Student Jordan Samson withdrew from Ole Miss after apologizing for a Facebook comment that sparked a student protest in the Lyceum on Sept. 23.
“I hope you can find forgiveness in your hearts for me,” Samson said in a statement from the university Wednesday. “I do not want this post to define who I am.”
Though Samson is withdrawing from the university as a student, he is not leaving campus, according to Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Brandi Hephner LaBanc.
Samson will work with the William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation and the Center for Inclusion and Cross Cultural Engagement in a practice called restorative justice.
“We will be checking in with him weekly and then meeting biweekly to keep up,” Hephner LaBanc said. “He’ll be in our community but not in classes.”
The statement released by the university said Samson “will develop a plan that will provide him with learning opportunities and restorative justice activities.”
Hephner LaBanc said Samson withdrew from the university voluntarily.
“He agreed to all of this on his own. This was not a sanction the university gave him,” Hephner LaBanc said. “I think it was a mutual conversation in getting to that point.”
Around 8:30 Wednesday morning, Hephner LaBanc and other members of the university administration met with leaders of the UM NAACP. Makala McNeil, who was in the meeting, said they wanted feedback on whether or not the revised statement the chancellor sent out on Sept. 23 was satisfactory.
“They want to make this an integrated part of students and administration working together,” McNeil said. “For us, we don’t want to have to do a sit-in and a protest every time this happens.”
Rather, McNeil said she hopes that when students have issues on campus in the future, they will find administration open to feedback.
William Winter Institute Academic Director Jennifer Stollman said the UM NAACP will also be involved in creating the curriculum for Samson’s involvement with the university for the remainder of the semester.
“That program will be fashioned according to the goals and needs of Jordan Samson as well as the other campus stakeholders. That’s how restorative justice operates,” Stollman said.
Late Sept. 22, Samson commented on another student’s Facebook post about riots in Charlotte, North Carolina. The comment said he had a “tree with room for all of them if you want to settle this Wild West style.”
The comment led to a peaceful protest, where more than 100 students sat in and throughout the hallways around the Lyceum. The students protested both the comment Samson made as well as the way the university responded to it.
After three hours of protesting, the leaders met with university administration and talked about what was wrong with the initial response of the university and what the administration could do next.
After the meeting, Hephner LaBanc said university met with Samson.
“The first thing out of his mouth is that he wanted to apologize,” Hephner LaBanc said. “I’m not going to condone anything he said. It was absolutely inappropriate, absolutely racist and scary. But he from the get-go had the approach of ‘I want to do the right thing, because I clearly didn’t do the right thing.’”
The university’s full statement was released this morning.
