| Thursday, June 7, 2018 |
| MSU-Meridian welcomes 2018-19 school administration cohort | |
 | Photo: The following students are enrolled in the School Administration graduate degree program at MSU-Meridian and desire to become visionary leaders for 21st century schools: front row from left, Corey Boykin, West Lauderdale Elementary School, Lauderdale County School District; Cierra Ball-Williams, Northeast Lauderdale Elementary School, Lauderdale County School District; and Deidre Bland, Meridian High School, Meridian Public School District. Back row, from left, Jastassia Johnson, Earl Travillion Attendance Center/Forrest County; Lorna Blackburn, Leake County High School/Leake County School District; Felicia James, West Jones High School/Jones County School District; Lyle Wallace, Philadelphia High School /Philadelphia City Schools; Yolanda Davis, Parkview Elementary/Meridian Public School District; Micah Mills, Northeast Jones High School, Jones County School District; Frederick Liddell, West Hills Elementary, Meridian Public School District; Amy Massey, Oak Grove Upper Elementary/Lamar County School District; and Jerlisa Jones, Crestwood Elementary, Meridian Public School District. Not pictured: Brenda Cochran, Wayne County High School, Wayne County School District; and Jonetta Cole-Slaughter, Kemper County High School, Kemper County Schools. |
| Former Congressman Travis Childers: Key to runoff success is identifying voters, begging | |
 | Travis Childers, former 1st District U.S. House member, knows about running election campaigns with quick turnarounds. On Tuesday, Democrats David Baria, a Bay St. Louis state House member, and Howard Sherman, a Meridian entrepreneur, advanced to a June 26 runoff for the U.S. Senate seat. And Republicans Michael Guest, district attorney for Rankin and Madison counties, and Whit Hughes of Madison, a former economic developer and hospital foundation president, advanced to a runoff for the 3rd District U. S. House seat being vacated by Gregg Harper. Childers said the key to winning the runoff is "to convince the people who voted for you in the first election to return to the polls for the runoff." He said candidates will not attract many new votes for the runoff. "In my opinion, you don't have time to recruit new folks," Childers said. "You will try, but the best chance you have is to identify the voters you had in the first primary and beg them to go back to the polls." |
| Lincoln voters split: Hometown candidate gets 55% of local votes, outsiders gather up 43% | |
 | She carried the county, but not by much. Although Brookhaven's Sally Doty took the majority of votes from Lincoln County in Tuesday's Republican primary election for the 3rd Congressional District, a closer look at vote totals from the 30 precincts shows a fractured voting populace and a less-than-solid homebase for the state senator. While no other candidate individually came close to her 2,000 votes, the three candidates who finished ahead of her combined to take away nearly half her hometown's votes. "With such a low turnout, it's hard to really read the tea leaves," Doty said. "Once you serve in office, and make tough choices and votes, you always have those who may not agree with you." |
| Roger Wicker wins GOP primary | |
 | It was a battle of north versus south as U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Tupelo, defeated business owner Richard Warren Boyanton of Diamondhead, a costal community in south Mississippi. Wicker, who received an endorsement by President Donald Trump, handily won Tuesday's Republican primary race over Boyanton. In the Nov. 6 general election, Wicker will face the winner of a June 26 Democratic party runoff between David Baria and Howard Sherman. Of the 41 precincts reporting in DeSoto County, ballots cast in the Republican primary amounted to 71.78 percent of the electorate. Votes cast in the Democratic primary amounted to 28.22 percent. Voter turnout was light in DeSoto County, according to DeSoto Circuit Clerk Dale Kelly Thompson. According to Thompson, only 7.77 percent of DeSoto County's 101,462 registered voters, or 7,887 voters turned out at the polls. In DeSoto County, Wicker received 73.73 percent of the vote |
| Michael Guest, Whit Hughes heading to GOP runoff | |
| Madison's Whit Hughes and Madison County District Attorney Michael Guest will meet in a run-off election in three weeks for the 3rd Congressional District seat. Unofficial results show Guest of Brandon led the pack of six candidates Tuesday with 45 percent of the votes in the 24-county district with 28,543 cast in his favor. Hughes finished second with 22 percent, or 14,118 votes. The run-off comes after neither candidate achieved the 50 percent plus one majority needed. In Madison County, turnout Tuesday was very light, with less than 14,000 voters going to the polls. Of the votes cast, 10,036 were in the Republican Primary and 3,782 were in the Democratic Primary. Guest won Madison County with nearly 50 percent of the machine votes as he garnered 4,631 in his favor. Hughes won 32.85 percent of the county, or 3,090 votes. |
| Jeramey Anderson has sights set on 4th Congressional seat | |
