| Tuesday, March 5, 2019 |
| Mississippi State University Raspet Flight Research Laboratory Gets New TigerShark | |
 | Mississippi State University's Raspet Flight Research Laboratory is expanding its vast unmanned aerial systems research and support capabilities with the acquisition of two of the latest TigerShark XP3 aircraft. Raspet's purchase of the two aircraft -- built by NAVMAR Applied Sciences Corporation -- along with associated radio and computer equipment, represents a total investment of approximately $2 million, and will substantially increase Raspet's UAS core flight research capabilities. The TigerShark's cost is covered in part by grant funding from federal research projects aimed at making UAS safer. MSU is the lead university for the FAA Alliance for System Safety of UAS through Research Excellence (ASSURE). The university also leads the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Common UAS Test Site. Additionally, MSU works with Mississippi economic development officials to support the state's growing aerospace industry. |
| Brandon Presley ready to push for rural broadband | |
 | Public Service Commissioner Brandon Presley plans to spend the next five years pushing for access to high-speed internet in rural Mississippi. Presley, who represents the northern district of the state, spoke to the editorial board of the Daily Journal Monday about his and the commission's plans. In January, Gov. Phil Bryant signed into law a bill that gives the state's rural electric cooperatives the ability to offer internet. "Now the work really begins," Presley said. "We've got to push the rural cooperatives to evaluate whatever they would need to do to provide this service to their members. "In Hamilton, Alabama, they have (internet to homes with speeds) equivalent of what they've got in downtown New York City. If they can do that in Alabama, we can do it here in Mississippi." While he expects broadband internet to take up a good bit of his time in the coming year, it won't be the only thing on his plate. |
| Final teacher raise amount still not set | |
 | As a teacher pay raise moves forward in the House, leaders caution that a final amount has not been set. The House Education Committee on Monday passed a Senate bill that would give the state's teachers a $1,000 pay raise phased in over two years. Assistant teachers would also see a salary bump if the legislation becomes law. Lawmakers returned to Jackson in January with urging from Gov. Phil Bryant to pass an across the board teacher pay raise. The average teacher salary in Mississippi is $44,926, according to the Mississippi Department of Education, but first year teachers with a bachelor's degree can start out at less than $35,000. So far, lawmakers have only moved to increase starting pay from $34,390 to $35,390. Senate Bill 2770 is the only proposal to increase teacher salaries to have survived legislative deadlines to this point. |
| Bill Waller Jr. emphasizes infrastructure and healthcare in campaign for Mississippi governor | |
 | Bill Waller Jr. along with his wife, Charlotte, made a stop in Meridian Monday as part of a statewide campaign to become governor of the state of Mississippi. Waller, 67, a former state Supreme Court chief justice and retired brigadier general with the Mississippi Army National Guard, met with The Meridian Star editorial board to discuss his decision to run for governor and some issues he will address if elected. Waller said he was prompted to run when numbers of people started calling, writing and visiting and when he realized there were some issues that weren't going to be addressed unless someone else got in the race -- the main point of his campaign focused on infrastructure. "I have a lot of respect for Tate Reeves, but two issues we differ on philosophically -- the highway program and Medicaid expansion," Waller said. "That is why I got in the race because I didn't see hope for either one of those issues in my opinion without some additional leadership. I think as a conservative Republican I have the best chance of winning in November." |
| FBI says investigation still ongoing after nooses found at State Capitol | |
| Nearly four months ago, nooses were found on the grounds of the State Capitol and garnered national attention. At the time, investigators said they were looking for the person responsible. In an email from the Department of Public Safety they say the investigation is still ongoing. A Freedom of Information Act request was submitted to the FBI for surveillance video of the grounds of the Capitol that may show a suspect. When questioned, the FBI claims they don't have any files to fulfill these requests. It was November 26th when seven nooses were found hanging on trees and political signs found sitting on the State Capitol property. The nooses were hung the day before the U.S. Senate runoff between Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith and Mike Espy. |
