The Ole Miss Alumni “Recruiting” Season is in Full Swing

Photo by Jack Newsom

In 1852 Ole Miss created its first alumni association with 23 members. Now, 150 years later, it’s more than 25,000 members strong, and this is the time of year that “alumni recruiting” really gets going.

On one recent Saturday, Rebel fans found their way to the Pavilion for the eighth annual Rebel Road Trip. These alumni gathered from across the South to engage with people of all ages with one thing in common – a love of Ole Miss sports.

Senior Business Major Nicholas Myer says sports are a big part of what brought him to Ole Miss.

“Just growing up hanging out with my friends and coming up here to games and stuff, I just fell in love with it and I mean look at this atmosphere, how can you not love this,” says Myer.

At the Ole Miss Alumni Association, the objective is to continue to try to get people like Myer to come back, even after their tenure at the university is over.

Assistant Director of Alumni Affairs Sunny Brown says that sports play the largest role in bringing post graduates back.

“The first thing that draws alumni in is any athletic event. I would say baseball, football,
definitely more so basketball this year than other years, but those are the big sporting events, for alumni — that’s kind of what we base all of our events around,” says Brown. “We do homecoming, our big homecoming gala, which brings a lot of alumni back, but it’s the night before a football game so it is a natural progression.”

Orientation coordinator Chloe Dwyer has the job of helping new students find their way at Ole Miss. If she does her job well, she says it should not be hard to keep grads connected.

“There’s that quote, ‘One never truly graduates from the University of Mississippi,’ and I
think that really speaks volumes with being alumni and wanting to come back to the Ole
Miss family,” said Dwyer.