Let’s revisit the energies of Student Government President J Hudson and Vice President Dani Borel in the past weeks.
After failed attempts of contacting Gov. Bobby Jindal and a fruitless meeting Oct. 14 where Jindal pawned off his executive council on Hudson and Borel instead of showing up himself, the pair went on the war path.
Within days, apparently fed up with Jindal ignoring their attempts at reaching him for answers about the state’s budget, Hudson shot letters to multiple U.S. newspapers in cities Jindal was visiting on a whirlwind Republican campaign tour. He called the governor out for ignoring the budget crisis in his own state and begged him to “fix your state’s serious problems.”
Hudson’s message even turned cynical at times, calling Jindal’s political travels a move toward a 2012 presidential bid.
The next day, Jindal’s camp put out a lengthy Facebook post that asked students for their take on the way the state is funding higher education.
And immediately elicited a response from Hudson.
“I believe that [state officials] are incorrect when they state all universities are delivering less value than the students deserve,” was his response, though he asserted whatever progress the University has made is now being threatened by the budget cuts from the state.
Hudson and Borel met with legislators after that — House Education Committee members John Bel Edwards and Patricia Haynes Smith — who both criticized Jindal for his handling of higher education’s crisis.
But the dynamic duo wasn’t satisfied. Hudson and Borel continued to hound Jindal, pressing him for accountability and answers for students concerned about their education.
On Oct. 28, SG’s ultra-secretive “WhatNow Lsu” event unfolded into students writing letters to Jindal and legislators, and a similar campaign the next day in Free Speech Plaza was meant to culminate in Hudson and Borel hand delivering the letters to Jindal at the Capitol.
When they arrived, Jindal wasn’t there to meet them, so they held onto the letters until he agreed to see them.
They finally met with the governor Monday at an event in Denham Springs, and they confronted him with the letters. They took the brief encounter with a grain of salt, saving the real issues for a meeting with him and Chancellor Michael Martin the following day at the Governor’s Mansion.
Boy, what a few angry letters during a fundraising campaign can do. Hudson and Borel went from being ignored by Jindal’s office to a personal invitation to the Governor’s Mansion.
Hudson and Borel took the opportunity to hand him 700 student letters and to press him on whether he’d attend a University forum with legislators to discuss budget cuts, to decipher the rationale for the Board of Regents’ funding formula and his plan for bettering our campus.
Jindal’s answers may have been noncommittal at best, but at least the pair made headway in opening a different type of budget cuts conversation — one between the governor and students.
“This isn’t a publicity stunt. This isn’t, ‘Hey, let’s get a picture with Jindal,'” Hudson told The Daily Reveille after the meeting. “This is saving higher education and saving LSU.”
But just when it seemed our student leaders had objectively put their charges (the University and its students) first, Borel did just what a starstruck politician with a personal agenda would do.
She asked Jindal to autograph the photograph featuring herself, Jindal and Hudson together on the previous day’s Daily Reveille cover.
So much for keeping a safe distance from the subject of the pair’s supposedly harsh scrutiny.
Something just doesn’t seem right with Borel asking Jindal — the man she and Hudson have been fervently challenging about budget cuts for weeks — for an autograph, like a giddy tourist in Disney World.
“I think Jindal is a good politician. I think he’s done some great things,” Borel told The Daily Reveille on Wednesday. “I don’t think that’s necessarily the case for higher education. It doesn’t mean he’s a man I don’t admire. I mean, it’s not every day you get to meet the governor.”
But even with that explanation, the meetings with Jindal appear to be more the culmination of a networking exercise than a tough front against government apathy to higher education.
And to think, we had just started to trust the hardlining duo to convey to the governor what LSU students really think.
What now, LSU?
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Our View: Hudson, Borel hurt credibility with autograph
November 3, 2010