University of Mississippi

Coordinates: 34°21′59″N 89°32′12″W / 34.3663°N 89.5368°W / 34.3663; -89.5368
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University of Mississippi
(Ole Miss)
File:OleMissCrest.png
University of Mississippi logo
MottoPro scientia et sapientia
Motto in English
On behalf of knowledge and wisdom
TypePublic, Co-ed
Established1848
Endowment$472,373,000 [5]
ChancellorRobert Khayat
Academic staff
697[1]
Students17,546 [6]
Location
Oxford
,
Mississippi

34°21′59″N 89°32′12″W / 34.3663°N 89.5368°W / 34.3663; -89.5368
CampusRural 1,000+ acres
Sports teamsRebels
ColorsHarvard Crimson and Yale Blue   
(adopted in 1893)[2]
MascotColonel Reb
Websitewww.olemiss.edu

The University of Mississippi, also known as Ole Miss, is a public, coeducational research university located in Oxford, Mississippi. Founded in 1848, the school is composed of the main campus in Oxford and three branch campuses located in Booneville, Tupelo, and Southaven. UM maintains a field station in Bay Springs as well as the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson. Additionally, it is both a sea-grant and space-grant institute. Sixty-nine percent of undergraduates are from Mississippi, and nineteen percent of all students are minorities. International students come from sixty-six nations.

History

The Lyceum
James Meredith walking to class at the University of Mississippi, accompanied by U.S. Marshals.
File:Jamesmeredithstatue.jpg
Civil Rights Monument (statue of James Meredith) on the Ole Miss campus.

The University got its nickname "Ole Miss" via a contest in 1897. That same year, the student yearbook was being published for the first time. As a way to find a name for the book, a contest was held to solicit suggestions from the student body. Elma Meek, a student at the time, submitted the winning entry of Ole Miss. Interestingly, the term "Ole Miss" is not derived from Mississippi, but was a term of respect used by slaves for the wife of a plantation owner.[3] This sobriquet was chosen not only for the yearbook, but also became the name by which the University is now affectionately known.[4]

The Lyceum, built in 1848, is the oldest building on campus. In its first year, it housed all of the classrooms and faculty offices of the university. The Lyceum is now the home of the university's administration offices. The columned facade of the Lyceum is represented on the official crest of the university, along with the date of establishment.

The School of Medicine, which was originally located at the eastern gate of the campus, was used as a hospital during the Civil War for both Union and Confederate soldiers, especially those who were wounded at the battle of Shiloh. The School of Medicine is now located in Jackson, Mississippi and the original building, which served as a dormitory for male students in its last years before being condemned in the early 1970s, was replaced by a new Chemistry building in the mid 1970s. Soldiers who died in the campus hospital were buried in a mass grave located at the northeast corner of the Coliseum which was built nearly 100 years later as a venue for concerts and basketball games.

With the outbreak of the Civil War, classes were interrupted when the entire student body and many faculty from Ole Miss enlisted in the Confederate army. Their company, Company A, 11th Mississippi Infantry, was nicknamed the University Grays, and suffered a high casualty rate during the Civil War. A great number of those casualties occurred during Pickett's Charge at the Battle of Gettysburg on July 3, 1863, when the University Grays made the deepest encroachment into Union territory. Some of the soldiers actually crossed the Union defensive fortification wall, only to be killed, wounded or captured. On the very next day, July 4, Confederate forces surrendered at Vicksburg, Mississippi; the two battles together are commonly viewed as the turning point in the war. When Ole Miss re-opened, only one member of the University Greys was able to visit the university to address the student body. The university was led, during the post-war period, by former Confederate general A.P. Stewart, a Rogersville, Tennessee native, who was President from 1874-1886.

During the 1930s, an attempt by Mississippi Governor Theodore G. Bilbo to move the University of Mississippi to Jackson, was prevented by then Chancellor Alfred Hume by giving Mississippi legislators a grand tour of Ole Miss and the surrounding city of Oxford. It so impressed the legislators that the move was defeated.

The University of Mississippi was also the site of a riot during desegregation, when James Meredith of Kosciusko, Mississippi, attempted to enroll in the school to become the university's first black student. Thousands of students, citizens from the surrounding area and many from out of state, a number of whom were armed, swarmed the campus on September 30, 1962 in a riotous effort to prevent Meredith's enrollment. Two people died during the race riot on campus. Meredith, thanks to the protection afforded by federal marshals, was able to enroll and attend his first class on October 2. Following the riot, elements of an Army National Guard division were stationed in Oxford to subdue future riots. While most Ole Miss students did not riot prior to his official enrollment in the university, many harassed Meredith during his first two semesters on campus. According to first person accounts chronicled in Nadine Cohodas's book The Band Played Dixie, students living in Meredith's dorm bounced basketballs on the floor just above his room through all hours of the night. When Meredith walked into the cafeteria for meals, the students eating would all turn their backs. If Meredith sat at a table with other students, all of whom were white, the students would immediately get up and go to another table.

