10s of Oxford: Fostering Community Engagement

These ladies of Oxford and University of Mississippi work hard in servicing and connecting with the community. To us their hard work makes them true 10s in ours eyes.

Jennifer Petermann

She is the director of the Oxford-Lafayette Humane Society for the past four years. Under her leadership the shelter increased its relationship to the community. An example of this is its partnership with Hollywood Feed where they feature animals at the store on the first of every Saturday. The shelter has numerous charities from the annual Paws for Art to themed fundraisers like the OLHS Angels tree last Christmas.

Her hard work comes from her sincere love for animals. She pets every one of them and loves on them as much as she can every day in the shelter. Even though the shelter is for Oxford and Lafayette she helps neighboring counties and cities from Batesville to New Albany. We salute her four years of great work and to many more years.

Eleanor Anthony

Eleanor Anthony is a senior Honors student at University of Mississippi and an editor at Populi Magazine. The magazine may be small but she and her fellow editors aim to create in-depth campus-wide conversations with it.

Anthony said the second issue would focus on how we look at student-athletes and whether the standards we hold them to are fair or not, spoken or undefined, moving into a third issue on why fiction is important to understanding our culture past and present.

The fourth issue hits home, focusing on the difference between when we are the University of Mississippi and when we are Ole Miss.

“We as a school are branded differently as both the university and Ole Miss, and I think collectively, we identify with one or the other based on what we’re doing,” Anthony said. “It’s been a controversial topic for us recently, so we want to see what students think. A lot of administrators, professors, alumni have entered that conversation, but not really the students.”

We honor her vision and are looking forward to the upcoming issues of the Populi Magazine.

Janet McCarthy

McCarthy is an University of Mississippi graduate who found her calling, Cotton’s Cafe Dog Treat Barkery, thanks to her best friend, a rescue puppy named Cotton. She came across the puppy’s abandoned litter in the woods and took her in. Under her love the puppy grew but McCarthy noticed that Cotton had a sensitive stomach. She then decided to test honey to see if it would help with her allergies, and from that she began making dog treats from scratch with natural ingredients sans preservatives.

From her love for her puppy she began selling treats made with locally bought ingredients used in her treats. Her community outreach helped support local farms and their markets in Oxford which led to her partnership with the local pet stores and also the Oxford-Lafayette Humane Society shelter that shared in her sincere care for animals’ well-being. Now she sells treats at 32 locations in Mississippi and Louisiana.

Callie Daniels is a staff writer for HottyToddy.com. She can be reached at callie.daniels@hottytoddy.com.