Married student housing is seen Tuesday, April 7, 2015 at the University of Mississippi. (DM Photo | Cady Herring)
Behind the law school building, a few modest brick buildings serve as on-campus housing for graduate and undergraduate students who have families of their own. And, although these students are in the minority, the university has a history of providing them a place to live.
In David Sansing’s “The University of Mississippi: A Sesquicentennial History,” the early 1900s saw a great increase in the enrollment of married students. In order to keep up with the growing numbers, two cottages were built, two others were repaired and all of those apartments were rented to married students.
Then, nearly 50 years later, the ending of World War II brought an influx of students to the university, and enrollment began growing significantly year-by-year. John David Williams, who was chancellor at the time, had housing constructed from war surplus buildings in 1947 so that married veterans had a place to live. For a more permanent solution to a growing university, Williams had a 25 year campus development plan drafted. From this project came, Carrier Hall, Shoemaker Hall, J.D. Williams library and a set of buildings for married students in the early 1960s.
Nearly three decades later, Daniel and Terry Tucker occupied one of those apartments from 1989 to 1991. They told their son, Clinton, a senior journalism major from Booneville, what it was like to live there.
“Obviously, it wasn’t their first choice to live when they got married,” Tucker said. “But they have always told me good stories about their experience, probably because they had my brother while living there. Just like today, there were a lot of international students, so every night there would be a melting pot of smells seeping through their walls. The neighbor directly beneath them cooked curry routinely.”
Most of those married student buildings were demolished prior to the construction of the 4-year-old Robert C. Khayat Law Center, and today only two sets of those buildings, now called The Village, remain.
“There is a little less than a 50-50 split of Mississippi residents versus residents from outside of Mississippi, where the out-of-staters are the majority,” said Tom Park, area coordinator for student housing. “And of that majority, international students make up most of them.”
Brittany Jones, a sophomore social work major from Oxford, is glad that her four children have been exposed to other cultures while living at The Village.
“That’s something we probably wouldn’t have experienced if we weren’t living here,” Jones said. “We’re all like a little community. Our kids play together, and most of the time we all look out for one another.”
The housing cost for the family section of The Village is either $8,482 or $8,976, depending on whether they reside in a renovated or un-renovated apartment, Park said.
“This ends up being approximately $707 – $748 per month inclusive of all utilities (and) university Wi-Fi access,” he said.
Jones finds the rent at The Village one of its best selling points.
“I decided to move to student housing because I could focus more on schooling without having to work so much to pay the high cost of living in Oxford, and it would allow me to spend more time with my kids,” she said.
Johnny Neumann, former professional basketball player and coach, also lives at The Village. At 64 years old, Neumann has returned to Ole Miss with his wife and daughter to finish his degree.
“The main concern I had for my family is that my wife is from Eastern Europe, and I wanted her and our little girl to feel safe and have other children and families around us that would be easy to meet and become friends with,” Neumann said. “For us, living in The Village apartments has been fantastic. It’s great for the kids, and it makes it much easier to get to class with the buses that run each day and stop right in front of The Village apartments.”
Jones said though her overall experience has been very positive as well, there are some things that will remain a challenge for those with small children sharing a campus with traditional undergraduate students at Ole Miss, however, Jones said.
“After games, if you aren’t at home before the traffic lets out, you’re pretty much screwed,” Jones said. “Then there are the frat parties that keep you up all night.”
Jones said she thinks additional student family apartments should be built because there are “more people (that) can benefit from them.”
