THE DAILY
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MISSISSIPPIAN
T H E S T U DE N T N E W S PA P E R O F T H E U N I V E R S I T Y O F M I S S I S S I P P I | S E R V I N G O L E M I S S A N D OX F O R D S I N C E 1 9 1 1
IT’S VALENTINE’S DAY: SEE OUR ‘LOVE ISSUE’ OF &MORE
OLE MISS ATHLETICS SUFFERS SLIGHT FINANCIAL LOSS
In this second installment of &More, the Arts & Culture team writes about students who made the decision to get engaged, romantic movies you might not have heard about and why it seems so important to be dating at Ole Miss.
Ole Miss Athletics director Ross Bjork reveals Ole Miss Athletics has taken a hit to its “reserve fund” on the Oxford Exxon Podcast. Check out our online content related to the final NCAA sanctions against Ole Miss.
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Protesters: First Charlottesville, now Oxford GRACE MARION
THEDMNEWS@GMAIL.COM
Two groups that participated in the 2016 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, have organized a protest in Oxford on February 23. The rally in Charlottesville left three dead, 35 injured and the nation in a state of racial, social and political turbulence.
Members of the Confederate 901 and the Hiwaymen, a self proclaimed patriot group, are protesting removal of the Confederate flag and Colonel Reb from football games, the removal of the state flag on campus and the creation of historical contextualization plaques on campus among other things. “We’re taking a stand for Ole Miss values such as the Confederate monument and
the Mississippi state flag,” said Billy Sessions, who founded Confederate 901 and attended the Charlottesville rally. He is not an Ole Miss alumnus or a parent of an Ole Miss student. In January, the city of Oxford approved the groups’ permit to have the protest, according to Sessions. The Oxford mayor and the aldermen who represent districts through which protesters
plan to march have not yet responded to inquiries regarding the permit approval. It is unclear whether they were aware of the groups’ presence in Charlottesville. Despite the violence that occurred during the event in Charlottesville, the organizers of the protest don’t think students should be worried about their presence. “There’s not going be any violence,” Sessions
said. “If (counter-protesters) don’t bring any violence, there won’t be any.” Although Confederate 901 has made several Facebook posts discouraging attendees from violence, some students think that their presence on campus is still a threat. “It is kind of scary to see something that close to you,
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Sports, memes and disappointment
Meet the Ole Miss Twitter community
“
Twitter is like the open mic night at the comedy club, except nobody can actually take the mic away from you.” David Case University of Mississippi School of Law professor and distinguished lecturer
David Case has a base of 2,314 Twitter followers.
GRIFFIN NEAL
THEDMNEWS@GMAIL.COM
Once pasted across the student union’s walls and forever etched into Ole Miss history, 1932 Ole Miss graduate Frank Everett’s words, “The university is respected, but Ole Miss is loved. The university gives a diploma and regretfully terminates tenure, but one never graduates from Ole Miss,” are timeless. You truly don’t ever graduate from Ole Miss, especially if you live long enough to tweet about it. The Ole Miss Twitter community is an enigmatic, self-deprecating coterie of alumni who fire off tweets — mostly about Ole
Miss sports — at an immeasurably high rate. But don’t think of Ole Miss Twitter like Facebook or Instagram. Family pictures or recollections of college events aren’t used as currency in this particular atmosphere. And as for the rules of Ole Miss Twitter, they’re unwritten. This online community is a decentralized web of alumni, varying in age, profession and level of Ole Miss interest. It’s defined solely by those who shoulder the burden of professing digital adulation for their alma mater. David Case is a professor in the University of Mississippi School of Law. He graduated from Ole Miss in 1985 and holds
PHOTO: KATHERINE BUTLER
degrees from the the University of Mississippi School of Law, Columbia University and Vanderbilt University. He’s also the consummate Ole Miss sports fan and one of many Ole Miss Twitter celebrities. “Twitter is like the open mic night at the comedy club, except nobody can actually take the mic away from you,” Case said. He tweets about whatever Ole Miss sport is in season, Ariana Grande and his affinity for the much-chagrined former mascot Rebel the Black Bear. His tweets are inspired by William Faulkner, who would have been a must-follow had Twitter existed in his prime. “I’ve always been a fan of
Faulkner’s stream of consciousness approach to telling stories,” Case said. “The 280 character limit gives you some room to kind of tell a story in an indirect way.” For Case, Twitter has served a far greater purpose than memes and riffs about Ole Miss sports. He’s amassed a considerable following on the site and has forged relationships with his online friends along the way. “I’ve become friends with people that I’ve met because of Ole Miss Twitter that I would have never had any reason to interact with,” Case said. “You don’t have to wait for alumni meetings
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