Millsaps College — Local services in Jackson

[Short version: I am a gay trans man who was facing abuse by my family in 2016 when I joined the college. The abuse was perpetuated and made worse by the Millsaps administration because they spied on us and told us they would report any "rule breaking" (i.e. dating someone whose parents didn't approve of same sex relationships) to our parents, in addition to reporting our counseling information and other personal matters.]

When I went there in 2016, they had me in an office room with an abusive family member and a counselor (I don't know what her if that was her actual position but that's what I registered her as). I was 18 and the counselor was helping my family member force me to sign some kind of personal information release because my family did not want a gay, trans kid and were doing everything in their power to change that. I had a partner at the time, and my Southern Baptist family and their Catholic family wanted us to break up (their family did the same thing and forced my partner at the time to sign the release of information).

Brit Katz and others said they would be watching me and they would report anything to our parents. They watched us in our dorm building, they watched us in the cafeteria, they watched us walking on campus. They made calls and emails to our parents. They made us go to counseling to "process the breakup" and then they gave our parents access to our mental health records. At one point, Patrick Cooper called out to my partner when they were walking with a group of people during trick or treating in the dorms and wouldn't allow my partner to go down my hall even though they weren't going to my dorm. They controlled us, they spied on us, they took away our freedoms and rights, and they use "family values" to justify it. We continued our relationship in secret, as it was our right to do so, but we hid it in public spaces. One day we were separately headed from the cafeteria to our shared dorm building (I was farther behind and they were farther ahead) Dean Katz passed by us and was smiling and acting friendly and said hello to both of us separately. When I shortly after had a panic attack and chased him and said "It's not what it looks like. We live in the same building. We eat in the same cafeteria. We are going to cross paths at some point." He turned to me and he was frowning so deeply and his face was so drastically different from his friendly demeaner he normally held. He told me he had better never see that again and he would be considering contacting our families. I continued to have panic attacks for weeks in fear that he was going to report it to them. There is so so much more, and this is only a sampling of what we went through. We had to stop going to eat in the cafeteria, stop going to clubs, stop existing in public spaces, etc. We could have broken up, but us together was the only way we were able to escape the abuse.

Millsaps is not pro-LGBT like they say they are. This is not a safe space. They only care about the parents paying them more money. Do not go to this school. They also have a student organization whose sole purpose is to spy on students and report back to the administrators. They draw eyes all over campus and make statements that they're watching you. It behaves like a cult, and it destroyed my mental health and I almost did not make it out with my life.

I would have sued them if I knew I could, but I was an abused teenager with no other support system and had to endure it for another year and a half before I had to drop out of school, flee my family's influence, and lose housing. If I had to choose between visiting/attending Millsaps again or being homeless again, I would take being...

Millsaps gave me the perfect opportunity to continue competing in football and baseball, and further my education to become adequate with the ways of business and acquire tangible knowledge that applies to being an entrepreneur. I thoroughly enjoyed the ability to get to a personal level with professors and administrators. I dedicate a lot of what I learned to being successful and a high-quality man in life to Coach Page, the baseball coach at Millsaps. He is a one-of-a-kind man, and I viewed him as a second father to me. He is a true resemblance of integrity, honesty, passion, perseverance, hard work, leadership, and much more quality traits that he possesses. Me deciding to play baseball again was the final touch to my maturity and my mastering of personality skills that has set me up to be in the place I am now out of school. I appreciate all of the professors I had through my years at Millsaps and their ability to be flexible and understanding with me and classmates to get the best possible ROI in the Else School of Management program. They were always available and willing to help in any way that they could for their...

Thank you, Millsaps College. You gave me a chance, the stability to grow, to learn more than I had expected, to expand into fields I had dreamed of but thought impossible to plow. You were the base to launch my career far beyond the limits of my imagination. Did I achieve what I wanted? Honestly, so much more than that. 50 years later, I am grateful as ever. This is not the forum for me to catalogue my achievements, wealth and satisfaction, but to say thank you to the professors of bygone days, the administrators for their patience, the abundance of knowledge showered upon me. When I doubted, friends lifted my head, eye lids and spirit. When I fell, friends picked me up and showed me the path. I loved you,...