The students spoke, but our leaders didn’t listen. The LSU Board of Supervisors including Cassie Alsfeld, the elected Student Government president, and the rest of the board members who represent the students unanimously passed the Student Union and Union Theater fee on Aug. 17.
Not sure how they could have missed it, but the students voted against that increase in the spring 2007 SG election. Fifty-one percent of the 6,898 students who expressed their voice in the election voted against the fee increase, while 49 percent voted in favor of it.
Full-time students, who pay $60 for the fee, will instead have to pay $89 by fall 2009. The money is needed to help the $24 million shortfall in the University’s initial estimate of renovation costs.
Whether or not the increase was needed, Alsfeld should have stuck to her promise of listening to the students who put her into office.
“I’ve told administrators I would vote against the fee if it goes before the Board because I have to respect the student’s choice,” Alsfeld told The Daily Reveille in a June 21 article.
Some promise.
Alsfeld should not have voted in favor of the increase. There is no reason good enough to excuse her from not listening to the students. She is supposed to be our voice.
Though Alsfeld’s vote would not have made a difference in the outcome, she should have represented the students as best as she could – by voting against the increase. She wouldn’t even be on that board if it wasn’t for the students.
Alsfeld shouldn’t take all the heat, however. The other board members approved it, and Chancellor Sean O’Keefe supported it.
Rod West, the board’s chairman, apparently doesn’t think he and his members have to listen to the students.
“The students do not dictate what the board must do,” West said after the vote.
The saddest thing is that the student vote was ignored. The students own elected leader wasn’t even persuaded.
Alsfeld failed her first true test as president.
She has a lot of work to do to live up to the new promise she made to the students in a recent interview with The Daily Reveille.
“They will be well represented,” Alsfeld told The Daily Reveille this Saturday. She said she doesn’t want to let the students down.
Well, then. It’s easy. Listen to them.
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