Mahoghany Jordan, a senior at the University of Mississippi, said her Saturday night out in Oxford, Miss., “went exactly as planned.” But by Wednesday night, social-media notifications were rolling in: She and another woman were the unwitting subjects of a Facebook post by Ed Meek, a former longtime administrator whose name tops the university’s Meek School of Journalism and New Media.
Or subscribe now to read with unlimited access for as low as $10/month.
Don’t have an account? Sign up now.
A free account provides you access to a limited number of free articles each month, plus newsletters, job postings, salary data, and exclusive store discounts.
Mahoghany Jordan, a senior at the University of Mississippi, said her Saturday night out in Oxford, Miss., “went exactly as planned.” But by Wednesday night, social-media notifications were rolling in: She and another woman were the unwitting subjects of a Facebook post by Ed Meek, a former longtime administrator whose name tops the university’s Meek School of Journalism and New Media.
Ed Meek, a donor and former administrator at the U. of Mississippi, used photos of two black female students to illustrate what he called the degradation of Oxford, Miss., where the university is located. He later apologized.U. of Mississippi
“Enough, Oxford and Ole Miss leaders, get on top of this before it is too late,” Meek’s post said, referring to fights and arrests in the city center after a Saturday-night football game. “A 3 percent decline in enrollment is nothing compared to what we will see if this continues … and real estate values will plummet as will tax revenue.” The post’s only attachments were photos of the two black women, dressed for a night out.
The university’s response was swift. Within the night, Chancellor Jeffrey S. Vitter replied to the post online, amid hundreds of comments and shares. “While we all want to ensure a safe, family-friendly environment at the university and in Oxford,” he wrote, “I must condemn the tone and content of Ed Meek’s post from earlier today. The photos in his post suggest an unjustified racial overtone that is highly offensive.” Vitter urged Meek to delete the post and apologize.
Eventually, Meek, who graduated from the university in the 1960s, issued an apology “to those offended by my post,” which he also deleted. “My intent was to point out we have a problem in The Grove and on the Oxford Square.”
“I am sorry I posted those pictures, but there was no intent to imply a racial issue,” Meek added in another apology, on Vitter’s Facebook page. Meek did not respond to a request for comment.
After a meeting of senior leaders, the university announced that a “listening session for the UM community” would be held Thursday night.
“This social media post was deeply hurtful because of the sentiment conveyed about the presence of African-Americans in Oxford and at Ole Miss,” the university said in a statement. “We are outraged that photographs of two of our female African-American students were used to make this point.”
As of Thursday afternoon, more than 1,800 people had signed an online petition to remove Meek’s name from the media school, the recipient of his $5.3-million gift.
“We have heard the calls for the Meek name to be removed from our building,” said Will Norton Jr., dean of the media school, in a video statement. The school expects to make a recommendation on the matter to Chancellor Vitter “in the very near future,” he said.
On Wednesday night, one of the women, Mahoghany Jordan, told local reporters she was “baffled” by the post. By Thursday afternoon, she had submitted a guest column to the campus’s student newspaper.
ADVERTISEMENT
“We weren’t the ones fighting Alabama fans at a tent in the Grove, we weren’t harassing our LGBTQIA+ counterparts, nor were we the ones fighting in front of bars around the Square,” Jordan wrote. “However, somehow for Meek, the blame for the university’s enrollment decline and city’s decline in property value was easier to associate with two women of color as opposed to the particular demographic that has been at the forefront of the school’s most controversial moments by far.”
“The post reeks of racist ideology as well as misogyny and is not representative of who either of us are,” Jordan continued, adding that “one should never use the physical appearance of a person as a measurement of their morality.”
On Thursday, The Clarion-Ledger, a newspaper in Jackson, Miss., noted that Meek wrote a recent column remembering his time, as a freshman in the late 1950s, as “Campus Cuties Editor” at the student paper, where he curated “cheesecake” photos of “the campus’s most beautiful coeds.”
Steven Johnson is an Indiana-born journalist who’s reported stories about business, culture, and education for The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Washington Post, and The Atlantic.