 | After running unopposed in Tuesday's Democratic Primary election, Jeramey Anderson now has his sights sets on November's General Election against Republican incumbent Steven Palazzo for the 4th Congressional District seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. The 26-year old Moss Point native has served for five years in the State House in Jackson and says his goal is to inspire young people and also bring new ideas to the table if he's elected in November. "People always, of course, look at my age," Anderson said. "I'm 26-years-old, but I've served in the Legislature going on six years in Jackson in the state House, and that's more than what my opponent had when he ran for Congress. So, I'm well-versed in how government should be run, and I've tried to make sure I represent my constituents in the 110th District of Mississippi with dignity, pride, and compassion. And I plan to do that same exact thing in Washington." Anderson will run against Republican incumbent Steven Palazzo for that 4th Congressional seat in Washington. |
| Candidate Jay Hughes: Is Hosemann promoting himself or voting with stickers? | |
 | Democratic lieutenant governor candidate Jay Hughes is questioning whether Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann is promoting himself, rather than voting, with stickers being handed out at polls during Tuesday's primaries. Hosemann is considered a likely Republican candidate for lieutenant governor next year, but has not announced such a run. State Rep. Hughes, D-Oxford, recently kicked off his campaign for the office. Hughes on Wednesday copied the Clarion Ledger a letter to Hosemann and an image of "Vote in Honor of a Veteran" sticker, which also says Delbert Hosemann, secretary of state and includes his office seal. Hughes questions whether distribution or wearing of such a sticker inside voting precincts is allowed under a state law prohibition against displaying or distributing campaign materials within 150 feet of polling locations. |
| Lawsuit: Governor overstepped his authority when he slashed MAEP budget | |
| Two Democratic legislators are suing Gov. Phil Bryant for what they argue is an overstep of his constitutional powers that hurt Mississippi's public school funding formula. On Wednesday, the Southern Poverty Law Center participated in oral arguments in the Mississippi Supreme Court on behalf of Rep. Bryant Clark of Pickens and Sen. John Horne of Jackson. The complaint was filed in May 2017 against the governor, Department of Finance and Administration executive director Laura Jackson, the Mississippi Department of Education, and state treasurer Lynn Fitch. It argues that the governor's repeated budget cuts in fiscal year 2017 that stripped funds from the Mississippi Adequate Education Program, the chronically underfunded public school funding formula, was unconstitutional. The suit argues that only the Legislature has budget making authority. |
| Can governor make midyear state budget cuts? | |
 | The Mississippi Supreme Court heard arguments Wednesday in a lawsuit that questions the governor's power to make midyear state budget cuts. Justices gave no indication of when or how they would rule, though they asked several questions of an attorney for the Southern Poverty Law Center. The center filed the suit in 2017 on behalf of two Democratic state lawmakers, Sen. John Horhn of Jackson and Rep. Bryant Clark of Pickens. The suit argues that the state constitution gives legislators the power to set budgets. It also says a law dealing with the governor making midyear cuts violates the separation of powers between legislative and executive branches. During oral arguments Wednesday, Southern Poverty Law Center attorney Will Bardwell asked justices to strike down a law dealing with the executive branch's role in midyear budget cuts. |
| China ramps up hacking of U.S. high-tech companies | |
 | After a hiatus of several years, Chinese state hackers are once again penetrating networks at a range of U.S. corporations in a campaign to steal secrets and leapfrog ahead in a race for global technology supremacy, cyber researchers say. Companies in fields such as biomedicine, robotics, cloud computing and artificial intelligence have all been hit by cyber intrusions originating in China, the researchers say. "It's definitely accelerating. The trend is up," said Dmitri Alperovitch, cofounder and chief technology officer at CrowdStrike, a threat intelligence firm based in Sunnyvale, Calif. The activity comes after a sharp drop in Chinese hacking that began in September 2015, when former President Barack Obama and Chinese leader Xi Jinping reached an agreement to end the hacking theft of commercial secrets. The agreement quelled U.S. anger over its charge that China is the "world's most active and persistent perpetrator of economic espionage." Why China's hackers may be getting back into the game is not readily clear. |
| Southern Miss effort to enroll low-income children in health insurance in jeopardy | |
 | Funding is up in the air for a University of Southern Mississippi effort to enroll uninsured, low-income Pine Belt residents in Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program or CHIP. And now, a Trump administration proposal has jeopardized some of the funding for CHIP itself. The university has had a $1 million grant since mid-2016 from the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services to enroll children in CHIP and adults in Medicaid and Marketplace insurance. The grant cycle is set to end June 30. "We hope to extend the cycle through December," said Kerri Vogt, director of the Kids Health Access Collaborative at Southern Miss. "We have applied to be extended to use our unused funds." Vogt said she expects to know around June 15 if the federal government extends the grant. It serves children and adults in nine counties in the Pine Belt, including Forrest and Lamar. |
