http://www.ihl.state.ms.us/newsstory.asp?ID=354

BOARD PASSES TUITION WAIVER, HEARS OF STORM DAMAGE AND ASSISTANCE



9/15/2005 (JACKSON ) -
Today the Board of Trustees of the Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning (IHL), in a meeting abbreviated by conditions resulting from Hurricane Katrina, passed a measure allowing the state’s public universities to waive nonresident tuition for students displaced by the storm.  The Board, mindful of pressing personal and institutional needs resulting from the storm, met by teleconference to save Board members, university presidents, and staff members the expense and time required to travel to Jackson.
 
The Board also heard from the institutional executive officers, who shared accounts of damage to university campuses and of the rallying of university communities to offer aid to students and others affected by the storm.  Universities’ damages ranged from the destruction of most of the University of Southern Mississippi’s Gulf Park campus to water, roof, and tree damage at the state’s northernmost institutions.  In response to the storm’s effects, each of the state’s public university campuses has enrolled displaced students; additional assistance provided by the universities includes temporary housing for those students’ families and for other evacuees, counseling for those affected by the storm, financial support, and a wide range of other services and support.
 
Board President Virginia Shanteau Newton, after hearing of damage to the universities and their responses to the emergency, said, “I want to commend our universities for their compassionate and generous response to this crisis.  Our system and our state will be dealing with the ramifications of this storm for months and years to come.”  The Board also gave temporary emergency authority to the Board president to respond as needed to issues prompted by the hurricane and its effects.
 
In addition, Board members honored Dr. Richard Crofts, commissioner of higher education, as the September meeting will be the last one he will attend in his ten-month service with IHL.  Virginia Newton praised Crofts’ professionalism and initiative in “seeing us through a very difficult time.”  The new commissioner of higher education, Dr. Thomas Meredith, will assume the duties of commissioner beginning October 1st.
 
In other business, the Board approved routine requests on campus building and renovation projects, traffic regulations, and personnel actions.
 
The next regularly scheduled meeting of the Board of Trustees will be October 20, 2005.