| 'Take This Country Back': State Legislators Want Constitutional Convention | |
| On the heels of a fife-and-drum-corps performance, a crowd of Tea Partiers showered retired U.S. Army Lt. Col. Allen West in applause as he took the stage in Fort Lauderdale. Bathed in spotlight in an otherwise dark room, the black Republican military man soaked in the anti-Obama energy that permeated the room. He then recounted the stories of those he called "the original insurgents" -- the "patriots" of yore who met in taverns and plotted the American Revolution. "This is where we are right now in our country," he shouted with the timbre of a man rallying his troops. "We need to meet in places and start talking about restoring our liberty and fight back against a tyrannical government." Nearly 10 years into that future, West, whom Republicans sent for a brief two-year stint in Congress in the 2010 Tea Party-wave election, stood in the rotunda of the Mississippi Capitol building in Jackson. There, on Feb. 21, 2019, he held up a pocket Constitution and asked state legislators to do something Americans have not done since the time when muskets and bayonets were commonplace---call for a convention of the states to amend the document in his hands. |
| Community colleges seek legislative support | |
 | In an effort to get the Mississippi Legislature's attention, community college presidents, faculty, and students reminded everyone at a Capitol building press conference that community/junior colleges provide a vast array of educational and economic opportunities for everyone. Additionally, two-year colleges provide a healthy return on every dollar spent on the nation's oldest community college system. MACJC Legislative Co-Chair and Jones College President, Dr. Jesse Smith encouraged legislators to "face the facts." "For every dollar invested in the community college system, the return on the investment is $4.86. That's a worthwhile investment if you're just talking about an investment but what about the people?" asked Smith. |
| Ole Miss requesting to close Gertrude Ford Blvd. for a month this summer | |
| Roads to get onto Ole Miss' campus have been shrinking by the number over the past year and this summer they could shrink by one more. The University will request the City of Oxford to close off Gertrude Ford Boulevard from July 8 to Aug. 9 this summer during Tuesday's Board of Aldermen meeting. The need to block the road is to facilitate construction of a retaining wall on the west side of the roadway, similar to what exists on the right side. University has been in discussion with the city regarding the project and the original plan for traffic control consisted of using a flagman and single lane closures to the complete the work. When finalizing their plans, the University and their engineer have determined that it would be better to close the road completely during construction. If the city approves the request during Tuesday's meeting, it will be the second road that is currently closed off to traffic by the University. Chucky Mullins Drive from Old Taylor Road to Highway 6 has been closed since last April. The road was scheduled to be reopened in January but a new timetable to open the road back up has not been given. |
| Hey, America: Y'all need to start saying y'all, linguist says | |
 | Across America, it's becoming increasingly common to hear the use of the Southern contraction "Y'all," a linguistic fusion of the words "you" and "all." It may be partly because of the spread of Southern influence nationwide, but it also fills an important need in the English language, said Southern linguist Thomas Nunnally. "It's being adopted all over the country, because it needs to be," said Nunnally, a retired professor of linguistics at Auburn University who spoke at Samford University on Thursday. Nunnally is editor and co-author of "Speaking of Alabama: The History, Diversity, Function and Change of Language," published by the University of Alabama Press. Linguists have noted that "y'all" addresses a gap in the English language left behind by the disappearance of the pronoun "ye," the second person plural form of the pronoun "thou," both of which have become stilted, archaic and fallen out of use. |
| Michigan's Jack Hu to be UGA's next provost and academic affairs VP | |
