After experiencing backlash due to posting a legislative report card, Student Government President Andrew Mahtook and his Chief Advisor Zack Faircloth spoke out about how the methodology and math of the report card achieved its final results.
The SG report card was an attempt to grade legislators based on their votes for and against larger bills that SG deemed most important for higher education.
“This wasn’t an intention to rank any senators and representatives and say what person is better than another,” Faircloth said. “That wasn’t the intention at all.” “This was simply to evaluate the votes that were out there.”
The bills were given a weight from one to five depending on how important SG believed the bill was to higher education. A vote in accordance to what SG believed the vote should be gives points for the weight of each bill.
Authors of important bills receive double points, resulting in some legislator scores to be above 100 percent. When all of the points were added together, they were divided by the total number of possible points.
Bills that were not voted on in one of the chambers are omitted from the total number of points, leading the Senate to be out of 90 possible points and the House of Representatives to be out of 99 possible points. The scores were strictly by the numbers over personal votes by each legislator.
“We had no idea what the grades would be until we did the math. Once we got the grade, we didn’t touch it,” Mahtook said via email.
Most of the backlash SG saw came from legislators feeling they deserved better scores for their efforts. Rep. Jerome “Dee” Richard, I-Lafourche, believed he deserved much higher than the 35.4 percent he scored.
“I pass a bill to bring more money to higher education, and this is the thanks I get,” Richard said. “It is ridiculous. I take my score and stand by it for what it is.”
Sen. Karen Peterson, D-New Orleans, was another legislator who spoke out from dissatisfaction with the report card. She felt her efforts warranted a better grade than the “F” she received.
“Thx. It’s sad that LSU students don’t see thru the BS. State genl funds depleted 4 higher Ed over 7yrs #jindalized,” Peterson Tweeted on June 16.
After the report card was published, others spoke out on Twitter questioning why sexual assault legislation was not included in the report card, such as Davante Lewis, former University of Louisiana system board member.
“@michbeyer @RTMannJr @tidilee But they didn’t score Campus Sexual Assault or college admission standards. 2 bills BoR didn’t care for,” Lewis Tweeted on June 16.
There were three goals that were laid out by SG when it was creating the report card: a fix for the budget deficit, long-term revenue for higher education and getting more power to the school administration to raise and lower tuition among other powers.
Mahtook said the sexual assault legislation simply did not fit into the three goals they wanted to achieve and that SG hopes to cover that in the future.
The original report card can be found here.