Jackson State University
Last week, the Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning (IHL) trustee board agreed to a 10-year, $1.518 million lease agreement on behalf of Jackson State University (JSU) for 8,600 square feet at an office complex on Galleria Parkway in Madison. The location provides JSU “greater potential to increase other race enrollment, thus allowing the university to come closer to attaining its 10 percent Ayers minority enrollment status,” according to an IHL report.
“Diversity is part of our DNA. We would hope that we would get a diverse population there [in Madison],” says Eric Stringfellow, the JSU director of communications.
Along with the other Mississippi HBCUs, JSU has a 10 percent minority status goal that’s based on the settlement of the Ayers v. Fordice lawsuit, which was filed in 1975 and decided 27 years later, in 2002.
The case plaintiff, the late Jake Ayers Sr., filed the lawsuit on behalf of his son, a JSU student, contending that the JSU education fell far short to that at Mississippi’s historically White universities. Part of the remedy for what federal courts found to be basically segregated universities has required the state’s historically Black schools to boost non-Black enrollment such that it reaches or exceeds a 10 percent other-race goal for three consecutive years.
JSU data provided by Stringfellow showed that JSU achieved 9.63 percent non-Black total enrollment in Fall 2012, up from 8.83 percent in Fall 2011 and 7.9 percent in Fall 2010.
“I think when you look at Madison, it’s probably one of the fastest growing areas in the state of Mississippi. … So for us, it’s an incredible opportunity to grow our enrollment, and we have some specific enrollment goals, and we think this campus could be key in helping us reach those goals,” says Stringfellow.
