THE DAILY
MISSISSIPPIAN
Friday, May 1, 2015
Volume 103, No. 129
T H E S T U D E N T N E W S PA P E R O F T H E U N I V E R S I T Y O F M I S S I S S I P P I S E R V I N G O L E M I S S A N D OX F O R D S I N C E 1 9 1 1
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Bruce Jenner is braver than you
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Rebels travel to Missouri to face Tigers
Ole Miss two-man group to perform tonight
Nepal disaster affects UM students
Living wage campaign An Ole Miss professor initiates long-term class project to raise the minimum wage on campus.
CLARA TURNAGE
Scturna1@go.olemiss.edu
AP PHOTO: ATSUSHI TAKETAZU
Survivors and evacuees bring out their belongings and personal property from the collapsed houses in Nepal on April 29.
LOGAN KIRKLAND dmeditor@gmail.com
As campus slept, one country was brought to the ground: buildings decimated, families displaced and people dead. Sophomore Doug Adhikari woke up on a normal day in Mississippi to see multiple missed calls and text messages. Unsure of what was wrong, he called his family back. On Wednesday, April 25, a 7.9 magnitude earthquake destroyed many cities in Nepal. The memories of Adhikari’s home lay in the rubble
“You forget to feel. You breakdown, you just don’t know what to think,” said Adhikari, a finance major. “You almost have this sense of guilt that you’re not there trying to help.” As the days pass, the death toll continues to increase above 5,000. “It keeps climbing every time I check, and it traumatizes you,” Adhikari said. Adhikari continues to call or text his family to check on the progress they and the country has made. He said his parents continue to say ”It’s ok” and “We are fortunate to be alive”
and that, even though this disaster has happened, life will go on. Despite their reassurances, he can recognize the impact this event has had on their lives. “You can hear it in their voice that they are terrorized by this whole event,” Adhikari said. After the earthquake, Adhikari’s parents, who reside in Kathmandu, slept in their car for three nights because it was not safe to be back in the house due to the aftershocks, which are strong as well. “The first three days was probably the worst time I
SEE NEPAL PAGE 5
After years of working, Tonia Adams’ hands are callused but agile. “I tell you: my day is so long,” Adams said. “These hands, oh God, they hurt so bad sometimes because I work so much on them. I’m constantly doing something with these hands. But I love everything I do.” Adams has worked on the cleaning staff of the Chi Omega sorority house for 15 years. Every morning, she gets up at 5 a.m. and heads to the first of her three jobs, which include cleaning condos off campus and delivering newspapers for the Oxford Eagle. “The reason I picked up the (third) job is because my daughter went to college and, me, I’m a single mom,” Adams said. “Her father was killed in a car crash last year. That left me with a lot on me.” She works for a yearly wage of less than $22,000 a year, or less than $11 an hour. Her wages keep her afloat, but no more. Sociology professor James Thomas thinks wages shouldn’t work this way. He said a salary should enable you to buy food, housing and security without public assistance. So, Thomas
launched a living wage campaign in his social problems class this semester to raise the minimum pay at the university to $17.28 an hour. He said unsustainable wages cross the lines of race, gender and class – making it applicable to both workers on campus and students interested in social problems. “When we think about a living wage issue, the people who work the jobs that pay below a living wage threshold proportionally are overrepresented by people of color and women,” Thomas said. “This isn’t just an issue about class or income. Living wage is a really comprehensive way to address systemic, intersecting, durable inequalities.” All semester, the students in Thomas’ class have written claims and groundwork for the campaign. Ian Whalen, a senior sociology major, said this class has differed from others he has taken in the field. “A regular sociology class really focuses on the theory of action,” Whalen said. “We talk about social movements and social concepts. But in this class, we’re actually going out and doing activist work.”
SEE LIVING WAGE PAGE 4
Blurred lines in Mississippi immigration program politics KARSON BRANDENBURGHOAGLAND knbrande@go.olemiss.edu
Washington, D.C. - Discussion of immigration reform may look red and blue in news reports, divided along political lines, but, in Mississippi, it’s a little more gray. President Obama issued a series of executive actions November 20, prompting a whole new conversation about immigration. These actions included expansion of the current Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program and initiation of a new program, Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents. The first allows persons who arrived in the United States before 1964
and before they were 16 years old to avoid deportation by applying for deferred action while they worked toward citizenship. The second, and more recent, allows for parents of children born here to also get on board with delayed deportation while they work toward citizenship. Immigration isn’t something that solely affects states on the border, where tempers have flared and immigration is caught up in volatile political battles. Realistically, southern agricultural states like Mississippi are at the forefront of the battle, too. Immigration impacts agricultural states like Mississippi because agricultural industries— farming, shrimping, etc. — need migrant workers for things like picking crops and manning
crews on the shrimp boats. Hence, the gray hue of immigration reform is evident in Mississippi politics. Run by Republican politicians, the state must balance political loyalties with the needs of Mississippians. Sen. Thad Cochran, a Mississippi Republican, has been long-involved in a battle to keep new regulations from hampering the H-2B temporary visa program for foreign workers, which allows seasonal immigrants to supplement the workforce, especially in the Gulf Coast states. “Shrimpers, foresters and other seasonal industries across Mississippi rely on the H-2B program to supplement their permanent workforce as they
SEE POLITICS PAGE 5
COURTESY: ERICA NITSCHKE
Laura Vazquez the Senior Immigration Legislative Analyst for the National Council of La Raza speaks at a meeting.