The site of these riots was designated as a National Historic Landmark, the Lyceum-The Circle Historic District, on October 7, 2008.[5] The district includes:

File:McCain-Obama debate at Ole Miss.jpg
Obama-McCain debate at Ole Miss.
  • Ventress Hall
  • Bryant Hall
  • Peabody Hall

The University of Mississippi was also the site of the first presidential debate of the 2008 election. The event was hailed as a great success and was viewed as a sign of great progress for the university.[6]

Academics

Divisions of the University

File:Ventresshall.jpg
Ventress Hall

The degree-granting divisions located at the Main Campus:

The colleges at the University of Mississippi Medical Center campus in Jackson:

Statistics

  • The University of Mississippi is among the top 30 public institutions with the largest endowments per student.
  • The University of Mississippi has produced 25 Rhodes Scholars and has also produced one Fulbright, one Marshall, five Truman, and seven Goldwater Scholars since 1998.
  • The School of Pharmacy ranks 20th in the nation among schools of pharmacy for funding from the National Institutes of Health and 2nd among pharmacy schools for total federal funding.
  • The University of Mississippi's School of Accountancy is ranked 15th in the nation.
  • The University of Mississippi's Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors College (founded and supported by Jim Barksdale in honor of his late wife) was ranked one of the top 3 honors colleges in the nation by Reader's Digest.[7]
  • The University of Mississippi Medical Center was recently granted a secondary nursing program, which is a program for first semester nursing students who already have a degree. It is the only school in Mississippi with this type of grant.
  • In 2007, the average ACT score of entering freshmen at the University of Mississippi (excluding the UM Medical Center) was 22.9.[8]

Student Media

  • The Daily Mississippian is the student-published newspaper of The University, established in 1937. Although The Daily Mississippian (DM) is located on the Ole Miss campus, it is operated largely as an independent newspaper run by students. The DM is the only college newspaper in Mississippi that is published five times a week. The editorial staff consists of approximately 15 students, along with a staff of 15-20 writers and 5 photographers, though these numbers vary from year to year and semester to semester. There is also an entire department devoted entirely to advertising sales and production. With a circulation of 15,000, it is one of the largest college newspapers in the country. The paper also runs The DM Online, one of the few online college newspapers that is independent of the print edition. With an independent staff and editor in chief, The DM Online is dedicated to strengthening the publications of Ole Miss through multimedia interaction.[9]
  • The Ole Miss student yearbook is a 416-page color book produced by students with faculty advice. It has won various awards including the Gold Crown.[10]
  • WUMS-FM 92.1 Rebel Radio, operated by students, is a 3,000-watt FCC-commercially licensed radio station.
  • NewsWatch is the only student-produced, live newscast in the state of Mississippi. Broadcast through the Metrocast cable company, it is live at 5:30 Monday-Friday.[11]

These five publications are a part of the S. Gale Denley Student Media Center at Ole Miss.

Odds and ends

File:Olemissspeedlimit.jpg
Archie Manning's uniform number as the official speed limit on campus.
  • The university houses the largest blues music archive in the United States. Some of the contributions to the collection were donated by BB King. The Mamie and Ellis Nassour Arts & Entertainment Collection, highlighted by a wealth of theater and film scripts, photographs and memorabilia, was dedicated in September, 2005.
  • Archie Manning's uniform number, 18, has become the official speed limit of the Oxford campus.
  • The school grows U.S. government cannabis. The National Institute on Drug Abuse [7] (NIDA) contracts to the university the production of cannabis for the use in the few approved research studies on the plant as well as for distribution to the seven surviving medical cannabis patients grandfathered into the Compassionate Investigational New Drug program (established in 1978 and canceled in 1991).
Medicinal Cannabis farmed by the University for the government
  • University of Mississippi Medical Center surgeons performed the world's first lung transplant in man and transplanted the heart of a chimpanzee - man's closest genetic relation - into the chest of a dying man.
  • William Faulkner's estate, Rowan Oak, is owned by the university. His Nobel Prize for Literature is held in Archives and Special Collections at J. D. Williams Library on the Ole Miss campus. The town of Oxford surrounds the campus which is located in Lafayette County and inspired Faulkner and his imaginary town of Jefferson, the county seat of Yoknapatawpha County
  • In Star Trek, the character Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy attended the university.
  • In Designing Women, the character Suzanne Sugarbaker attended the university, where the character was a member of Pi Beta Phi sorority.
  • In the 1996 movie A Time to Kill, based on the novel by John Grisham, Sandra Bullock plays a stellar law student from Ole Miss named Ellen Roark.
  • The Mississippi Teacher Corps is based at the university.
  • The University was chosen to host the first presidential debate of 2008, which was held September 26, 2008. This was the first ever presidential debate to be held in Mississippi.[12][13]
  • The Princeton Review 2008-2009 rankings included Ole Miss as the #2 party school in the nation[14][15].
  • Ole Miss was rank the 23rd best Public College/University by Forbes Magazine in 2008. [16]