| Grant aids U. of Alabama bridge project on Second Avenue | |
 | A $6.025 million grant has been awarded to the University of Alabama for the construction of a vehicle and pedestrian bridge over the railroad crossing of Second Avenue. The Infrastructure for Rebuilding America (INFRA) grant, announced Wednesday by U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby, will go toward the completion of the overall $22.61 million project that's expected to improve and realign Second Avenue between Paul W. Bryant Drive and 15th Street. "I am proud to announce that the University of Alabama will receive a $6 million INFRA grant for a vital transportation project in the Tuscaloosa area," Shelby said in a news release announcing the project. "With ongoing growth and development throughout the state, Alabama's transportation needs are rapidly changing, and it is imperative that we find the appropriate solutions. It's unclear when, exactly, construction would begin, but Tim Leopard, UA's associate vice president for construction administration, said the project is practically ready to go. |
| Jennifer Kerpelman named Auburn University's interim vice president for research | |
 | Jennifer Kerpelman, professor and associate dean for research, graduate studies and outreach in the College of Human Sciences, has been named Auburn University's interim vice president for research, effective June 1. An accomplished researcher in the fields of adolescent development and family studies, Kerpelman brings more than 20 years of leadership as a faculty member and higher education administrator to the role, including extensive experience in advancing partnerships with external agencies and private-sector organizations. Kerpelman's interim appointment fills the vacancy created by John Mason, outgoing vice president for research and economic development, as he transitions to a new role at Penn State-Harrisburg. The university will launch a national search for a new vice president for research in the coming weeks, to be chaired by Calvin Johnson, dean of the College of Veterinary Medicine. |
| UGA Provost Pamela Whitten likely to be Kennesaw State president | |
 | The University of Georgia might soon lose its second-highest ranking administrator. Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost Pamela Whitten is the sole finalist to become the next president of Kennesaw State University, state Board of Regents officials announced this week. Whitten has been at UGA since 2014, replacing Jere Morehead, who became UGA's president after serving as provost and senior vice president for Academic Affairs at the university. If confirmed as expected by the Board of Regents, Whitten would become the top administrator at one of the country's fastest-growing universities. Whitten has been seeking a college presidency since at least 2016. In November that year she was announced as one of three finalists to become the top administrator at the University of Tennessee's Knoxville campus. Last November she was a finalist to become president at Iowa State University. |
| U. of Tennessee student to participate in UK Fulbright summer program | |
 | For the first time in the school's history, the University of Tennessee Knoxville will send a student to participate in the prestigious Fulbright UK Summer Institute. Natalie Campbell, a rising junior majoring in disability studies through the College Scholars Program and member of the Chancellor's Honors Program, will embark on the international venture on June 25 and will stay in Northern Ireland until July 20. "I was shocked," Campbell said. "I obviously worked very hard on my application, worked hard on the interview, I did everything I could to prepare for it but still with something like this you kind of think, 'but what are the odds?'" The Fulbright UK Summer Institute Program partners with nine European universities to provide American students the opportunity to learn more about another culture while also exploring a topic interesting to them. |
| U. of South Carolina offering active shooter training for students, faculty | |
 | In 2015, Lauren Smith was advising a University of South Carolina student in her Byrnes Building office when she received an alert on her phone. Shots had been fired on campus. Smith turned the lights off, told the student to stay inside the glass-doored office and talked to the distressed student to keep her mind off what might be happening. "I tried to keep her calm, got her to not panic," said Smith, who is USC's associate director of international student services. That shooting -- where a professor's ex-wife killed him on campus before turning the gun on herself -- was a fresh memory for USC faculty at a Wednesday session on how to respond to an active shooter. With some reports suggesting active shooter training has become more common in the wake of America's unique epidemic of mass shootings, the USC administration has placed an increasing priority on training faculty, staff and students to respond to an active shooter. |
| Lawmakers discuss national security concerns and Chinese students | |
