After surviving a threatening legislative session this year, The W is rallying its supporters in preparation for the start of the 2025 legislative session in January.
Mississippi University for Women faculty, staff and administration as well as community members, local leaders and Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science supporters gathered Tuesday at the Lyceum at Lee for The W’s first Legislative Engagement and Advocacy Partnership rally.
Tuesday’s rally kicks off a statewide tour aimed at building a network to foster legislative support for keeping the university and MSMS operating in Columbus.
“Our goals are really to activate the community and activate our alumni to reach out and make sure that we are known,” MUW President Nora Miller told The Dispatch after the rally. “… I think the community has really recognized what a loss it would be if anything happened to (The W) or MSMS.”
Earlier this year, The W administration formed a task force to head the LEAP initiative. Members of the task force spoke Tuesday about how alumni and community members can get involved with the effort along with strategies for the next legislative session.
Linda Ross Aldy, chair of the LEAP Task Force, said the next step is creating a “key person network” of volunteer alums and friends to be assigned to each of the 174 state legislators in the Senate and the House.
If the legislators understand The W is solid, Aldy said, they’re more likely to support keeping MSMS on the MUW campus and increasing the high school’s funding.
“One senator made the comment during the session that they had no appetite to fund MSMS at any greater level because of The W’s uncertain future,” she said. “Well we’re here to make sure that that future is very certain.”
2024 session was ‘a wake-up call’
The 2024 legislative session resulted in several scares around The W’s future. Miller said plans for the LEAP initiative have been in the works since the session ended in April.
“Once we survived the legislative session, it was like, we’ve got eight months before it starts all over again,” she said. “What can we do to make sure that we are better prepared and that we have a strong network of people who will speak up for us?”
The university went into the 2024 legislative session expecting a bill proposing a name change to Wynbridge State University, but that bill never dropped. Instead, the university faced a slew of bills that threatened its future.
The first bill proposed relocating MSMS to Mississippi State University. A substitute bill seeking to merge The W with MSU was then introduced in committee. The bill made it to the Senate floor where it was abandoned and amended to instead create a feasibility study specific to the viability of MSMS and MUW. That bill ultimately died on the floor in March.
Another bill introduced in February sought to have the Board of Trustees of the Institutions of Higher Learning select three state universities to close by 2028 based on factors like enrollment. MUW’s enrollment is in the bottom three among the state’s eight public universities. That bill died in committee.
Aldy called the session a “wake-up call” to the fact that the university is not safe. But LEAP’s legislative action plan includes creating strategies ahead of time in case the same or similar bills are introduced, she said.
“We are ready to play offense and ask for the things that we need to ask for, but we’re also ready to play defense in case there are bills that come back out in the 2025 session,” she said.
Advocating for MSMS
Miller laid out The W’s legislative requests for next year, including the continuation and enhancement of capital appropriations. She said the LEAP Initiative will also advocate for more funding for MSMS.
“We also want to make sure that we can help to take care of MSMS and be better partners with them and promote what they’re doing,” she said.
Lowndes Board of Supervisors President Trip Hairston told the audience that he, MUW administrators and Mayor Keith Gaskin have spent the last several months deciding the best way to advocate for the residential high school.
Attendees left Tuesday’s meeting armed with talking points in support of keeping MSMS at The W, where it’s been located since its inception in 1987.
Among the talking points, MSMS alumna Karen Clay said the size of The W’s campus and its proximity to Columbus is perfect for students to acclimate to living away from home for the first time. Clay said the high school is fully embedded on the campus, exclusively occupying more than 150,000 square feet of the facilities there.
Hairston revisited the point that MSMS was intentionally created as a state high school on The W campus. Relocating the high school on a different campus would change “the fabric” of why it was created, he said, referring to a now-shelved proposal last year that would have built a new MSMS and Starkville High School as a megacampus at MSU.
Other talking points included the decades of tradition shared between The W and MSMS that are central to the Columbus community, like Tales from the Crypt and Eighth of May. A full list of talking points in support of both The W and MSMS is available on MUW’s website at muw.edu/leap/.
Hairston encouraged the audience to reach out to legislators with the information, especially if they have a personal connection to a lawmaker.
“If you know of somebody who has influence with the Lt. Gov. and speaker of the house and other members of the legislature, it’s important for you to make those contacts and talk with them,” he said.
McRae is a general assignment and education reporter for The Dispatch.
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