After two hours of deliberation and seven tied votes, the Louisiana Board of Regents finally has a new student member – Southern University’s Terry Landrey. The senior law student defeated LSU Student Body President Chris Odinet thanks to a 3-1 decision by a special executive committee chaired by Odinet’s LSU predecessor, Michelle Gieg. “It was a very, very political situation,” said Crawford Leavoy, executive assistant to Odinet. The student member is a liaison to the Board of Regents and also oversees the four management boards which run the state’s universities, a task that has taken on new importance in recent months. “In the wake of the hurricanes, every school has a significant need to have its voice heard,” Leavoy said. The voting, which took place on Tuesday, May 16, was forced into a deadlock when the four universities tied their votes between the two candidates, with the LSU and University of Louisiana-Lafayette systems choosing Odinet and the Southern and Louisiana Community and Technical College systems favoring Landrey. It was a process that would repeat itself one more time before Gieg, the non-voting executive chairperson, created a special election committee, with one person from each university casting their respective votes. The result was four more series of deadlocked votes, a contentious situation for which there was no previous constitutional provision. “LSU and Southern both wanted to hold the position to help all students, permanent and displaced, reach a better level of higher education,” Leavoy said. After wavering between a coin-toss and a popular vote, Gieg charged the executive committee with breaking the tie. This time, the voters complied and Landrey was declared the winner, ending nearly two hours of uncertainty. Despite the controversy, Leavoy, a two-year veteran of the student government process, is willing to give Landrey the benefit of the doubt. “Southern has a special place as a prominent black university,” he said. “It needs a voice in the place of the Board of Regents.”
Contact Joe Ehrich at [email protected]