THE DAILY
W E D N ES DAY, O C TO B E R 17, 2 0 1 8 | VO LU M E 1 07, N O. 3 3
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
FILM DOCUMENTS THE IMMIGRANT EXPERIENCE IN MISSISSIPPI “Mississippi Yearning,” the latest movie from award-winning creators Baldwin Chiu and Larissa Lam, will be screened tonight at the Powerhouse as a part of Yoknapatawpha Arts Council’s Fall Cultural Round Table.
Andy Kennedy has been hired by SEC Network to be an in-studio college basketball analyst for the upcoming season following his short stint on the network last season. SEE PAGE 8
SEE PAGE 5
Survivor of campus hit-and-run continues recovery
FORMER OLE MISS BASKETBALL HEAD COACH HIRED BY SEC NETWORK
‘The weight of where we’ve been’
Creative writing professor reads from memoir about race, weight, family
MEREDITH SILLS
THEDMNEWS@GMAIL.COM
Bailee Gray, a freshman from Kerrville, Texas, was struck by a vehicle while crossing the intersection of Northgate Drive and Sorority Row during the weekend of the Ole Miss home game against Alabama. The driver who hit Gray, Ole Miss freshman John Walsten, was arrested three days after the incident and has been charged with leaving the scene of an accident with injuries. Gray said she was walking on campus right beside the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority house when she was struck, and that she was “in the wrong place at the wrong time.” “I went to get a milkshake for me and one of my friends, and we had a jam out session in the car until around 1 a.m.,” Gray said. “I said goodbye to her and started walking back to my dorm.” Gray said the route she usually takes to her dorm has no light and no sidewalks, but this particular night she was cautious of her surroundings and decided to take an alternate route. “I was like, ‘Be smart here,’” she said. “I don’t want to walk up a hill like usual. I would rather walk down a hill, and this way has a sidewalk and a lit path.” Gray approached a crosswalk. She remembered a car stopping, so she proceeded to walk. “I know that I started walking across the street, and I threw my arm up to block my face because his lights were like even with my eyebrow,”
SEE HIT-AND-RUN PAGE 3
PHOTO: TREVISO DAVIS
Kiese Laymon reads from his new book “Heavy: An American Memoir” at Off Square Books on Tuesday afternoon.
LIAM NIEMAN
THEDMFEATURES@GMAIL.COM
Creative writing professor Kiese Laymon candidly detailed his Mississippi childhood, his relationship with his mother and his struggles with his weight at Off Square Books last night.
Laymon, hailed as “the chief blues scribe of our time” by fellow scholar and author Zandria Robinson, read from and signed his new memoir “Heavy: An American Memoir” at 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday at Off Square Books. “Heavy,” which is written directly to Laymon’s mother, is his third book. Before this
project, he’d published a novel, “Long Division,” and a collection of essays, “How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America.” Like these previous books, “Heavy” reckons with race, family, the South and both physical and metaphorical weight. According to the book’s description, the memoir “charts
his complex relationship with his mother, grandmother, anorexia, obesity, sex, writing, and ultimately gambling.” In response to an audience member’s question, Laymon said the story in “Heavy” truly started as an idea when he was a child, but that — to this
SEE LAYMON PAGE 4
Student joins national Latino law group GRACE MARION
THEDMNEWS@GMAIL.COM
Rosa Leon was born into a military family in a small town in northern Guatemala, just south of the conutry’s border with Mexico. Leon, a first-year law student, is a founding member of the Ole Miss chapter of the Latino Law Students Association. She and LLSA member Julio Cazares represent the University of Mississippi nationally through their involvement with the Latino Law Students Association. “Julio is the director of national public relations so he is in charge of all of our pub-
PHOTO COURTESY: SARAH HEYING
Rosa Leon represents the University of Mississippi School of Law at a constitution signing on Monday. licity, not just for our chapter but for every chapter in the nation,” Leon said. “And, I
am the director of membership, so I am in charge of all of the chapters in the nation
to make sure that they’re following our constitution and being active in their community and basically doing what they need to be doing in order to stay in good standing with nationals.” Leon founded the university’s chapter of the Latino Law Students Association this fall, and the chapter now has 20 members. “We promote Latinos in law and just betterment of Latinos in general,” Leon said. “Our chapter is doing that and also trying to promote just the law students in general. We’re trying to get our law students to be as successful as possible.”
SEE LAW PAGE 3