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MISSISSIPPIAN T h e S t u d e n t N e w s pa p e r
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M i ss i ss i p p i | S e r v i n g O l e M i ss
and
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discussing the smoking ban Remembering the riots: The Associated Student Body sponsored a town hall meeting Wednesday night to discuss the smoking ban on campus.
Firsthand accounts
On Wednesday, a panel of people who witnessed the 1962 riots discussed the conflict at Barnard Observatory. The event was organized by the Opening the Closed Society program as part of the 50 years of integration celebration. BY MOLLY YATES mayates@go.olemiss.edu
AUSTIN MCAFEE | The Daily Mississippian
Quadray Kohleim, a senator whose name is on the bill, discussed the campus-wide smoking ban at a panel Wednesday night.
BY SUMMER WIGLEY sswigley@go.olemiss.edu
The Associated Student Body hosted a town hall meeting to discuss the campus-wide smoking ban Wednesday night. At the beginning, information was given to the audience in regard to the reasoning be-
hind the smoking ban, after which the floor was opened for questions, comments and concerns. The reason behind the new smoking ban was the overall health of the students at the university. A survey was given by students on campus last year to
determine how they would feel about a smoke-free campus. “Out of 14,000 plus students on campus, only 650 responded to the survey,” said Jessica Brouckaet, a public policy sophomore and director of health promotion on See SMOKING, PAGE 5
A panel of individuals who were on The University of Mississippi campus during the integration riots gathered on Wednesday afternoon for an open group discussion about the violent events that took place on Sept. 30, 1962. The panel, moderated by associate journalism professor Dr. Kathleen Wickham, was comprised of a retired university administrator, a former faculty member, students who attended the university during the fall of 1962 and a man who was a high school junior in Oxford during the riots. Panel member Ken Wooten began the discussion. Wooten, a retired registrar and admissions dean for the university, was inside the Lyceum to assist the marshals and federal officials who were on site to
manage the growing riot. Against the initial wishes of the marshals, Wooten chose to go to the Circle and asked the students to return to their dormitories. He was struck by the scene before him. “The tear gas had already been fired,” Wooten said. “Everyone was bloody and crying from the fumes.” Wooten was then grabbed by the crowd and used as a human shield to push its way past the barricade of marshals guarding the Lyceum. Wooten recalled the state of the Lyceum once he returned that night. “You couldn’t walk down either hall of the Lyceum without having to step over a wounded man with a broken arm or a head injury from a thrown brick or a gunshot wound,” he said. At daylight, when walkSee PANEL, PAGE 5
Mississippi has highest poverty rate in America Recently released data shows that the state of Mississippi has poverty rates far above the national average. BY KAYLEIGH SKINNER kaskinne@go.olemiss.edu
GRAPHIC BY JACK SCHULTZ | The Daily Mississippian
Mississippi is struggling with high rates of poverty, according to recently released data from the U.S. Census Bureau. The 2011 census shows that more than 128,000 families in Mississippi live below the poverty line. The federal poverty level for a family of four is around $23,000 in income, and 22.6 percent of Mississippians were members of families whose incomes were below this figure. Additionally, the median household income in Mississippi of $36,919 fell far below the national median household income of $50,502.
Director of the Mississippi Economic Policy Center Ed Sivak said high rates of poverty force residents to struggle. “Families are doing more with less now because of the Great Recession,” Sivak said. Sivak added that economic security exists in quality education and health care, but this has been difficult for families to obtain due to tuition hikes. “Increasingly some of the fundamental blocks of economic security are becoming out of reach.” The census data also shows that more than 500,000 Mississippians did not have See POVERTY, PAGE 4