 | A Senate subcommittee hearing Wednesday afternoon originally bore the title "A Thousand Talents: China's Campaign to Infiltrate and Exploit U.S. Academia." Although the name of the hearing was changed to "Student Visa Integrity: Protecting Educational Opportunity and National Security," Democratic lawmakers nevertheless raised concerns that Chinese students and scholars are being broadly tarred as threats to national security and potential intellectual property thieves. Fueling this concern is a recently reported policy change, going into effect June 11 and confirmed in broad strokes during the hearing by a State Department official, which will restrict the length of visas for certain Chinese nationals who are participating in some types of sensitive research. In a sign of how tense the debate has come, normal congressional courtesies appear to have been ignored. |
| Colleges and State Laws Are Clamping Down on Fraternities | |
 | Fraternity members at Louisiana State University adhere to age-old rituals, shrouded in secrecy, that dictate how they gather, greet each other and initiate their young pledges. But when they return to campus in the fall, one ritual will be drastically different: They will face much more severe consequences for dangerous hazing incidents. In May, eight months after the death of Maxwell Gruver, a freshman pledge at the university's now banished Phi Delta Theta fraternity chapter, Gov. John Bel Edwards of Louisiana signed into law an anti-hazing bill that would make it a felony for those involved in hazing that resulted in death, serious bodily harm, or life-threatening levels of alcohol. The new law represents an important departure for Louisiana, which once had some of the most lenient anti-hazing laws in the nation. But it also reflects renewed efforts around the country -- in state legislatures, inside courthouses and on campuses -- to prevent the hazing injuries and deaths that have plagued college campuses for decades. |
| U. of Memphis budget increases minimum wage, will not raise tuition for 2018-19 | |
| The University of Memphis Board of Trustees made good on its promise not to raise tuition next year with the passing of a $516 million budget for 2018-19 on Wednesday. The university will also use $4.6 million in state and university funds to increase wages and salaries, including for its lowest-paid employees. University President David Rudd will also see a $50,000 salary bump, but to be paid using private dollars and not taxes or tuition. The university will increase its minimum wage from $10.10 to $10.60 an hour, a step toward boosting pay, President David Rudd said, but still a far cry from the $15-an-hour wage under consideration in other institutions across the city. The university is also expecting an increase of $4.5 million in athletic revenues next year. |
| Mitch Daniels Urges Graduates to Resist Tribalism | |
| For several years, former Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, a conservative who now leads Purdue University, has imparted the same caution to graduating students. He tells them that while he hopes they never think of themselves in this way, they are now aristocrats who owe their membership in a privileged elite not to family name, wealth, or ties to a ruling party, but to their unusual cognitive skills and education. America's new aristocrats "have begun to cluster together," he notes. But, he declared during this year's commencement address, over these last few years, "this new self-segregation has taken on a much more worrisome dimension. In a tribe, he said, life is easy in all the wrong ways: "You don't have to think. Whatever the tribe thinks is right, whatever the other side thinks is wrong. There's no real responsibility; just follow what the tribe, and whoever speaks for it, says to do." |
| State Republicans fulfilling pledge to cut government | |
| Mississippi newspaper publisher and columnist Wyatt Emmerich writes: "For better or worse, Mississippi Republicans are fulfilling their promises to cut state government. This is a dramatic change from the doubling each decade since 1990. Based on the annual reports from the Joint Legislative Budget Committee, total state spending grew 124 percent from 1990 to 2000, 99 percent from 2000 to 2010, but only four percent from 2010 to 2018. That's a huge shift. In other words, after two decades of doubling in size, the growth of state government has come to a screeching halt since the Republicans booted out the Democrats as the dominant party in the state. This year is the most dramatic of all: Not only did the state government not grow, but it shrank about five percent." |
SPORTS
| Mississippi State making memorable postseason moments | |
 | Mississippi State was down to its final strike on Saturday and was on the verge of going two-and-out in the Tallahassee Regional. But with one swing of the bat by Elijah MacNamee, the Bulldogs extended their season and rallied through the loser's bracket for the second straight year. MSU won four games in three days to advance to a Super Regional at Vanderbilt this weekend. "To be one strike away from having your season over and to extend it like that, that's a memory that our team -- not just Elijah -- gets to take with them to their grave," said MSU interim head coach Gary Henderson. "You're going to remember that for forever. That's a special moment." MSU had a short workout in Starkville on Wednesday before traveling to Nashville immediately afterward. The Bulldogs will practice for 90 minutes at Hawkins Field today beginning at 2:45 p.m. |
