‘System of privilege’: How well-connected students get Mississippi State’s best dorms

Mississippi State University’s housing department has a confidential practice of helping certain well-connected students secure spots in its newest and most expensive dorms, while the premium price tag pushes many less privileged students into the campus’s older, cheaper halls.

It starts when donors, public officials, legacy alumni or other friends of the institution make a request for what the university calls “housing assignment assistance.”

Then, the Department of Housing and Residence Life works to place these students in the dorms they desire.

The practice is not an official university policy, and it’s not advertised on Mississippi State’s website. But inside the housing department, it is institutionalized. Many full-time staff refer to the process by the phrase “five star,” a reference to the euphemistic code — 5(asterisk) — the department used to assign well-connected students in its housing database, documents show.

In recent years, the department changed the process to make it more internal. 5(asterisk) has remained a virtual secret on campus — until now.

That’s partly because the department’s leadership has worked to keep the process under wraps, even going so far as to explicitly tell staff not to share information about 5(asterisk) outside of the department, according to emails Mississippi Today obtained through a public records request.

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“Family business reminder – We/you don’t air to others,” Dei Allard, the department’s executive director, wrote in an email four years ago to high-up staff in the department. “Basically, only a handful of those within our organization should be privileged to have this information… i.e. keep your mouth shut.”

In response, one staff member noted that processes like this likely exist at universities across the country, while another raised concerns that 5(asterisk) results in students receiving preferential treatment, such as a better room assignment or a new room if they aren’t satisfied with their initial draw, because of who they know.

“The name itself is an issue in my opinion,” wrote Jessica Brown, the department’s assignments coordinator at the time. “I think this has created a very unfair system and a system of privilege. I think that it in a way causes other students to be unknowingly discriminated against such as based on their economic social status.”

The university did not grant an interview to Mississippi Today about the 5(asterisk) practice. Allard declined to provide more information beyond the university’s official response.

Through written statements, a spokesperson denied the process results in better treatment of well-connected students, referring to 5(asterisk) as a form of assistance the department works to provide to all types of students.

“There is a long-standing broad administrative practice of providing assignment assistance to those students who request it when that’s possible by price point and housing availability to do so,” Sid Salter, the university’s vice president for strategic communications, wrote in response to Mississippi Today’s questions and findings.

Nevertheless, Salter did not deny the housing department uses the term 5(asterisk) to refer to the practice and the students who benefit from it. He acknowledged the housing department sets aside about 120 beds for 5(asterisk) students each year and confirmed which dorms they typically request — Magnolia, Moseley, Oak, Dogwood and Deavenport halls. And, Salter was able to estimate that the department has helped roughly 100 5(asterisk) students each year, who are mostly white and wealthier.

“Not exclusively correct, but generally so,” Salter wrote. “We certainly have received housing assignment requests from non-white students.”

The university does not know when the 5(asterisk) designation started, Salter wrote, only that it predates the beginning of Mark Keenum’s presidency in 2009 and began as a response to requests “from legacy (multi-generational) alumni, university donors, university partners, institutional friends, public officials and others who asked for help.”

Though emails obtained by Mississippi Today do not reflect that staff who were familiar with the process thought 5(asterisk) students received the label based on academics, Salter wrote the practice has also been used to recruit “academic stars” who tie their enrollment to housing preferences such as location, cost, amenities and affinity groups.

“Why would any university not be responsive to such requests if possible?” Salter wrote.

A different housing assignment process exists for student athletes or those with certain scholarships like the Luckyday Scholars Program for students who are community leaders.

At one point, the process of helping 5(asterisk) students land in their preferred dorm appeared to include a system for labeling these students in the university’s housing database. The department had what appears to be instructions for how to assign the status to the housing application profiles “for each 5 star and roommate of a 5 star,” according to an unlabeled document obtained by Mississippi Today.

That document is no longer used, and the department does not know when it was created. Salter wrote that housing no longer uses the 5(asterisk) label in its database and does not keep a separate list of 5(asterisk) students.

Mississippi State believes the practice is widespread at similar universities across the state and country, Salter wrote, adding the university “is curious why we are being singled out among Mississippi institutions when significant housing issues are in the headlines at other state schools.”

Unfairness exists in the dorms at universities across the country, experts say. That could look like a wealthy parent who knows how to pull strings for their students or a dorm that is priced too high for lower-income students.

“It’s not just a Mississippi thing,” said Elizabeth Armstrong, a University of Michigan sociology professor whose 2015 book, “Paying for the Party”, examined the different experiences students have in college, including in the dorms, based on their socioeconomic class.

