Whether Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke or Democratic insider Edwin Edwards won the 1991 gubernatorial election, Ted Schirmer did not like his options — and neither did more than 500,000 Louisiana voters.
So Schirmer led a movement to recall the candidate who won the Louisiana governor’s race. In the process, he managed to stage his own arrest, take an unfair law all the way to the United States Federal Appeals Court and win an injunction that forced the Louisiana Legislature to change the law.
But before his political charades, Ted Schirmer was LSU Student Government president.
And he is not the only former SG president who has gone on to make a name for himself after campus life by being funny or unique.
Whether they become submarine operators for the Navy, public school teachers, business owners or politicians, Schirmer and other former SG presidents Randy Gurie, Elaine Durbin Abell, Evelyn Edmiston Raser, Michael Futrell, Kirt Bennett and Jay Dardenne all have had an influence on their communities.
Gurie, current associate dean of students, former SG president in 1968-69 and the organizer of the Past Presidents Association, remembered Schirmer as “a character.”
“Back then, he was hippie,” Gurie said affectionately of Schirmer, who served in 1976-77. “He dressed horribly, had hair down to his shoulders, and he used to come to the Board [of Supervisors] box at football games with his girlfriend. She’d go barefoot.”
After finishing law school, Schirmer worked in civil rights and disabled-citizen discrimination cases throughout the state before taking on the Duke-Edwards recall campaign.
“The reporters called me up and asked me who I was going to vote for because they knew I rarely vote for a party,” he said. “I said, ‘Why don’t we just recall whoever wins?’ And they put it on the air.”
From that moment, Schirmer said he received calls from people across the state telling him to start a petition to recall the winner — so he did.
But the Louisiana Legislature made it tough, Schirmer said. Even though he had nearly one million signatures from Louisiana residents, the Legislature required Schirmer and his cohorts to get signatures from three-fourths of the state’s registered voters.
Schirmer went to polling places to get signatures and ended up intentionally getting himself arrested in front of the media to challenge a law that said he could not come within 600 feet of the polls.
His case went to the Louisiana Supreme Court and on to a federal appellate court, where judges struck down the 600-foot rule. The new law requires a 100-foot distance between polls and campaigners — a rule Schirmer said he still thinks is unreasonable.
Since the recall, Schirmer has moved to Malibu, Calif.
Now, the lawyer — who spent 14 months in combat in the Vietnam War before coming to the University — works at a long-term drug and alcohol rehabilitation clinic for veterans.
Like many other past presidents, serving as SG president gave Schirmer the opportunity to change campus policies.
Schirmer said his administration was the first to come out against the University’s curfew rules for women and grooming standards for men.
“I was astonished that a state university was restricting education based on facial hair,” he said. “So we had the first sit-in at LSU.”
 
WOMEN IN OFFICE
Elaine Durbin Abell, the University’s first-elected female SG president served from 1963-64 and changed the course of student politics at the University. She also campaigned against dress code standards because the University forbade women from wearing pants.
“[Texas] A&M wrote an article saying LSU was going down the tubes because they elected a woman president,” she said with a laugh. “I didn’t mean to create such a stir, but at the time, I guess I did.”
Abell’s election also spurred a story in Life magazine about her.
“LSU was ahead of its time,” Abell said about the University electing her as president.
Abell went on to medical school and law school and obtained a clerkship with the Louisiana Supreme Court.
She now runs a small, private practice in Lafayette and sits on various community and statewide boards including the Iberia Bank Board, the LSU Alumni Association and the Louisiana Expressway Commission, which campaigns for the completion of Interstate 49 from New Orleans to Lafayette.
“One person can make a difference,” she said. “If you have a good idea for change, people will see you for who you are, and people will be willing to go along.”
Though Abell was the first woman elected as president, Evelyn Edmiston Raser was the first woman to serve as president, after being appointed for the 1945-46 term.
She assumed the office after the current president and vice presidents were drafted into World War II .
And Abell and Raser are actually cousins-in-law — Raser’s cousin married Abell.
“They wanted to keep it in the family,” Raser joked. “But I didn’t really earn it like Elaine did.”
 
POLITICIANS AND PUBLIC SPEAKERS
Past presidents Michael Futrell and Jay Dardenne both went on to become state legislators.
Dardenne, a state senator from district 16, served as SG president in 1977-78.
Futrell, a state representative, was president in 1980-81 and is one of the only students to win the top SG position as a sophomore. During his term, he said SG started the late-night bus system — now known as the “drunk bus” — and protested against students being searched for alcohol as they entered Tiger Stadium for football games.
After graduating, Futrell waited a few years before getting back into the public eye. He joined the Navy after college and spent six years in active duty in the Atlantic Ocean.
“It was the waning days of the Cold War, so they still had Soviet submarines,” he said. “We would chase and hide from the Soviets, all up northern Atlantic around Iceland down to the South Bahamas.”
After his military tour, Futrell was elected to two terms in the state legislature and now works as U.S. Senator David Vitter’s state director.
Futrell said his goal has always been to move Louisiana forward, and working for Vitter is the best thing he can do right now, though he didn’t rule out another run for public office.
More recently, SG’s 1990-91 president found national acclaim in what he considers his unlikely situation of being “a black Republican and law school drop-out.”
“It is truly the expectation,” Kirt Bennett said of past presidents attending law school. “I went to law school for one day before I recognized it was not for me.”
Bennett, who now works for Northwestern Mutual financial consulting firm, founded Young Leaders Academy in Baton Rouge — an organization that teaches black, inner-city boys leadership skills and how to excel academically.
Bennett said the academy was born out of the desire to find ways to change racial dynamics and address problems he said young, black males face. Since the academy’s opening, Oprah Winfrey and Presidents Bill Clinton and George H. W. Bush have praised it.
But despite an appearance on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” and visits to the White House, Bennett said his most nerve-racking moment was speaking at the University commencement ceremony in 1997.
Bennett, 37, was 30 years old when the University asked him to speak. He was the youngest commencement speaker at that time.
“I’d seen Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton speak at these things,” he said. “I had to pinch myself, and I just thought, ‘this is cool.’”