Talkin' 'bout Ole Miss

Hi guys,

Today I thought I’d whip together a bit of info about Ole Miss so you can all learn a little bit about where I’m going to be spending my 4 months on exchange (and why I think it’s going to be amazing)!

The University of Mississippi (Ole Miss for short) is a public college in the rural college town of Oxford, Mississippi (1.5 hours south of Memphis, Tennessee), covering more than 2000 acres of land (feel free to have a geez at campus via this interactive map: https://map.olemiss.edu). The college was established in 1848 with 80 students, and now caters for nearly 25,000 students today across its 6 campuses (all in Mississippi) and online school (Oxford is the main campus though). About 60% of its students are from Mississippi, and it hosts international students from nearly 100 other countries. Over 5,000 students live on campus between nearly 20 residence buildings, as well as those who live in sorority houses. The most popular academic majors taken at Ole Miss include Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC), Marketing, Accountancy, Finance, Pharmaceutical sciences, and Elementary Education and Teaching.

Ole Miss’ school colours are cardinal red and navy blue, and their sports teams are known as the Rebels, with the Tony the Landshark as their current mascot.

Their fight song (played at sporting events by the marching band) is called “Forward Rebels”. A popular greeting among Ole Miss students is “Hotty Toddy”, the origin and original meaning of which is unknown but is believed to derived from the phrase “hoity toity” which opposing teams apparently used to use to mock Ole Miss students. There is also a Hotty Toddy chant which is always heard at sporting games.

Above: the Hotty Toddy chant

Below: the Hotty Toddy chant over the Forward Rebels fight song

Translation: Are you ready? Hell yeah! Damn right! Hotty Toddy, Gosh Almighty, who the hell are we? Hey! Flim flam, bim bam! Ole Miss by damn!

Ole Miss are part of the top athletics division in the country (National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division 1), and compete in the Southeastern Conference (SEC), considered by many to be the best conference in football due to its successful history. In Football, they’re also part of the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) (I’ll make a post in the future explaining college football in more depth – it’s super intricate and confusing).

West Division (left to right): Texas A&M, Arkansas, Louisiana State, Ole Miss, Mississippi State, Alabama, Auburn

East Division (left to right): Missouri, Vanderbilt, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina

Ole Miss is a massive sports school and is one of the reasons many students choose to attend. Ole Miss has teams that compete in a heap of different sports, including Football, Basketball, Baseball, Softball, Tennis, Volleyball, Soccer, Golf, Track and field, Cross country and Rifle (as well as non-varsity teams for Lacrosse and Rugby) (note: not all sports have a team for both genders). The Ole Miss campus therefore features a football stadium (Vaught-Hemingway stadium), basketball arena (The Pavilion), baseball stadium (Oxford-University Stadium/Swayze Field), soccer stadium, softball complex, athletics track, tennis courts, and a golf course, as well as other sport buildings that include gyms, jogging tracks, fitness studios, swimming pools, racquetball and squash courts, sand volleyball courts, indoor tennis courts, frisbee golf course, challenge course, and practice facilities for some of the varsity sports. Ole Miss certainly loves sport!

The Ole Miss football program (which is pretty much the key reason I chose to go in the fall semester) is one of the most successful, most well-known, most enjoyable things about the University of Mississippi. Football season at Ole Miss is a highlight of the academic year, with the 2019 season coming up this Fall beginning on the 31st of August for the Rebels. Ole Miss start the season with an away game, but 7 of their 12 games will be home games, and 3 of the 5 away games are less than a 3 hour drive away. So hopefully I can get to as many of the games as I can (and that my bank account can afford)! Among the many other playoff/end-of-season championships that are played at the end of the college football season, Ole Miss and Mississippi State compete in their own ‘Egg Bowl’ championship, an intra-state rivalry championship match that has been played since 1901, with the winner receiving the Golden Egg trophy and bragging rights. Currently Ole Miss leads the tally with 62 wins compared to Mississippi State’s 45. However, Ole Miss has only won 2 of the last 10 championships (they actually won 4 but had to forfeit 2 of those wins due to NCAA penalties). It is usually played on/around Thanksgiving weekend, and this year will be played on Thanksgiving day (Thursday November 28th) at Mississippi State (Starkville) and is the last scheduled game in their regular season this year.

Ole Miss student life is booming with nearly 400 student organisations, both social and academic, and inclusive of the 30+ fraternities and sororities. Roughly a third of undergraduate students are involved in Greek life at some point in their time at Ole Miss, with plenty choosing to live in the sorority/fraternity houses that many of the chapters have on campus. Greek life recruitment at Ole Miss chapter is said to be extremely competitive. Fraternities and sororities regularly run activities and hold parties that are open to all Ole Miss students, so I’m hoping I get to experience some of it in my time there.

Above: the Kappa Kappa Gamma house on campus

A couple of other fun facts about Ole Miss:

· Ole Miss is the university that Michael Oher ends up attending in the movie The Blind Side (and the end scene of the movie was actually filmed on campus)

· Ole Miss has its own bus service called the Oxford-University Transit which operates 14 routes that takes students (for free) around campus as well as into town and to other residential areas in Oxford

· Ole Miss operates the only legal marijuana farm and production facility in the country for use in approved research and for medical purposes (thought this was a bit of a lol)

· Ole Miss owns the nearby University-Oxford Airport, which is a small public airport alike to our local Tyabb airport

· In recent years it has been named both ‘most beautiful campus’ and recognised as one of the safest campuses in the US

· The Lyceum, an administration building, is the oldest building on campus and was once used as a hospital for troops during the Civil War

· Popular legal thriller author John Grisham attended Ole Miss for postgraduate law

Hope you all found all of this as interesting as I did and that it gives you a better insight into how incredible the University of Mississippi is. Thanks for reading!

- Emily xx