Absent from the agenda for this month’s LSU Board of Supervisors meeting is any word on the search for a new chancellor. Held Thursday and Friday in Shreveport, this month’s Board meeting includes reports on the chancellor search at the LSU Health Sciences Center in Shreveport and preliminary recommendations in Gov. Bobby Jindal’s 2008-2009 Executive Budget. The meeting agenda, however, does not include the Chancellor Search Committee at the University. Acting Chancellor William Jenkins will serve as chancellor until the committee finds a replacement. Also not included in the agenda is the LSU Environmental Conservation Organization’s proposal of the Presidential Climate Commitment. The commitment calls for climate neutrality by 2050 and was originally given to former Chancellor Sean O’Keefe to approve. Megan Sharkey, ECO vice president, said O’Keefe intended to approve the proposal. With O’Keefe’s departure, however, the proposal is left in the hands of of the LSU System and the Board. Charles Zewe, System vice president for communication and external affairs, said System President John Lombardi and the Board support conservation efforts but are not prepared to sign the commitment. Although O’Keefe intended to sign the proposal, ECO must present before the Board. Sharkey said ECO was unable to submit the proposal in time for consideration on this meeting’s agenda. “For the meeting tomorrow, you had to have submitted anything by Feb. 5, which was a few days after Chancellor Sean O’Keefe resigned,” Sharkey said. In an e-mail to The Daily Reveille on Wednesday, Lombardi wrote the Board is not allowed to discuss things not on the agenda. “Nothing that is not on the Agenda can be discussed or presented because the rules require that items be sent to the Board well before the meeting so they can read and inform themselves before they have to vote or discuss any particular item,” Lombardi said. Sharkey said they intend to have the proposal ready for the next Board meetings on April 24 and 25. Agenda items for that meeting are due March 25. Sharkey said ECO has an appointment with Jenkins regarding how to make their presentation to the Board. Sharkey said the organization needs a “sponsor” for the proposal and hopes Jenkins will present it to the Board with them. The Board usually takes two days to consider all committee recommendations at the meetings. But in a March 4 e-mail, Zewe said the Board “may take up recommendations from its committees as well as other pending action for final passage Thursday afternoon.” Lombardi said variations to the schedule are sometimes made because “the Board does not know how long the various committee meetings will take.” “Because these are public meetings, notice must be given that the meeting might take more or less time than normally anticipated,” Lombardi wrote.
—-Contact Ben Bourgeois at [email protected]