we have to cultivate leadership and excellence in those whose potential is routinely overlooked.
Mississippi women imagined The W before it ever existed—they willed it to life. Mississippi women built its curriculum, created its bizarre and wonderful traditions, bequeathed it their wealth and legacies, and have cherished the relationships that were started here over the course of their entire lives. We are proudly coeducational, but our “unique legacy,” as the proposed bill phrases it, is that we represent the collective voices of generations of this state’s women.
Women built our campus as a place where their voices would be heard, their potential recognized and nurtured. For any who doubt our future, if you knew Aly, Anna, Mary, Frederica, Josh, and Sam—all current MUW students—as I do, then you would not fear for The W. Our students are our future, and they are as bright and worthy as ever.
My faith has been shaken of late in many things, but I put my trust in the women of this state. Two things are clear at this moment. One: If we lose The W now, we will never get it back, and two: If The W is to be saved, it will be women who do it.
We’ll gladly take any help we can get, but history shows that when the wolves in the Mississippi legislature begin to howl, it falls to Mississippi women to lead the fight for The W. She is for us, and if we are not for her, no one else will be. We have had our differences, and we’ve got to sort ourselves out in the months ahead. We must put our differences aside right now because we cannot lose what our grandmothers, mothers, sisters, aunts and best friends built. We need to make way for visionary leadership to meet the moment and our challenges. We have to fight for The W again while making clear that we will not participate in the process to pick off Mississippi schools or turn on each other in an effort to save ourselves.
Vague promises to keep The W preserved will not quiet us. The Long Blue Line stretches all across this state, and it is time to gather ourselves for another defense of the institution that has given us the confidence and conviction to prevail.
Editor’s Note: This column represents Erin Kempker’s personal opinion only and does not necessarily represent the views of the Mississippi University for Women as a whole.
This MFP Voices essay does not necessarily represent the views of the Mississippi Free Press, its staff or board members. To submit an opinion for the MFP Voices section, send up to 1,200 words and sources fact-checking the included information to azia@mississippifreepress.org. We welcome a wide variety of viewpoints.
