JAMES L. ROBERTSON 1L was editor of the Dally Mississippian last year.

In the fall of 1958 an English professor at the University of Mississippi told his freshman class that "before you leave this university, you will come to question every belief which you now hold."

Since that time many events have occurred which have made the University of Mississippi known to people around the world. Some know it as the school whose football teams have appeared in major bowl games in 9 of the past 11 years (winning 6). Others know it as the school whose girls took the Miss American crown in 1959 and 1960.

Still another group knows this university as one of the leading producers of Rhodes Scholars in the South, while others know Ole Miss because it is location in the home town of William Faulkner.

Unfortunately, however, a great many people today know of the most tragic of all Southern efforts of massive resistance to forced integration. Many people now think of the University of Mississippi as an institution whose student body is dominated by rabid racists, whose administration is spineless and acquiescent when the politicians of the state start playing rough.

Still, beneath this image of Ole Miss which has been sent around the world by the news media, there continues the questioning of beliefs, the search for new ideas and the analysis of old ones, the giving and taking of thoughts and opinions. Southern theories of racial inequality, the constitutional defense of states' rights, and the public careers of the major Southern politicians are constant topics for theses, term papers, and classroom discussion.

The English professor who addressed his freshman class five years ago is now Provost of the University, a position second in authority to that of the Chancellor. His ideas on the purpose of the university have not changed, and throughout the turmoil, the administration, though exercising discretion not to offend the state legislature which, for better or for worse, controls the purse strings of the university, has seen that these ideas have continued in effect.

Chartered in 1844, the University of Mississippi began its first session with a faculty of four members offering instruction in a general curriculum in the liberal arts. The university now includes Schools of Law, Engineering, Education, Medicine, Pharmacy, Business and Government, and Nursing, as well as a Graduate School.

Today the university has a geometrically increasing enrollment which is pushing toward 6,000, with campus in both Oxford and Jackson. All schools except Medicine and Nursing are located on the Oxford campus.

The faculty and administrative staff now number approximately 500, and the educational facilities of the university have so expanded that masters degrees are given in 17 fields and Ph.D's in nine.

When a barometer other than news paper reports is used, the darkest period through which Ole Miss has passed between 1884 to 1963 not the riots last fall, but rather the late 1920's, the days when prohibition, anti-evolution laws, and the Ku Klux Klan flourished. Then Gov. Theodore G. Bilbo had well over 100 professors and administrators fired and replaced by his political supporters.

Though the university lost its accreditation immediately, the incident awakened Mississippians to the dangers of a system of higher education subject to the whims of a governor who more likely than not would consider colleges a part of the patronage pool.

Consequently, after Bilbo left office, a constitutional amendment created a 12-man Board of Trustees for all the state's colleges and universities. The board is answerable for its policies to no one except itself, and only four of its members are appointed by each governor.

Though the Board has been subject to criticism from the state's politicians, the only instance of one of its decisions being circumvented occurred last fall. After the first of the three Barnett-Meredith meetings, the Board announced its decision to obey the court order and admit Meredith. The remainder of Gov. Barnett's actions were in violation of the constitution of the state.

Trustees Independent