 | University of Georgia President Jere Morehead has once again reached out to the state of Michigan to fill UGA's no. 2 administrative post. Jack Hu, the University of Michigan's vice president for research, will become UGA's senior vice president for academic affairs and provost, the university announced Monday. He is set to begin work July 1. Hu replaces Pamela Whitten, who came to UGA from Michigan State University to replace Morehead as provost and senior vice president for academic affairs. Whitten left last year to become president of Kennesaw State University. Libby Morris, director of the UGA Institute of Higher Education, has been interim provost since Whitten's July departure. Hu has the background and experience "to continue elevating our national prominence in research, innovation and graduate education while building on our superior undergraduate learning environment," Morehead said in a prepared statement. |
| U. of Tennessee likely won't expel students in blackface, administrator says | |
 | University of Tennessee-Knoxville administrators are still deciding how to discipline students who appeared in blackface in a Snapchat image that surfaced last week, according to Vice Chancellor for Student Life Vince Carilli. The decision remains "outstanding," Carilli said during a campus discussion Monday afternoon, stirring up the audience when he linked blackface to First Amendment rights. "We would be hard-pressed to expel a student for expressing their First Amendment rights," Carilli said. Close to 200 people, many of them students, sat face-to-face with administrators in the student union ballroom to discuss how to move forward following the incident of racism. The image, of four people believed to be UT students, shows two wearing what appears to be a black skincare masks. |
| Big Bang Theory's Mayim Bialik talks CBS show, science roots at U. of Tennessee | |
| "The Big Bang Theory" star Mayim Bialik made her first visit to Knoxville and was an open book to the hundreds of people she spoke to Monday night. Bialik, an actress, author and scientist, came to the University of Tennessee as a part of its Mossman Distinguished Lecture Series. She talked and joked to a crowded Cox Auditorium in UT's Alumni Memorial Building, answered questions for 30 minutes and signed one attendee's drawing. Bialik said she mainly speaks at events on the East and West coasts, so she had looked forward to coming to the South, an area she hasn't explored much. During her lecture, Bialik addressed her heritage, family and how she got started in acting and science. She also honed in on what it's like to be a female scientist and to be a part of "The Big Bang Theory." |
| Former Tiger Transit driver found guilty of rape in Auburn bus incident | |
 | A former Tiger Transit driver was found guilty Monday for the 2017 sexual assault of an Auburn University student. Tony Martin Patillo, 53, of Columbus, Ga., was found guilty Monday by a Lee County jury on first-degree rape, first-degree sodomy and public lewdness, according to the Lee County District Attonrney's Office. Patillo faces 10 years imprisonment to life on the rape and sodomy charges, according to Lee County District Attorney Brandon Hughes. He is scheduled for sentencing at the Lee County Justice Center at 4 p.m. April 24. "The criminal justice system identifies the targets of sexual predators like Tony Patillo as victims; however, the young lady in our case was anything but. She was strong, courageous, and I am grateful to have been able to get justice done on her behalf," Hughes said in a news release on Monday. |
| Major survey shows professors worry about discrimination but aren't prepared to deal with classroom conflicts over diversity | |
 | Discrimination is a source of stress for many faculty members, especially women and ethnic minorities. And most professors say they're not prepared to deal with diversity-related conflict in their own classrooms. So finds a new report from the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles. The institute publishes its survey of undergraduate teaching every three years, with this report covering 2016-17. The publication is a data trove on the faculty experience and includes additional information on professors' satisfaction with salary and benefits and mentoring students and other professors. Teaching issues ground the survey. In response to a new set of questions this year, for example, most professors across disciplines said it is their responsibility to promote students' ability to write effectively and to prepare them for future jobs and advanced education. But just about one-quarter of respondents said they strongly believe they should provide for students' emotional development. There's additional information on faculty politics. And contrary to how they're often portrayed in popular culture, professors aren't all liberal. In fact, relatively fewer professors self-identified that way in this survey than in years past. |
| Legal Scholars Don't Know the Details of Trump's Order on Campus Speech. But They Think It's a Mistake. | |
