Ole Miss Continues Its March Toward “Relevancy”

by Al Benson Jr.

It seems that many of these colleges and universities in the South today don’t really feel “relevant” anymore, or maybe the proper term might be “politically correct” or more properly yet “culturally Marxist.” Somehow, it seems, their leadership and faculties must labor to convince  the cultural Marxists out there that they really, sincerely, want to play their game, but they have to do it in such a way that it will not alert those who still cherish Southern culture as to their true intent.

Therefore, they take the classical Fabian socialist approach that they might attain their intended destruction of Southern culture incrementally, all the while assuring those that might send their kids to be “educated” in their Ivory Towers that they really do treasure Southern culture and heritage, but, for the sake of being relevant in today’s changing world, they must work at soft-peddling that heritage just a bit, lest some Black Panther or Muslim terrorist become “offended.” For them the “sin” of offending someone is more heinous than the sin of adultery, which they really don’t consider all that bad anymore.

Ole Miss has gone in this direction. In its infinite wisdom, their leadership has decided to completely trash its Southern heritage and cultural background (incrementally of course) while assuring potential enrollees that this is the last thing they want to do. It may be the last thing they want to get caught doing, but hardly the last thing they really want to do.

I’ve worked at two different colleges over the years, one in the East and the other in the Midwest and from what I could see from either one, they seemed to think their mission was to “fundamentally transform”  the students sent to them so that their parents would hardly recognize them when they returned home. I had one lady even tell me once, “Since our daughter came here I don’t even know her anymore.” And she wasn’t happy with that. I told her “I could get fired for saying this to you but if you want your daughter back, taker her out of this school.” I don’t know if she ever did, but I felt it was sound advice. The “fundamental transformation” I have seen with many of these college kids is, in many cases, far from positive.

And at Ole Miss, this seems to be the plan also. They started out banning Confederate battle flags at ball games. That took awhile because, at first, the kids kept showing up with them at games anyway, but the school leadership persisted, and the kids, not realizing their heritage was under subtle attack, eventually started leaving the flags back at the dorm. Then they changed the school mascot. Col. Reb just had to go! He “offended” too many people, and who knows where all those people came from. Some may not have been Southerners who should have realized that, in the South, they don’t do things quite the same as they do in Trenton, New Jersey. Some may have been brainwashed Southern kids, because, as we know if we’ve done the homework, the brainwashing in public schools literally starts on the first day in Kindergarten.

Now it turns out the school band will be prevented from playing Dixie, while the school still talks of how it preserves Southern traditions–which it seems they are seeking to stab in the back culturally, one by one. What they want is a school that is totally identified with what they call the “New South.” And, as one man said years ago in a speech I heard “The New South is NO South.” He was right.

I wonder–how many of those that send their kids to Ole Miss that are from the South realize what is going on–and if they realized it would they be in agreement with it? And if they couldn’t agree with the hatchet job being done on their culture, would they consider putting their kids in some other school–if they could find another one that wasn’t doing the same thing? Years ago author William Lind wrote an article in which he called America’s colleges “little ivy-covered North Korea’s” He was right too.

The problem becomes more and more difficult for parents who want their youngsters to get a college education without being totally brainwashed. They really have to search to find places this can be accomplished and the number of such places seems to be diminishing.

There are some Christian colleges where this is possible, but you have to be careful there too, because some Christian colleges have also drunk the leftist Kool Aid, and may or may not even realize it. Parents in the South who want their Southern traditions and culture preserved for their children and grandchildren have got to be really discerning as to where they send them to college and I don’t envy them the homework they will have to do in making that decision in our culturally Marxist society today.