Following the overturn of Roe v. Wade, the university and its leadership has remained mum despite over half its student body being stripped of a fundamental right.
That silence should be deafening for any student considering the university, especially those who are coming from states that choose to protect abortion rights.
Some of the most prosperous and populated states in the nation have chosen to protect a women’s right to choose:The same states that LSU is aggressively marketing itself to grow its student population and pad its finances.
LSU says they care about the safety and health of their student body; however, the university is not telling the entire truth.
When a radical legislature and a rare anti-abortion Democratic governor pushed some of the most restrictive and punitive laws in the country, campus leaders remained silent making their commitment to the well-being of the student body nothing more than a hollow marketing tactic.
So much for the “end-to-end health care experience” the university boasted following a $243 million gift from LCMC Health and Our Lady of the Lake.
Any student considering attending LSU first needs to consider whether they are willing to risk being forced to carry a baby to term during their college career because university leaders were too afraid to stand up for students, faculty and university community members alike.
This issue is especially relevant for our campus community considering LSU’s years-long systemic failure to prevent sexual assault and penalize abusers that we are only now fully reckoning with.
The university’s silence on the issue is just another way that the flagship caves to the wishes of Republican legislators that rarely align with the purported values of the flagship.
While some on campus might welcome the reversal of nearly 50 years of Supreme Court precedent, it undeniably puts the university in a harder position when it comes to recruiting the best and brightest students, faculty and researchers.
Students at the university this upcoming semester will have fewer rights than at any time during their college career, but if you listened to the university administration, you wouldn’t know that anything had changed.
No acknowledgment. No Solidarity. Nothing.
There will inevitably be students that are put in impossible situations, forced to make life-or-death decisions during this upcoming semester because of laws passed by Louisiana lawmakers.
It is a shame that our administration has not done a single thing to lessen that burden since the Dobbs decision.
President Tate’s home state of Illinois is now the closest state where the university community can access reproductive health care.
When Tigers make the unthinkable decision to undertake that journey they should remember that he made no public attempt to save them from having to travel across the country to access medically necessary health care and exercise the right to bodily autonomy that is denied to them by the state of Louisiana.
Charlie Stephens is a 21-year-old political communication senior from Baton Rouge.
