Morgan Boyd
Reporter
The Spectator sat down with the Student Government Association’s President John Jacob Miller and Michael O’Brien, the executive officer, to discuss how students feel about a possible name change for Mississippi University for Women. After having several students bring up this issue, the SGA, having no official standing or goal on the matter but merely representing the students, launched a poll recently on Canvas asking students their opinion on the issue.
“As an SGA executive officer I’ve gotten a lot of comments about this, and I feel like it was my job to voice their opinions since I am a representative. Again, SGA has no stance on this — we are just putting out the options,” O’Brien said. “Some feel, from what I can tell, uncomfortable. Some feel that it is the next step for the university.”
Miller has also had a variety of opinions brought to him on the matter.
“I have personally had a wide arrange of responses, some people feel like the name is not representative of the student body. Some people feel as though going forward the university would have higher enrollment if it was a gender-neutral name,” Miller said.
With this variety of responses from the students, the question still lingered: Were more students in favor of the change or against the change?
“I’ve had maybe a handful of people come to me against the change, but compared to those who support the decision, more have seemed to be for it,” said O’Brien.
From Miller’s perspective, however, it has been more evenly spread out.
“I’ve had people who have vehemently rejected the idea of a change in the name, and I’ve had a lot of people very passionate in favor of the change. I’ve also had a lot of people who are in the middle. There is a lot of gray area, which is the challenging aspect in this,” Miller said.
The SGA conducted a poll asking student if they would support a name change poll, and 2,013 out of 2,560 students voted. Out of the 2,013 people who voted, 828 voted yes, 703 voted no and 482 voted for the ‘No Opinion’ option.
“From the responses I’ve gotten there seems to be a pretty blended response. From the data we collected from the polls, even if every male student voted yes, we still wouldn’t have the numbers that we have. So there’s a significant amount of the female population that supports a change,” Miller said.
Currently, SGA is still in the early steps of this project. When asked about opinions of alumni and other nonstudents that are involved with the campus, Miller said the SGA was purely piloting this as a student-based initiative, and they have not spoken to any alumni on this issue.
“The opinions, faculty, and staff will come in later in the process depending on recommendations of Student Government Association. But we are purely keeping our focus on the students,” Miller said.
The SGA has now decided to proceed with a referendum of inquiry. This means that the SGA is going to hold programming to get a better understanding how the student body feels about the topic. They plan to hold at least one education session led by an expert on the history of the university and host listening sessions with student groups and the general student population.
Despite having the majority of the students vote, Miller still feels there was a large gap of no opinion.
“We really want to dig deeper and understand how students really feel. And at the end of that, there will be another poll that will simply have a yes or no option, which will really gauge the statistical support one way or the other. Using that, the Senate will reconvene to vote on whether to approve or deny the recommendation in changing the name of the university. We want to be extremely open to the opinions of the student body the entire time,” Miller said.
Knowing all of this, the question still stands, how will a name change benefit the university? Miller believes this would lead to more students feeling comfortable coming in.
“I do think enrollment would rise because the name deters people off at the start and when there are a thousand colleges to choose from, what would make this school stand out?” Miller said.
A more sensitive idea brought up by this change is the history behind the university’s name. Mississippi University for Women was the first public college for women in the country, so could a name change accurately retain the historic significance behind The W? Miller says that is not the intention of the change.
“We have absolutely no intention of removing the history of the university. This is something that we have had to take with extreme care. We definitely want to pay homage to the wonderful women that have come before and founded the institution, and that is a conversation we will have to have with students and eventually depending on the results administrators on how to choose a name that represents the interests and demographics of the student body but also keeps in mind the important historic significance of the institution,” Miller said.
Currently there is not a new name in mind for the school, and they are still trying to get opinions of the students.
“The options of choosing a name will come later in the process when alumni, faculty, staff and students are involved. This will be in the hands of the university. If students have recommendations for a name, we are more than happy to hear those and pass them along, but that is not what our focus is at this time,” Miller said.
This is not the first time the idea of a name change has been brought up.
“They attempted to change the name about 10 years ago in 2009 or 2010. It did not go well. We think that one of the reasons for this was it was an administrative choice, and the alumni and a large majority of students did not feel that they were included in the decision. What has come around this time is that there has been a lot of changes with The W in the last 10 years, and we have gotten a lot of interest in changing. But this time, the difference is we are purely representing the student body. It’s something that the campus community has expressed interest in and we are going to look into and try again,” Miller said.
If anyone has any questions, or comments or criticisms of the process, feel free to reach out to SGA, which is located on the fourth floor of Cochran.
