A group of students calling themselves the Lucky 7 organized a sit-in on Wednesday to protest the continued use of the Mississippi state flag on Mississippi State University’s campus.
The group released a webpage Tuesday night claiming responsibility for some of the chalkings that appeared around campus last week, specifically the messages bringing awareness to the history behind Confederate Heritage month and the Mississippi state flag. They also announced their intent to protest and clarified other facts about their origin, their demands and difficulties they have faced.
Their demands include the removal of the state flag from campus, equalized funding for black student organizations, minority faculty representation and proactive programming and resources to increase the retention rate of African Americans, with the removal of the flag being their top priority.
One such obstacle they spoke on was having their e-mail deleted after being in contact with the university.
Wilburn Smith, a member of the group, said the e-mail, [email protected], was reported and shut down after they e-mailed the university with a list of demands they felt should be acknowledged, though he stressed they are focused solely on the removal of the flag first.
“We e-mailed the president along with other administrators here on campus—department heads, 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.”
In a press conference held in Lee Hall, directly above the protest, Sid Salter, chief communications officer and director of the office of public affairs at MSU, stepped in for President Mark Keenum to address the e-mail issue.
“The e-mail that the demand letter was communicated through was [email protected],” Salter said, as claps and yelling from the protest downstairs could be heard in the conference room. “Mississippi State does not have dominion over yahoo.com. We don’t have the ability to do that if we wanted to. And we don’t want to, we don’t operate that way.”
More to come regarding the protest and the issue’s surrounding the state flag on MSU’s campus.