 | President Trump's announcement of an executive order that threatens to cut off federal research money from colleges that do not support free speech has drawn criticism from college leaders and legal scholars on two fronts. First, they say, it might not be legal. Second, they argue, it's a terrible idea. This past weekend Trump announced his plan for the executive order at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference. He presented the plan after discussing an incident in which a volunteer with the conservative group Turning Point USA, Hayden Williams, was punched in the face last month in the middle of Sproul Plaza, at the University of California at Berkeley. Pushback from academe arrived almost immediately, with Terry W. Hartle, senior vice president for government and public affairs at the American Council on Education, referring to the planned order as "a solution in search of a problem." |
| University private jets may be practical, but are they worth the optics? | |
| As public university budgets come under increasing scrutiny, a handful of institutions are giving new meaning to the term "flying coach." They're actually flying coaches, coaching staffs and sometimes coaches' families around the nation in taxpayer-subsidized airplanes. In other cases, the luxury seats are filled by top university officials on fund-raising trips that, universities say, more than pay for the flights. Facing the need to cut $20 million from its budget, the University of Kansas is considering a plan to end direct public funding for its jet. KU's faculty has long sought the sale of the private Cessna Citation CJ4, a gift to the university and its athletic department. The university calls the jet "an efficiency tool with a clear return on investment," but from Kansas to South Carolina to Florida, Indiana and Ohio, the use of university-owned jets and other private aircraft -- often bestowed by wealthy donors -- proves a sore spot between university officials and budget-trimming lawmakers. |
| Chinese hackers targeting universities for maritime technology: report | |
 | Chinese hackers have targeted nearly 30 universities around the world as part of an effort to steal research about maritime technology, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday. The news outlet cited research from iDefense, a cybersecurity intelligence unit of AccentureSecurity, that showed Chinese hackers have targeted the University of Hawaii, the University of Washington and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, among others. There are reportedly at least two other universities in the U.S., Canada and Southeast Asia that have been targeted as part of the effort to acquire research about technology developed for military use. The effort dates to at least April 2017, iDefense found. The group identified universities targeted in the hacks after noticing their networks were pinging servers located in China and controlled by a known Chinese hacking group, according to The Journal. |
| As Elite Campuses Diversify, A 'Bias Towards Privilege' Persists | |
 | Elite colleges are making strides to diversify their student bodies, both racially and economically. In the last few years, we've seen most top schools commit to enrolling more low-income students, through financial aid, recruiting efforts and programs for high school students aimed at expanding the pipeline. But once those students arrive on campus, says Anthony Abraham Jack, they often find the experience isolating and foreign. "There's a difference between access and inclusion," explains Jack, an assistant professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and author of the new book The Privileged Poor: How Elite Colleges Are Failing Disadvantaged Students. "Universities have extended invitations to more and more diverse sets of students, but have not changed their ways to adapt to who is on campus." For his book, Jack profiles low-income students at an unnamed elite college. He puts them into two groups: Those coming from prep schools, and those coming from under-resourced public schools. |
SPORTS
| Mississippi State vies for biggest win of basketball season against Tennessee | |
| Tuesday night at Tennessee, Mississippi State has a chance to do something it hasn't done all season: beat a ranked team on the road. The Bulldogs (21-8, 9-7 SEC) have only had one other opportunity to pull off a ranked win on the road. They lost 76-55 in that situation against No. 8 Kentucky on Jan. 22. This No. 4 Tennessee team (26-3, 14-2 SEC) lost to the Wildcats by a similar margin at Rupp Arena, 86-69, two and a half weeks ago, but the Volunteers rebounded to thump the Cats 71-52 at Thompson-Boling Arena. Now, Mississippi State has to venture inside that same venue and try to come out with a different fate. If the Bulldogs can do so, they'll have their best win of the season one week before the start of the SEC Tournament. |
