“Why not?” LSU Women’s Basketball coach Kim Mulkey asked at a Jan. 5 press conference.
Why not honor legendary LSU Women’s Basketball players Seimone Augustus and Sylvia Fowles with statues of their own next to Shaquille O’Neal’s bronze monument?
“That’s how much I think of those two young ladies, what they did for this university and what they did for women’s basketball,” Mulkey said.
LSU Board of Supervisors member Mary Leach Werner had similar thoughts during the Board’s debate on whether to name the Pete Maravich Assembly Center’s basketball court after former men’s coach Dale Brown.
“It’s been told to me by Dale Brown supporters how much he supported women’s athletics,” Werner said. “Yet not one female basketball player or student-athlete appeared today to affirm that story.”
Werner cited the unwillingness to name the court after both Brown and former women’s coach Sue Gunter as just another way the university places women in a secondary class.
The significance of a statue honoring someone on campus cannot be understated. It is an honor reserved for a small group of people who have made enormous contributions to the university and its recognition across the world.
O’Neal recognized this profound and rare distinction during the unveiling of his bronze lookalike in 2011
“I am very humbled and honored,” O’Neal said. “I am going to say this a million times, but there could have been a lot of other guys that LSU could have made a statue of. I am just blessed and honored that they chose me.”
Mulkey and Werner share the desire to honor the contributions of women here at the university. Both women contend that the honorifics on campus are not representative of the entire campus demographic who make the university the amazing place that it is.
LSU-Alexandria Student Body President Monica Aguilera, who serves as the student representative on the Board of Supervisors, aimed to remedy this inequity by recommending that the PMAC court be named the “Gunter-Brown Court.”
Her motion was defeated 12 to three by a 75% male-majority board. The same board that has been tight-lipped throughout the flagship’s Title IX problems. The same board that didn’t consider a single woman as a finalist for university president.
Mulkey, Werner and Aguilera are right. We should honor the contributions of women and men equally here at the university, because, “Why not?”
Why not, LSU?
Charlie Stephens is a 21-year-old political communication junior from Baton Rouge.
Why not honor legendary LSU Women’s Basketball players Seimone Augustus and Sylvia Fowles with statues of their own next to Shaquille O’Neal’s bronze monument?“That’s how much I think of those two young ladies, what they did for this university and what they did for women’s basketball,”
LSU women’s basketball head coach Kim Mulkey smiles as she holds a baseball bat before embracing Iowa State women’s basketball head coach Bill Fennelly Thursday, Dec. 02, 2021, before LSU’s 69-60 win against Iowa State in the Pete Maravich Assembly Center on North Stadium Drive in Baton Rouge, La.
