Rival MUW alumni groups decide to merge

by Associated Press

Published: April 18,2011

Tags: 2010 BTI Client Service All-Stars, Alumni, education, higher education

COLUMBUS — Rival alumni groups have agreed to set aside their differences of the past four years and work together to support Mississippi University for Women.

The Mississippi University for Women Alumni Association and Mississippi’s First Alumnae Association said that they had voted to merge.

The Commercial Dispatch reports that after the April 16 announcement on the Columbus campus, alumni cheered and hugged before linking arms and singing an old school song, “Hail to Thee.”

The alumni groups splintered in 2007, when Claudia Limbert was president of the university.

Limbert accused MUW Alumnae Association workers of trying to get her fired and hindering fundraising, and she cut the group’s ties with the university. Limbert created the MUW Alumni Association as a new, official organization.

The Alumnae Association sued, claiming Limbert overstepped her bounds as president and didn’t have the authority to kick it off campus. Lowndes County Chancery Judge Dorothy Colom sided with the ousted alumnae group and ordered Limbert to allow it back on campus. But the Mississippi Supreme Court eventually sided with Limbert. She retired last year.

Allegra Brigham, the interim MUW president, said the merger of the two alumni groups is in the university’s best interest.

Source: The Commercial Dispatch

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