Beneath still waters, as the song goes, there’s a strong undertow. The surface won’t tell you what the deep water knows.

So it is, I fear, with East Mississippi Community College, where the resignation of both Lowndes County representatives on EMCC’s Board of Trustees within the past week has brought a lingering issue to public attention.

Gregory Stewart, an executive with Aurora Flight Science, announced his resignation this week, citing his planned retirement as his reason for leaving the EMCC board. A week earlier, Golden Triangle Development LINK CEO Joe Max Higgins turned in his resignation, citing a lack of commitment by EMCC to the school’s workforce development center, better known as Community.

Higgins, the plain-spoken economic developer, and Stewart, the soft-spoken diplomatic company executive, have their own reasons for leaving the board, but their departure, I believe, is not purely coincidental. The undercurrents that roil beneath the surface represent two competing visions for what EMCC is, or should be, a divide that is both geographical and ideological.

EMCC’s district — and its local funding — comes from six counties — Lowndes, Oktibbeha, Clay, Noxubee, Kemper and Lauderdale counties. The original campus, located in the southern part of the district in Scooba, is built on the traditional, some would suggest outdated, community college model with dormitories, sports programs and all of the other amenities and necessities associated with residential institutions. When people in Noxubee, Lauderdale and Kemper counties think of EMCC, this is the dominant image.

But when residents of the northern counties — Lowndes, Oktibbeha and Clay — think of EMCC, they think of a commuter college and all that entails. There are no dorms or sports venues on the Mayhew campus. The focus in the north is on academics and programs. The arrival of Communiversity, a $42 million state-of-the-art training center, in 2019 is an emphatic endorsement of that more modern view of the role of community colleges.

It has become increasingly difficult to find harmony between these two wildly-divergent schools of thought. For EMCC President Scott Alsobrooks it is a herculean task and, I suspect, one that will only be more difficult in the years to come.

The traditional model found at the Scooba campus is badly outdated, a throw-back to the mid-20th Century, a time of one-car families. Community colleges, then called junior colleges, were established in small towns considered too far away from four-year colleges, to serve rural students. Most of the students were dropped off on the junior college campuses. Hitch-hiking was a common practice, too.

Dormitories were a necessity, along with all of the other features common to campus life.

The landscape today is much different. Even on residential campuses, commuter students dominate the enrollment. At Mayhew and Communiversity that’s true of 100 percent of the students.

In most cases, the new model dominates. Most community colleges in America do not have dormitories or sports teams or all the other extra-curricular adornments. They exist for the sole purpose of providing students access to more economical, more accessible college education or, as is the case with Communiversity — career-track training.

Apart from nostalgia, it’s hard to make a compelling argument for that traditional vision that  Scooba represents. Of course, in Mississippi, where there is often an almost slavish devotion to the status quo, there is a powerful base of support for the Scooba model. At a time when resources are limited, the political power base in EMCC’s southern counties represents an obstacle for the more progressive vision found in the north.

That’s why the departure of Higgins and Stewart looms large. Both were strong, unapologetic advocates for the Mayhew/Communiversity vision. The Lowndes County Board of Supervisors now must find new board members to represent that vision. The balance of power, which already seems to tilt toward the old model, hangs in the balance. These are critical appointments.

Three people have applied, including Columbus mayor Keith Gaskin. Under different circumstances, there could be no better choice than Gaskin, who’s credentials are unrivaled — a PhD. in community college leadership with more than 20 years experience in education administration and an extensive fund-raising background at Mississippi State, Alabama and MSMS.

Yet Gaskin is only a few months into his role as Columbus mayor, a job that should command his undivided attention. There should be serious reservations about the mayor taking on a new challenge, given the circumstances.

Regardless of who the supervisors select to represent Lowndes County on the EMCC board, the challenge is formidable. The divide seems close to irreconcilable, the competing visions of what EMCC should be, and the funding that each demands, almost impossible to manage.

Beneath still waters, a torrent continues to rage.

Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].

Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].