You can tell a lot by looking at the layout of a campus. The University of Mississippi has rapidly expanded since it opened its doors in 1848, but has considered parts of its landscape worth preserving.
Take a look at a map of the university. One can tell the university has gone to great lengths to protect the Grove from extensive development, but more interesting and more important is the university’s axis. The axis is used in architecture to show, wordlessly, what’s important in a space. So what does the axis of The University of Mississippi’s campus show us today?
The axis of The University of Mississippi begins with University Avenue. Drawing a line from University Drive through the center of campus, you’ll hit, in order, the Confederate monument, the Circle, the Lyceum, the James Meredith statue, the J.D. Williams Library, the fountain and the Paris-Yates Chapel. An archaeologist examining the layout of the campus in 10,000 years would conclude that these buildings and landmarks, which have been preserved along the university’s axis, were most important to it.
The axis reflects a history of the university that many university supporters have found difficult to confront.
The first landmark on the university’s axis is not the Lyceum, but the Confederate Monument. It splits University Avenue.
The American flag is not before the monument on this axis, but after it in the middle of the Circle.
The Lyceum, which represents the university’s origins and also exists as the most salient symbol of the university’s mixed legacy, acts as a divider between the Confederate Monument and the James Meredith statue, between the university’s past and present. Yet this does not change that along the axis of the university, the Confederate monument speaks first and sets the tone for all of the other landmarks and institutions that come after it.
The university’s administration and alumni have learned the importance of symbolism and are to be commended for their attempts to change or counter the controversial symbols of the university, like the renaming of Confederate Drive or the very existence of the James Meredith statue itself, against staunch opposition from university supporters who think more of the university’s past than its future.
But the time is coming when university officials will have to confront that the Confederate Monument’s central place on campus undermines their larger goal to bring The University of Mississippi into the twenty-first century. The culture they are trying to change is not just atmospheric, but carved into the very landscape. We must make these efforts, or else all that administrators, professors and students have tried to change about the university can be undermined by simply looking at a map.
Whitney Barringer is a doctoral candidate in history from Bismarck, Arizona.
