HATTIESBURG, Miss. – Southern Mississippi has revoked the scholarships of five members of its pep band who took part in the heckling of a Kansas State basketball player at last Thursday's NCAA men's basketball tournament game. Southern Miss issued an apology last week to Kansas State point guard Angel Rodriguez after he was the target of chants of "Where's your green card?" during the Wildcats' 70-64 second-round victory in the NCAA tournament. Rodriguez had 13 points and four assists in the game that was played in Pittsburgh...Rodriguez said last week that he accepted the apology because "there's ignorant people and I know that's not how they want to represent their university." Rodriguez said he doesn't pay attention to that "nonsense, especially because Puerto Rico is a commonwealth, so we don't need no type of papers."
First off, in this time of economic crisis, I honestly didn't think we were still giving out scholarships to hobbyists who play the tuba or whatever instrument these guys play...Just seems like if you're going to cut somewhere, this seems like a place to start...Not like Tuba and Drum Majors are generating money for the school or going on to wildly successful Tuba careers and donating large sums of their income back to the school.
But secondly, if you are going to give scholarships to local Tuba players, maybe make sure they can pass a basic social studies exam from the 4th grade...I've long just assumed that kids in the deep south of Mississippi were practicing coloring in the lines while me and my fellow educated, northern 12 year olds were learning about the Louisiana Purchase and Cloud formations, but this just confirms it. This is straight up embarrassing. I honestly don't know how, as an administrator at this school, you can allow these kids to stay without at least testing them on some basic US knowledge at this point...Like, give them the actual citizenship exam...hell it should probably be mandatory at Southern colleges anyway, just to make sure they know that the school lessons they learned as little kids in elementary school aren't in fact the truth, you know, like how they lost the war, and woman can vote, and Dred Scott was reversed.
Good lookin Deep South.
