‘They Are Starting To Pay Attention’
President Ronald Mason talks about how Jackson State University is raising its profile.
Ronald Mason Jr. may be the only college president in the United States who’s had the experience of running a major city’s public housing authority. While serving as general counsel at Tulane University in the late 1990s, Mason was charged with the task of overseeing the Housing Authority of New Orleans after city officials sought to avert a takeover by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Federal officials accepted a compromise when Tulane University partnered with the city of New Orleans and appointed Mason to revitalize the troubled housing authority.
Mason says the housing authority experience has served him well as president of Jackson State. He talks to Diverse senior writer Ronald Roach about the impact it had on him and the challenges of running a university.
DI: What did you see early on as challenges?
RM: The biggest challenge for this institution, like most HBCUs, is resources. [Jackson State] has been historically underfunded. Still, because of the state we’re in and the economy we’re in, we’re stretched thin because we’ve always been given the task of educating public servants — primarily teachers, social workers and so forth. And because of the history of segregation in America, there’s not a lot of wealth among the alumni. [They’re] hardworking people and good people, they just don’t have millions and billions of disposable income.
DI: Given that the school has carved out a thriving niche as an urban-based research institution, do you see Jackson State having to further negotiate the role it plays in Mississippi and its relationship with the state?
