University of Mississippi

Sarah Dale, one of my former undergraduate students at Texas Tech, posted some pictures on her Facebook page of a family trip to the University of Mississippi. With Sarah's permission, I'm reprinting some of her photos. Ole Miss, as folks commonly refer to the university, is situated in the small town of Oxford, Mississippi. Oxford's population is only 19,000, although according to one of the sources I read, the larger area including surrounding counties has a total population of about 300,000. Any good college town will have an adjacent student-oriented commercial district and Oxford is no exception, with The Square (below).

I assume Square Books actually sells rectangular-shaped books. Also on The Square is the music club, the Lyric Oxford.

Information on The Square in Oxford is available at this link (when the page comes up, scroll down below the hotel information). The following building would certainly fit in architecturally on a college campus, but it actually appears to be the Lafayette County Courthouse.

Attending a football game appeared to be one of the Dale family's main priorities on the trip. Shown below is the Ole Miss Walk of Champions, through which the Rebels proceed into the stadium a few hours before kick-off.

Texas Tech football coach Tommy Tuberville, who previously held the same position at Mississippi, instituted the new "tradition" of Raider Walk upon his arrival earlier this fall in Lubbock. Finally, it's game time at Ole Miss...

University of St. Thomas (Downtown Minneapolis Professional Campus)

Downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota, which I visited recently for an academic conference, features not only the traditional shimmering skyscrapers...

...but also quirky features such as a building with an entire wall painted like a musical score...

....and a statue commemorating the Mary Tyler Moore Show of the 1970s, the storyline of which was that her character, Mary Richards, worked in a Twin Cities television newsroom. As those of a certain age will recall, the opening sequence accompanying the theme song culminated in Mary tossing her hat in the air in a moment of joy.

In terms of colleges, the only one I was aware of in the immediate downtown area is the professional-school campus of the University of St. Thomas (whose main campus is in St. Paul). Shown below is the Opus College of Business and environs. Note the linkage of buildings by enclosed bridge/walkway, an extensive network of which exists in the downtown area to shield workers and visitors from the city's brutal winters.

I had hoped to also visit the nearby University of Minnesota campus, but ran out of time. For those interested in the University of Minnesota, we have a couple of photographs taken by my colleague Kazuko Behrens and displayed previously on this blog.