Athletics

Main article: Ole Miss Rebels

Student Housing

Approximately 3500 students live on campus in the fourteen residence halls available. All freshmen (students with less than 30 credit hours) are required to live in campus housing their first year unless they meet certain commuter guidelines. [17] The Department of Student Housing and Residence Life is an auxiliary, meaning that it is self-supporting and does not receive appropriations from state funds. All rent received from students pays for housing functions such as utilities, staff salaries, furniture, supplies, repairs, renovations and new buildings.[18] Most of the residence staff members are students, including day-to-day management, conduct board members and maintenance personnel. [19] Upon acceptance to The University of Mississippi, a housing application is submitted with a processing fee.[19] On Campus Housing cost ranges from $1730 to over $2500 per semester depending on the occupancy and suite type. [19] Students (with more than 30 credit hours) have the option to live off campus in unaffiliated housing. [19]

Greek Life

Despite the relatively small number of Greek-letter organizations on campus, many students participate in Greek life at Ole Miss. The tradition of Greek life on the Oxford campus is a deep-seated one. In fact, the first fraternity founded in the South was the W.W.W. (or Rainbow Society), founded at Ole Miss in 1848, which went on to charter other chapters across the South. The fraternity merged with Delta Tau Delta in 1886.[20] Delta Gamma national sorority was founded in 1872 at the Lewis School for Girls in nearby Oxford. Today, sorority chapters are very large, with many boasting of around 250 active members. Recruitment is fiercely competitive and potential sorority members are encouraged to secure personal recommendations from Ole Miss sorority alumnae in order to increase the chances of receiving an invitation to join one of the 9 NPC sororities on campus.

NPC Sororities
NPHC Organizations
Fraternities

Associated Student Body

The Associated Student Body (ASB) is the Ole Miss student government organization.

Noteworthy alumni

Main article: List of University of Mississippi notable alumni

See also

References

  1. ^ OLE MISS FACTS 2007-08
  2. ^ Ole Miss Traditions
  3. ^ Chodas, Nadine. The Band Played Dixie: Race and Liberal Conscience at Ole Miss.
  4. ^ The Ole Miss Student Yearbook
  5. ^ Gene Ford and Susan Cianci Salvatore (2007-01-23), Template:PDFlink, National Park Service
  6. ^ Clear winner of 1st presidential debate: Ole Miss
  7. ^ Best Honors College: Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors College
  8. ^ IHL Fast Facts
  9. ^ The DM
  10. ^ The Ole Miss
  11. ^ NewsWatch
  12. ^ The Clarion-Ledger: University lands first of 3 debates; Accessed November 20, 2007
  13. ^ 2008 Presidential Debate | The University of Mississippi - Official Home Page
  14. ^ FOX News: List of Top Party Schools by Princeton Review
  15. ^ Atlanta-Journal Constitution: UGA students still party, but a little less so
  16. ^ http://www.forbes.com/2008/08/13/best-public-colleges-oped-college08-cx_mn_de_0813public_slide_23.html?thisSpeed=15000
  17. ^ [1]
  18. ^ [2]
  19. ^ a b c d [3]
  20. ^ The New York Times: Two secret societies united, Delta Tau Delta and the Rainbow Society join hands; Published March 28, 1885; Accessed December 08, 2007
  21. ^ http://thedmonline.com/ato_receives_first_strike
  22. ^ http://thedmonline.com/dke_frat_appeals_expulsion
  23. ^ "Ole Miss suspends fraternity in Nov. hazing incident". The Clarion-Ledger. 2008-11-22. Retrieved 2008-11-22. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  24. ^ [4]

External links

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