Mississippi State students staged a sit-in today calling for the removal of the state flag from all campus locations. A group of students calling themselves the Lucky 7 organized the event, which consisted of a rally at the flagpole on the Drill Field, a march to Lee Hall and a sit-in on the steps, directly below President Mark Keenum’s office.
  Jason Ward, a history professor at Mississippi State University, addressed the crowd of protesters at the flagpole before they marched.
  “There is a problem. You are not the problem,” Ward said to the group surrounding the flagpole.
  Ward said symbols are powerful, and the flag as a symbol invites scorn whenever the discussion of bringing it down comes up. He applauded the students who were protesting and encouraged them to continue making their voices heard.
  “There’s never a good time for a protest people don’t want to happen. Real problems require real debates,” said Ward.
   As the group sat on the steps of Lee Hall a walker-by yelled out across the drill field.
  “We want the flag,” he said before leaving the Drill Field.
   Several of the onlookers were opponents of removing the flag and watched the protest happen with stern looks.
  “There is no debate,” Mike Sullivan, an observer of the protest and opponent of removing the flag, said. “It’s our state flag.”
  Another opponent of removing the flag, James Oliver, a student studying mechanical engineering at MSU, argued that the feelings of the majority should be considered.
   “This is a democracy,” Oliver said.
While there has not been an official student body wide vote on the subject of removing the flag from MSU’s campus, the university’s Student Association has passed two resolutions on the issue. The first was passed in September and stated the SA, as the elected voice of the student body, believes the majority of the students at MSU wish for the state legislature to change the flag.
     The second one, Resolution 25, was passed in February and was part of a joint effort between the student governments of several other state universities, including the University of Mississippi. It stated the majority of students in the state wish for the appearance of the flag to be changed.
    The Student Association also released a statement Wednesday addressing the issue of diversity and inclusion on campus. In the statement, the SA said they believe concrete actions need to take place. In response to the flag, they said they would like to change the flag through the proper channels.
      “We want to see change in the state flag,” the statement said. “We do not want students to feel unwelcome. Everyone should realize that Mississippi State University is not only an educational institution but also a home. Taking down a flag could resolve many issues; however, the greatness of changing the flag is a powerful goal, and our ability to lobby the state government for its change is crucial.”
       A desire to similarly respect the representative process was echoed by Keenum in a press conference held during the protest. He said he personally wants to see the flag removed but in the right manner rather than just taking it down, an act which he described as “arbitrary.”
  “We’re working through this process in a respectful process, as I mentioned,” Keenum said. “We’re respecting the flag. We’re respecting the process. And will continue to do so. That’s what we’re going to do.”
 Keenum released a statement in July following the shooting spree in Charleston, South Carolina, advocating for changing of the flag. In October, the University of Mississippi and the University of Southern Mississippi removed the flag from their campuses. While the flag still waves at five locations around MSU, at the Wise Center, the Perry cafeteria, North Farm, the VA Center and the Hunter Henry Center, MSU’s Student Association put forth Resolution 9 in September, which aimed to remove the state flag. However, the flag still stands.
  Outrage over the flag reached a boiling point for the members of the Lucky 7. Their sit-in to remove the flag on Wednesday attracted a large crowd, many of which held signs that displayed their anger, one of which read, Keenum doesn’t love us.
    Wilburn Smith, a member of the Lucky 7 and president of the campus chapter of NAACP, said he does not agree with Keenum’s process.
  “We’ve met with the president several times on several occasions, and his whole thing is respect the process, respect the process but, as I told him, as an African-American, as a minority, years and years and years ago our ancestors were told ‘respect the process, wait, be patient, just join with us,’” Smith said. “Nothing got done. That’s why we had to go and actually start marches, organize events to put pressure on the people in the government and legislature to let them know our voices need to be heard. We want equal rights. We want equality as well.”
  The Lucky 7 tried to communicate to the university their intentions by e-mail on Monday through their own account, [email protected].
      “We e-mailed the president of the university along with other administrators here on campus—department heads, vice president of student affairs and other administration on campus,” Smith said. “We went back to log into our account, and our account had been reported and banned.”
   When questioned about the e-mail being shut down, Sid Salter, chief communications officer and director of the Office of Public Affairs at MSU, answered.
   “The email that the demand letter was communicated through was [email protected],” Salter said. “Mississippi State does not have dominion over yahoo.com. We don’t have ability to do that if we wanted to. And we don’t want to; we don’t operate that way.”
   In the email, the Lucky 7 outlined their demands of the university, which include the removal of the state flag as their top priority and issues such as equalized funding and support for black student organizations, better minority representation in faculty, diversity and sensitivity training for all faculty along with institutionalized diversity and sensitivity training for freshmen and others. They laid out a timeline for the demands to be met, with the latest date being Aug. 1, 2020. However, the demand to remove the flag is slated by the Lucky 7 to be met by May 1.
  In response to these demands, Salter described the process the university has been going through to meet the students’ concerns.
  “The list of demands that we received Monday, Dr. Keenum assigned that entire list to vice presidents, deans and directors with the instructions: vet these concerns, tell us what we are doing, crunch the data, and if you determine that we need to proactively respond in some way, make that recommendation back to him,” Salter said. “And that’s in the process right now.”
   For more information on the Lucky 7 and the issues they oppose, go to their website takeastandmsu.weebly.com. For Keenum’s statement on the flag, go to http://www.msstate.edu/newsroom/article/2015/07/media-advisory-statement-dr-mark-e-keenum/.
 

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Sarah Dutton | The Reflector

Students sit on the steps of Lee Hall demanding that the Mississippi state flag be removed from MSU's campus. The sit-in occurred after a rally at the flagpole and a march to Lee Hall.