LSU’s Office of Diversity said a recent tweet by the University’s official Twitter account is not problematic, but some students disagree.
The University sent out a tweet on Wednesday, Jan. 15 celebrating the return of classes. 
“Welcome back, Tigers!” the tweet reads, accompanied by two pictures of students. In both pictures, all the students appear to be white. 
“LSU likes to pride itself on how diverse they say the student population is, yet they fail to accurately portray this ‘diversity’ on social media,” mass communications freshman Sasha Bourne said. 
LSU Media Relations Director Ernie Ballard said any one social media post can’t fully encompass the University’s commitment to diversity.
“Looking at one post alone at any given point does not provide a complete picture,” Ballard said. “On all of LSU’s social media channels, we strive to showcase students, faculty, staff and alumni from all races and backgrounds doing great things representing LSU.”
Photos like these are often staged or taken on a volunteer basis, meaning that it may be up to the students whether they want to be pictured or not. 
Kinesiology freshman Tes Bódy said the University should still have made a point to accurately portray the diversity of its student body, no matter if the picture was staged or not. 
“There is still the issue of a lack of POC (people of color) representation at this ‘diverse’ university,” Bódy said.  
Bourne agreed that the University could have staged the photo to represent a more diverse student population. 
“The first thing I thought when I saw that tweet was that as busy as the Quad is during the day, they managed to only capture photos with just white people,” Bourne said. 
However, Vice Provost for Diversity Dereck Rovaris did not find the same issues with the tweet.
“There will be times when there are problems,” Rovaris said, “but I don’t think this is one.” 
He also pointed out that diversity isn’t always visible in pictures. 
“There could be a Native student in there, there could be a Latinx student in there,” Rovaris said. “You don’t want to make assumptions.” 
Agricultural business freshman Mike Younis, a student within the College of Agriculture, said the University’s post should have been more diverse. He said the College of Agriculture is often stereotyped to be “white as hell,” but that isn’t the case in his experience. 

“In some aspects it kind of is,” Younis said, “but there is a growing number of nonwhite people coming into the College of Ag.” 
Younis also mentioned an organization for minorities in agriculture, natural resources and related sciences. He said that in his experience, there are a lot of professors and graduate students from diverse backgrounds as well. 
“It was just one picture,” Younis said. “If you look at other posts on LSU’s page there is a lot more diversity.”
He also gave several examples of social media accounts of various clubs and organizations on campus which display the diverse student body of the University, including LSU’s Instagram page. 
White students do make up nearly three quarters of the student population at the University, according to the 2019 LSU Fall Facts, with African Americans, Hispanics, Asians and others making up significantly smaller portions of the student body. However, diversity has been increasing throughout the years at the University, with the last two incoming freshman classes being the most diverse in the University’s history.