Still, Armstrong said she had never heard of a process as blatant as Mississippi State’s, which she described as tipping the scale in favor of privileged students who are already more likely to be able to live in the priciest dorms because their families can afford to foot the bill.

“The sense they are trying to keep it a secret suggests they know this is something they shouldn’t be doing,” she said.

Emails show housing department staff believed the 5(asterisk) practice meant preferential treatment

No issues with the 5(asterisk) process have been raised to the administration, Salter wrote.

But emails obtained by Mississippi Today show housing department staff who were involved in the process had concerns or at least knew the practice troubled their employees.

In June 2020, Allard, who had been the executive director since 2017, asked her staff to describe the 5(asterisk) process in the same email where she cautioned them against sharing information about it outside the department.

The request came at a salient time: Colleges across the country were issuing statements in support of diversity, equity and inclusion amid the George Floyd protests. Days earlier, thousands had gathered in Jackson in one of the state’s largest protests against racial inequities since the civil rights movement.

The responses show what staff on the ground understood the 5(asterisk) status to mean: Better room assignments and help for VIP students with room changes and other housing issues.

“I’m not quite sure what the true definition is but from my understand it is students that we adjust based on the wants or needs of the President’s Office,” wrote Brown, who is no longer with the university.

But the 5(asterisk) students themselves were starting to push the practice beyond its original intent to things like room changes, Brown continued.

“I think they know that they have this privilege,” she wrote, “and this is why the process is starting to go further than just a better room assignment.”

Brown noted it was not up to staff to change the practice.

“Honestly I am not sure how this issue can be fixed,” Brown wrote. “I think that this issue has to be fixed starting from a higher executive level (outside of housing), but I am not sure if they are willing to do that.”

Danté Hill, the then-associate director of occupancy management and residential education, had a different perspective.

“I’m sure all campuses have some type of VIP resident,” wrote Hill, who is now the department’s facilities and maintenance director.“ It is just the nature to the political structure that is in place. I have not verified this with many campuses however.”

Hill wrote that he did not feel that 5(asterisk)s received special treatment, but his staff felt their decisions were overturned in instances involving those students. With access to the university’s housing database, they could see which students had the 5(asterisk) status.

“They do not see these students as a representative population,” he wrote. “They see these overall as privileged students not usually of color. I think this group is more honed in on inclusion and SJ (social justice) and wants to see fair treatment across the board and they see this process as the ability to allow a student whose family has some kind of connection to move in front of students who may have done everything the right way.”

Hill thought it would help if the department stopped using the label.

“I believe we may need to remove the classification and make this process more internal and not label these students as anything in particular,” he wrote. “I don’t know how we do this other than keeping emails on file when we place someone.”

University will continue 5(asterisk) practice

Mississippi State’s new construction dorms are already more likely to house wealthier and well-connected students in part because they can cost nearly $4,000 more than the campus’ traditional dorms, the seven residence halls built before 2005.

The 5(asterisk) practice contributes to the inequity, Armstrong said.

“It’s kind of like putting an extra thumb on the scale when the thumb is already way on the scale,” she said.

It also means the traditional dorms are more likely to house lower-income students. Mollie Brothers, a resident advisor during the 2020-21 school year, observed this when she oversaw Critz Hall, one of the university’s traditional-style dorms that was built in the 1950s and renovated in 2001.

More than half of the women on her floor were Black, she recalled, while her friends who worked in the new construction dorms oversaw floors that were almost entirely white.

“In the other dorms that weren’t as nice, it was definitely more diverse,” Brothers said.

Salter said the university does not have metrics to support this claim.

The university knows it has a shortage of new construction housing and is working to provide more options with the construction of Azalea Hall,a new dorm the university plans to open ahead of fall 2025 that will feature single rooms and restaurants, according to a press release.

But if history is an indication, when freshman start applying for a room in Azalea Hall, it follows that 5(asterisk)s would have an advantage, which the university did not deny.

“In this particular facility, Lucky Day Scholars will have primary preference, but we believe Azalea will be an extremely popular housing option,” Salter wrote.

After Allard’s email, the university made changes to its 5(asterisk) practice — it stopped notifying RAs which students on their floor were receiving housing assistance, therefore reducing the number of people who know about the status. Around the same time, the university also stopped applying the 5(asterisk) status to student profiles in its housing database, Salter wrote.

But Mississippi State said it would continue the practice.

Salter provided a statement from Regina Hyatt, the vice president for student affairs, who said the department’s housing policies are compliant with best practices and state and federal law.

“MSU works hard to assist all students who ask for help in the process, including students at every point on the socioeconomic continuum,” Hyatt said. “We will continue that practice as it (has) historically been part of our university’s traditions.”

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This story was originally published by Mississippi Today and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.