Despite every Yik Yak hater, despite it feeling like 96 degrees in the shade and despite every attempt to crush the spirit of students, LSU showed up at the State Capitol yesterday with a vengeance.
I’ve got to hand it to the organizers for putting together such a coordinated effort. If you didn’t know better, you’d think people were paid to be there as part of a media stunt.
News cameras were everywhere — I stopped counting after eight. Reporters had to hurry people through their statements because so many people wanted to talk about the scourge of budget cuts.
The LSU Alumni Association had tables set up with water and jambalaya that tasted better than what they serve on campus. Before the march began, there were more alumni and graduates at A.Z. Young Park than students, which tells you something about how much of an impact the University has had on past generations.
I was going to bring my own sign, but I was running late and ended up there without one. Never fear — Student Government and Geaux Vote LSU had tables set up with all the supplies to make sure I had the means to get my point across through at the protest and ballot box.
And oh, were there some smart sounding signs. Among my favorites were: “Bobby Swindle,” “Turn Down For Cuts” and “Jindal betta have my money.” A purple and gold Batman protested alongside a girl in her graduation gown, making the whole thing seem surreal.
It was certainly a millennial-driven protest. Our attention spans didn’t last long enough to make it through the speeches without cheering and chanting in between sentences.
I couldn’t contain myself, either. I started yelling about how “Duck Dynasty” gets better treatment from the legislature than students while everybody was supposed to be messaging legislators from their phones.
The chants started off shaky and improved as the protest went on. At the beginning of the protest, some guy — my guess is a leftist who thought he was in ’70s Chile — started shouting “The students, united, will never be defeated.”
Adapted South American solidarity chants aside, people were certainly making their voices heard. I started a “No funds, no future,” round before the inevitable happened. When you get a bunch of LSU students yelling about something, “Geaux Tigers” is sure to slip in.
Surprisingly, people were civil enough to avoid “F*** Jindal” and “Suck that tiger d***.” Some might say that meant we weren’t angry enough, but I think it means we were professional enough to demand respect.
Some legislators certainly gave it to us. Democratic state Rep. John Bel Edwards killed it, promising the crowd that he wouldn’t vote for a budget that cut a single dollar from higher education. He was definitely just pandering to us so we’d make him the next governor instead of U.S. Sen. David Vitter.
Republican state Sen. “Dan’s the man” Dan Claitor made no such promises, but he did tell protesters how to get to the Governor’s mansion and suggested we stop by there before we left.
Fewer than the 1,800-plus people who RSVP’d on Facebook showed up, but it was far more than the multi-school protest two weeks ago. It seems like the LSU-centric nature of this protest made the turnout bigger, especially with the bus coming from the Veterinary School parking lot.
I don’t know whether legislators listened. I don’t know whether I wasted my time. I don’t know how the budget will look at the end of the legislative session. What I do know is that I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t send some kind of message. A retired faculty member I talked to summed it up best: “If we don’t show that we care, that definitely sends a message.”
James Richards is a 20-year-old mass communication sophomore from New Orleans. You can reach him on Twitter @JayEllRichy.