The Reveille sent a letter Wednesday to LSU Faculty leadership demanding that the public body abide by Louisiana open meetings law and not illegally close its meetings to members of the public.
The letter comes after Faculty Senate leadership removed non-members, including a Reveille reporter, from a public meeting on Nov. 15.
The body didn’t follow proper protocols under the state’s open meetings law to go into executive session, according to the Reveille’s lawyer. The law allows public bodies to speak in private under certain circumstances.
Attorney Scott Sternberg wrote the letter to Faculty Senate President Mandi Lopez. Sternberg, of New Orleans, is widely known for representing news outlets in First Amendment and public access matters.
“As you probably already have concluded, on Monday, November 15, 2021, the Faculty Senate appears to have engaged in an illegal closed session in which it removed non-members from the chamber,” Sternberg wrote. “I write today to ask, respectfully, that you take the steps to ensure that this never happens again.”
For the Nov. 15 meeting, an executive session wasn’t included in the meeting agenda and a proper vote was not recorded. Lopez asked if meeting attendees objected to going into executive session, counted six people’s hands and then asked non-members to leave. No vote was formally recorded.
“The Faculty Senate must notice the meeting properly, include in the agenda that it will be entering executive session for one of the permitted exceptions in La. Rev. Stat. § 42:17(A), and then hold an affirmative vote, recording the vote of each member, as to the question of whether to enter executive session,” the letter says. “It does not appear this occurred in the meeting in question.”
Parents, students and a journalist waited outside the meeting room for 25 minutes as faculty members spoke in private.
The Reveille’s editor in chief, Lara Nicholson, said the letter is intended to communicate that news organization’s student journalists “do not tolerate clear violation of the law.”
“Our reporter was illegally asked to leave a public meeting which wasn’t just a disservice to her as a student journalist, it was a disservice to the community that’s already used to a lack of transparency from the university,” Nicholson said.
The Faculty Senate has two upcoming meetings, an executive committee meeting on Friday and full meeting on Dec. 7, both of which Nicholson said a Reveille reporter will attend. Nicholson said the Reveille will review its legal options if the Faculty Senate again acts to close a meeting in violation of the law.
“In closing, unless an executive session is proper and properly held, we hope the Faculty Senate will respect the sound, long-held public policy behind the Open Meetings law: that the public’s business be done in the open, and not behind closed doors,” the letter says. “The power and privilege to legally enter executive session should be utilized charily.”
