When I teach public speaking, my students hear a lot about their responsibilities to hold those in power accountable for their actions. My students always and without fail answer this call of responsibility by doing some of the most remarkable things I’ve ever seen. From protesting racist caricatures at a local coffee shop, starting charitable organizations or welcoming campus radicals into our class in order to keep them from disturbing others in the quad with their bigoted signs; they continue to inspire and amaze me with their creative and energetic responses to injustice.
 
As students at LSU, we owe it to our peers to make a bit of a fuss when things aren’t done correctly – it is our school and is paid for by our tax dollars. We have the right to feel safe and comfortable while we try to develop and grow our spirits and our minds.
 
Last Spring, after teaching a morning section of CMST 2061, I walked in the quad and witnessed a most bizarre event. I wont rehash the whole bit, but you can get caught up here: https://www.lsureveille.com/news/incoherent-student-drives-car-into-quad-1.2166547. The administration at LSU responded quickly and appropriately to my complaints.
 
You see, the big crises that arose from all this was not about the police response time (which is now much quicker); it was about the proper use of the LSU emergency text message system, which the police dispatcher failed to use because he didn’t think it was a “real” emergency.
 
When the Vice Chancellor contacted me, he expressed a
sincere desire to make things safer for us on campus and find out what went wrong. He asked me direct and action oriented questions like, “How did they use the system at your previous schools?” “What do you think we could have done differently?” and “How would you have handled it?” I left there with an overwhelming confidence in our administration and in their desire to make LSU as safe as possible.
 
Thursday, I received two text messages warning me of an armed man on campus. They mark only the latest in a series of texts over the past six months that LSU has used appropriately and exactly the way the Vice Chancellor and I discussed.
 
The ultimate issue is not whether or not the potential threat is a real one or not; but is about putting the safety of the students in the students’ hands and leaving it up to us to
decide when we should take them seriously and when we shouldn’t, and LSU did that. I feel safer on campus than I did a year ago because I feel more informed about potential threats. Why did this happen?
 
The answer is why I am writing this letter. Because of LSU students — students working for The Daily Reveille, students posting on facebook and tigerdroppings, students emailing the Vice Chancellor, and students who called the police and complained. You made this campus a safer place, which means you made LSU a better community to learn and grow in, for yourself and for your friends.  
 
I tell my students (as a wise professor once told me) that democracy is built on an unwavering faith in the rhetorical inventiveness and persuasive abilities of
every citizen to change things, both big and small, for the good of the many. LSU’s students continually renew this faith for me and hope they renew it for each of you as well.
 
To this day, the police insist my times are inaccurate, even after I provided them with my phone records from Verizon. My pride says that we lost the battle and you can’t beat the man with the badge. But my cell phone? The text message I just got tells me we all won. Thanks.
 
Joseph Rhodes
Department of
Communication Studies
Ph.D. Student/Instructor
 
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