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132nd YEAR ISSUE 10
TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 26 2017
THE STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF MISSISSIPPI STATE UNIVERSITY SINCE 1884
MSU and SOCSD Partnership School set for 2019 completion DEVIN EDGAR NEWS EDITOR
After a construction delay due to large amounts of summer rainfall, the Mississippi State University and Starkville-Oktibbeha Consolidated School District Partnership School is slated for a Spring 2019 completion date. The $27.5 million school, which broke ground on construction in May, was originally anticipated to open in November 2018. The school will serve every sixth-and seventh-grader residing in Oktibbeha County, and will also be a demonstration site for student teachers and faculty members in MSU’s College of Education. Other universities across the country, like Louisiana State University and the University of Chicago have campus lab-schools and a private elementary school, respectively. However, according to Devon Brenner, assistant to the vice president of research and economic
Devon Brenner | Courtsey Photo
A render of the MSU and Starkville-Oktibbeha Consolidated School District Partnership School expected to be completed in spring 2019. It will serve sixth-and seventh-graders in Oktibbeha County.
development at MSU, those schools are often only available to the elite, with many of the students being professor’s or administrator’s children. The partnership school will be housed on MSU’s campus but built in conjunction with the public school district. Once completed, it will be the only school in the nation designed this way.
“Other campus-based schools are not a realistic picture of what life is like for students or teachers,” Brenner said. “They clearly aren’t meant to serve a broader community, but our Partnership School is designed to do exactly that.” Although construction just began this year, the Partnership School has been on MSU’s and SOCSD’s
agenda since 2015, when it was announced the Oktibbeha County schools and Starkville city schools would consolidate. David Shaw, MSU vice president of research and economic development, said after watching his daughter go through Oktibbeha County schools, he knew the struggles the county school district was facing first hand.
After consolidation efforts, Shaw said he traveled to colleges in Arkansas, Ohio and Alabama to research the models of many campusbased elementary schools to begin formulating ideas for something similar in Starkville. In late 2015, it was decided the partnership between MSU and SOCSD for a sixth-and seventh-
grade school would be a realistic fit for the entire community, therefore putting the partnership school into action. “Once we settled, it was just like this was the match that sparked a fire of enthusiasm,” Shaw said excitedly. “It created a huge, ground swell of momentum from all aspects of the community with parents, MSU and the entire district being behind it.” SOCSD Superintendent Eddie Peasant said as generations go by, children learn differently, which is why the way educators’ teaching should grow alongside of the student. However, he said the classrooms never changed to accommodate those changes. Complete with podstyle classrooms and floor-to-ceiling glass, the 128,000 square-foot building is both innovative and complementary of the way children learn today, Peasant added. PARTNERSHIP, 2
Confederate statues on college campuses stir up controversy HANNAH EAST
CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Recently, the presence of Confederate monuments across the south has been called into question, particularly on college campuses. The rekindling of this issue comes on the coattails of events in Charlottesville, Virginia, in which one woman was killed and several others injured. Mississippi currently has over 130 Confederate symbols across the state, including ones located on college campuses. The two main universities in the state, Mississippi State University and the University of Mississippi, both house monuments of controversy. The bust of Stephen D. Lee, the first president of MSU and former member of the Confederate Army, sits in the middle of the Drill Field on MSU’s campus. Similarly, a statue of a Confederate soldier is located on Lyceum circle on the campus of Ole Miss.
a new institution that looks to the future and not to the past,” Keenum said. “It’s important to remember that President Lee was a leader of reconciliation efforts after the Civil War.” Alison Greene, associate professor of history at MSU, was one of over 30 professors from colleges across the state to sign a letter calling for the removal of the state flag this year. She said the flag went up 30 years after the Civil War when white supremacists held absolute control over the state. “I do think that historians, particularly those of us who work on U.S. and Mississippi history, have an obligation to speak to and of this history,” Greene said. Greene also said she believes individual communities must engage the question of how to handle Confederate monuments, adding that communities are responsible for the discussion of their histories of white
According to Mississippi law, “no statue, monument, memorial, or landmark from any war can be removed from a public property unless it is being moved to another approved location or if it blocks visibility for drivers.” However, in reference to college campuses, a university’s president can authorize the removal of Confederate monuments. This was seen at both Duke University in Durham, North Carolina and the University of Texas in Austin, Texas, earlier this year. MSU President Mark Keenum addressed the controversy over the school’s statue of the first president. He stated in an email that the monument is there to recognize and honor the first president of the university. “With respect to Stephen D. Lee, I will say that his bust on the Drill Field is a reminder of the work that Mississippi State’s first president did to build
Noah Siano | The Reflector
The statue of Stephen D. Lee on the drill field is one of two confederate monuments housed on the Mississippi State University campus.
supremacy. John R. Neff, director of the Center for Civil War Research at Ole Miss, was a part of Chancellor’s Contextualization Committee chosen to revise the plaque placed near the
Confederate monument in a way that accurately describes the school’s historical role in the Civil War. Neff said students across college campuses are “absolutely affected” by these monuments.
It is difficult to determine to what degree each person is impacted, Neff said, since different students are affected across a vast spectrum. Personally, he said he would not like to see these monuments destroyed. Read more at reflector-online.com
MS Votes allows students to register to vote on MSU campus
E E T T O O VV TODAY!
Jennifer McFadden, The Reflector
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LINDSAY PACE STAFF WRITER
Mississippi State University students have an opportunity to become registered voters through Mississippi Votes on Sept. 26 at five different locations on campus. Mississippi Votes is a non-partisan, civic awareness organization existing to “register, educate, inform, and
empower” voters across the state, according to their website. To increase voter registration, the organization examines each community’s needs in order to develop specific solutions to voter registration setbacks. For Oktibbeha County, one such setback is a lack of registered voters. In a town with over 20,000 college students, Oktibbeha County stands as the
FORECAST: The next three days should be dry and hot as a high pressure ridge sits over much of the eastern half of the country, however we will be watching a cold front pass through for the weekend that will FINALLY bring fall like temperatures to the area. -Jordan Darensbourg, Campus Connect Meteorologist
least registered county in Mississippi. To remediate this, Mississippi Votes recruited several student ambassadors to bring civic awareness to MSU and the greater community of Starkville. One ambassador, senior agribusiness major Betty Thomas, strives to educate students of their civic rights after a group of 30 of her friends said they did not vote during the 2014 mid-
term election. “I was just flabbergasted, because in a national election with major implications, none of them had voted for anyone, were registered to vote, knew how to vote, or knew how to vote absentee. And it just kind of solidified my passion for making sure that young people exercise their right, and know how to exercise their right, to vote,” Thomas said. VOTE, 2
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