There is a name for places where the past is more important than the future.
They are called ruins.
Every year, nine million people go to Rome to see the Colosseum, not because of its potential, but because of what it once was.
That may someday be the case with Mississippi University for Women.
It would be grossly inaccurate to suggest that the failed effort to change the name of MUW will be the ruin of the 140-year old institution, but it may well serve as a signal of that decline.
There are simply too many people — or just enough people with too much influence — who are determined to make the future the enemy of the past.
Three times in this millennium, university leadership has proposed changing the university’s name to reflect its current and future reality as a co-educational university, hoping to build tuition through recruiting more male students and female students who prefer a co-educational environment.
In 2002, the idea never went much beyond the conversation stage, but in 2010, the university had reached the point where it submitted a bill in the state legislature to make Reneau University its official name. The bill died in the House committee, thus ending an almost two-year campaign for a name change.
The idea has continued to percolate among university administration ever since.
It emerged once more in 2022. It died again this week.
Seeing the hand-writing on the wall, university president Nora Miller announced Wednesday that the university is pausing the renaming effort even as a bill to change the name to Wynbridge State University of Mississippi awaited committee action in the legislature. Pressure on legislators to vote against the name change made it unlikely to pass. The local delegation mostly supported, but did not fight for the name change.
Miller said the university clearly needs more alumni support for a name change and will have time to work on that before presenting a new name to the legislature in 2025. Maybe. But “Wait ‘til next year” is the anthem of the defeated.
I believe the university will have a new president before it has a new name. That’s sad times two.
Certainly, Miller’s handling of the process left much to be desired, but placing the blame where it belongs should not be confined to Miller.
Far more complicit are the two groups that combined to scuttle the name-change. The first group — and in my view the more honorable of the two — were those who were opposed to any name change at all.
As backward-thinking as that may be, it’s preferable to the second group, which claimed it supported a name-change, but never really argued in good faith.
They insisted that their position was based not so much on the names that emerged — first, Mississippi Brightwell University, then Wynbridge State University of Mississippi — but on what they claimed was a flawed process.
Well, university leadership changed the process twice, paused the process three times and still the opposition remains.
What does that tell you? It tells me that criticizing the process was mostly an excuse. It’s much like the argument that the cause of the Civil War wasn’t slavery, but states’ rights, using semantics to make an argument more acceptable.
The university’s fate is not dependent on a name-change, but it is significant.
It comes at a time when universities everywhere are staring down what is called an “enrollment cliff’’ — a dramatic drop in the college-age population beginning next year. That’s especially ominous for Mississippi’s universities because they rely more heavily on tuition than universities in other states. In 2000, state appropriations supported nearly 60% of our universities’ operating budgets, while tuition was 26%. In fiscal year 2023, that ratio had basically flipped, with tuition supporting 64% of operating budgets.
That puts a premium on recruiting out-of-state students, whose tuitions are significantly higher than that of in-state students. MUW is competing for students who are likely unaware that it is co-educational. So, that’s why a name change is far more than window-dressing.
Critics of the name change say the university should be more concerned with improving the conditions of its aging buildings, but money to do that is also reliant on student recruiting and those coveted tuition dollars.
Of course, the great thing about ruins is that they require little maintenance.
Keep the name. Forfeit the future.
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 39 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 39 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
