LSU students: Your governor is ignoring you.
Gov. Bobby Jindal may say he values your input, but the actions of Jindal and his press team prove those words are hollow.
We could be wrong, of course — but we wouldn’t know it. For the past year, the governor’s press office has routinely ignored The Daily Reveille’s requests for information, communication or cooperation — we’ve received nothing but run-arounds and static.
We’ve e-mailed his press secretaries but haven’t been afforded the courtesy of a response.
We’ve been told to our faces we’d be added to his press list but never saw it come to fruition.
Jindal’s Executive Council, Stephen Waguespack, met with Student Government President J Hudson and Vice President Dani Borel on Tuesday. During that meeting, Borel says Waguespack didn’t understand the allocation of educational funding.
Waguespack also defended the administration’s support of LSU, citing capital outlay money it has sent to the campus. That money may buy expensive new buildings, but these buildings will be empty if we don’t have the faculty to fill them.
We’d love to give you a first-hand account of this meeting, but our reporter was barred from attending.
These answers — like the governor’s past chatter — are a political smokescreen thrown up to dismiss the issue. And they certainly don’t come close to answering the burning questions about LSU’s future we’ve been trying to ask for months.
East Baton Rouge Mayor-President Kip Holden has addressed our questions. State Sen. Dan Claitor has addressed our questions. Even U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has addressed our questions.
Why won’t Jindal?
The cynical answer is obvious: Students don’t vote. Why should his office deal with students when they have no real political reason to do so?
This might very well be the same reason higher education is facing potentially catastrophic cuts while other parts of the budget can’t get cut at all.
We’re not mad because of some petty personal pride. We’re not just mad we can’t get access as journalists.
We’re mad because we — all of us at LSU and in Louisiana higher education institutions — can’t get answers as students and as citizens.
To students who care about their educational future, to students who want their leaders to answer for the decisions that might soon ruin that future: Keep watching this page. Today we start counting the number of days before the Governor’s Office initiates real, substantive contact. We will mark each day until Jindal or one of his representatives comes out of their fourth-floor ivory tower and finally acknowledges the cries of higher education.
Today certainly doesn’t mark the first time we’ve tried to contact the Governor’s Office. That day is long past.
Today simply marks the day we got tired of being ignored.
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Contact The Daily Reveille’s opinon staff at [email protected]