| Bulldogs face tall task at No. 5 Tennessee | |
| Schedule makers didn't do Mississippi State any favors down the stretch having to face the defending SEC co-champions on the road in back-to-back games. The Bulldogs lost the first of those two contests 80-75 at Auburn on Saturday but will try to rebound tonight against No. 5 Tennessee at 8 p.m. on the SEC Network. "We've got our hands full," said MSU coach Ben Howland. "Grant Williams, Admiral Schofield, (Jordan) Bone, their personnel is really talented. They have depth and they're tough. I love their team and it's such a great challenge for us." The Volunteers won both meetings against MSU last year. Tennessee won 76-54 in Starkville behind 24 points from Schofield and eliminated the Bulldogs in the quarterfinals of the SEC Tournament in St. Louis with a 62-59 victory. |
| Bulldogs hosting top 20 matchup today | |
| Since Mississippi State's game with Nebraska was canceled on Sunday, it has pushed back Keegan James to start today's contest against No. 18 East Carolina. James, a junior right-hander with a 1-0 record and a 1.12 earned run average will toe the rubber for the seventh-ranked Bulldogs at 3 p.m. against sophomore righty Gavin Williams (1-0, 2.00). MSU (10-1) is hitting .291 as a team and averaging 8.1 runs per game this season. East Carolina is off to an 8-4 start to the season and won two of three games hosting the Leclair Classic over the weekend against Utah (W, 7-6, 10-innings), Wright State (L, 12-4) and Western Carolina (W, 12-6). |
| Mississippi State women's soccer adds Allison Whitworth to staff | |
| Head coach James Armstrong has added another former professional player to the Mississippi State soccer coaching staff with the addition of Allison Whitworth as a volunteer assistant. Whitworth will work primarily with the Bulldogs' goalkeepers. A native of Birmingham, Alabama, Whitworth played three seasons in the Women's Professional Soccer League with the Atlanta Beat, Chicago Red Stars and FC Gold Pride. She comes to Starkville after serving as the head coach at Spring Hill College in Mobile, Alabama, for the last three years. She was promoted to senior woman administrator in December 2017. Whitworth had a highly successful career both athletically and academically at Auburn University where she graduated summa cum laude with a degree in psychology and minor in exercise science in 2007. She set the Tigers' career record with 356 saves, which still ranks second in school history. |
| Details from UGA-Texas football series contract | |
| Georgia's future home-and-home series with Texas figures to be games that will be in high demand. So how many tickets will the schools get as part of the contract signed for the games? Georgia can purchase up to 5,000 tickets for the game at Darrell K Royal-Memorial Stadium in Austin on Sept. 2, 2028 and Texas 5,000 tickets for its first ever game in Athens on Sept. 1, 2029. The schools will discuss a "potential adjustment," to that ticket number by Sept. 1, 2026. That information is in a game contract obtained from Georgia by the Athens Banner-Herald Monday in an open records request. The Texas contract was signed by Georgia athletic director Greg McGarity on Oct. 5 and by Texas officials on Oct. 25. The games were announced on Nov. 12 as well as Georgia games at Clemson on Sept. 15, 2029 and against Clemson in Athens on Aug. 31, 2030. As previously reported, the visiting school in the Georgia-Clemson series will be allocated up to 6,000 tickets for sale, which also could be increased. The visiting team receives a $500,000 guarantee for the Georgia-Texas games. |
| Atlanta's Mercedes Benz Stadium, home of SEC championship game, going 'cashless' | |
| You will no longer be able to use cash for concessions, merchandise and tickets for events at Atlanta's Mercedes Benz Stadium, including the SEC championship game, the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl and the Chick-fil-A Kickoff Game. Stadium authorities announced Monday that the facility, also home to the NFL's Falcons and Major League Soccer's United, is going "cashless." Beginning with Friday's United home game vs. Cincinnati, customers must now use debit or credit cards or apps such as Apple Pay for all transactions. Fans will be allowed to use cash to purchase pre-paid debit cards at 10 new kiosks that will be installed on the stadium grounds. Steve Cannon, CEO of Falcons and Atlanta United owner Arthur Blank's AMB Group, which operates the stadium, said that research showed customers were moving away from cash for purchasing food and beverages, tickets and souvenirs at sporting events and concerts. |
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