| Inside Mississippi State catcher Dustin Skelton's postseason hot streak | |
| The suggestion wasn't anything radical. It was simple. And, really, catcher Dustin Skelton heard Mississippi State hitting coach Jake Gautreau try to explain this message to him before in various other ways. Just this time, he was listening instead of hearing, and something clicked. The result is one of the reasons why Skelton surprisingly made the All-Regional Team last week. Now, he heads to Vanderbilt for a super regional on the first sustained hot stretch of his Mississippi State career. |
| Whistlers allowed, Mississippi State cowbells aren't at Vanderbilt Super Regional | |
 | Vanderbilt baseball can't play its usual music over the stadium sound system at this weekend's Super Regional, and Mississippi State fans can't ring their cowbells. No cell phones are allowed in dugouts, but a long-distance phone line is mandatory. And players are allowed to drink Gatorade, but only from Powerade bottles. These are a few of the curious requirements in the 71-page NCAA rule book for hosting a Division I Super Regional baseball series, which Vanderbilt will do against Mississippi State beginning Friday (7 p.m., ESPN2). Here are those and some other interesting rules of note |
| Vanderbilt Super Regional tickets sold out vs. Mississippi State, secondary markets available | |
| Fans hoping to attend the Super Regional game between Vanderbilt baseball and Mississippi State are out of luck, at least through the school. All-session outfield seats were put up for sale Tuesday, but they were already unavailable by Wednesday afternoon. Vanderbilt's website doesn't list any more tickets online. Those tickets were originally priced at $83 for adults and $68 for youth and students under 17 years old. However, there are other ways for fans to get tickets to the Super Regional games. Secondary markets like Stubhub, VividSeats, SeatGeek and others have dozens of tickets for all three games this weekend. The cheapest tickets were at about $140 each to start the day Wednesday, but by about 5:15 p.m., they halved in price to around the $70 mark. |
| No changes coming to SEC rule that blocked Hugh Freeze from Alabama this year | |
 | During the relatively quiet SEC spring meetings in Destin last week, the league's contingent of coaches and administrators talked about new graduate transfer rules, the league's alcohol policy and how the Supreme Court's recent gambling decision could impact the conference. There was even discussion about a new rule limiting headsets used during football games which Auburn head coach Gus Malzahn labeled a "joke." What didn't come up, at least according to SEC commissioner Greg Sankey, is how a year-old bylaw that gave the commissioner additional oversight into members' hiring practices has impacted the league. The previous year in Destin, the SEC passed bylaw 19.8.1.2 that states each school's president or chancellor must directly consult with Sankey before offering a job to a coach "who has engaged in unethical conduct as defined under NCAA bylaws or who has participated in activity that resulted, or may result, in a Level I, Level II or major infraction." |
| SEC basketball coaches support expanding NCAA Tournament to 72 teams | |
| After sending a conference-record eight teams to the NCAA Tournament, the SEC wouldn't mind seeing the field expand. SEC basketball coaches expressed interest in the idea being proposed by the ACC to expand the NCAA Tournament from 68 to 72 teams. "I think there's generally in that room support," SEC commissioner Greg Sankey said. "Did they take a vote? No, but I think there's support." ACC commissioner Jack Swofford discussed expanding the field following that league's spring meetings last month. f the additional four teams would lead to all four 16 seeds and the four 11 seeds all being play-in games, Sankey is not sold on that format. "I'm not sure I like that," he said. "If we're going to expand somebody has to explain why 72 is the right number. You can recall not so long ago 96 was on the table ... We pivoted back to (64) and then into the (68), which has worked well." |
| Butch Thompson reflects on Auburn's journey to Super Regional appearance | |
| Late on a Sunday night in Raleigh, N.C., inside an indoor tennis center serving as a media hub, Butch Thompson sat on a podium in front of the gathered reporters, looked at the three players seated to his left, and let his mind wander back to his first few weeks at Auburn. He inherited a program in flux after the surprise firing of then-coach Sunny Golloway in September. His first team on the Plains would go onto win just 23 games and fail to make any sort of postseason, including the SEC Tournament. But before that first season began, Thompson and his staff found Josh Anthony, Jay Estes and Luke Jarvis playing at community colleges in Oklahoma, California and Florida. They brought the three players from three different states to Alabama. Those were the three players seated next to the third-year coach on Sunday, fresh off a 15-7 victory over Regional host NC State that sent the Tigers to their first Super Regional appearance since 1999. They've been a huge part of that success. |
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