Before students left for Spring Break, the Student Senate voted to pass a resolution to suggest student representation on the Baton Rouge Metropolitan Council.
SGR No. 23, which was passed unanimously, suggests the creation of the seat in order to provide greater student input in the council’s decision-making process.
The Baton Rouge Metro Council is the policy-making authority in the city and East Baton Rouge parish.
The student representative can attend LSU, Southern University or the Baton Rouge Community College.
In the resolution, authors say students of Louisiana State University, Southern University and Baton Rouge Community College account for 45,700 people in EBR.
Authors also say the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary School Education has a non-voting, at-large seat for a student member, which has helped to provide insight into policies concerning state education.
The authors say a student member on the council would give the council a chance to hear a representative of the city’s students.
Brandon Smith, the chairman of the Senate’s Governmental Relations Committee, said he thinks the resolution is very realistic, because it is simply asking for student representation on the council.
Smith, who is one of the resolution’s co-authors, said Sen. Chris Odinet, the resolution’s main author, introduced the resolution at a committee meeting held earlier this semester.
All of the committee members like Odinet’s idea, he said.
Smith also said he thinks local universities will welcome the position the resolution could create, and he is optimistic they can get the Baton Rouge community behind it.
Anna Dearmon, co-author for the resolution, said the resolution came out of the Governmental Relations Committee as a result of the some of the issues concerning local university students facing the Metro Council.
Some past issues that have come up in the Metro Council meetings concerned creating stiffer penalties for people caught with fake IDs and trying to keep 18-year-olds out of bars.
Smith said having a college student who is innovative as well as competitive would be good for the council.
“It is not just about a college student on the council,” he said. “It is about a person of substance. It is about putting the future on the council.”
Any city looking to thrive should have tangible input from those who are its future, Smith said.
Some members of the Council told The Baton Rouge Advocate they support student involvement, but they are skeptical about the Student Senate’s resolution.
Metro Council Members Pat Culbertson, Charles Kelly, Martha Tassin, Byron Sharper, Mike Walker, Darrell Ourso, Lorri Burgess, David Boneno and Jim Benham did not respond to phone calls or e-mails from The Reveille by press time.
Brain Mayers, a Metro Council Administrator, told The Advocate he thinks creating a non-voting council seat for a student is not feasible.
Mayers told The Advocate students should use the “existing public channels and appoint a student to attend meetings and voice student concerns.”
Lorri Burgess, the mayor pro-tempore, also told The Advocate that students should run for office if they want official representation on the Metro Council.
College students only seem to go to the council meetings when alcohol issues are being discussed, Burgess said. Students have other priorities.
“If they’re interested, they would bring themselves to those types of meetings,” she said to the Advocate. “It would be a great opportunity for them to be involved in our government.”
Odinet said he was surprised by the apathy of the comments expressed by the Burgess and Mayers in The Advocate article.
He said he was surprised Burgess told The Advocate she has little contact with University students, despite the fact that she represents a portion of the LSU community.
“If she is not in touch with the students, then where is she standing?” Odinet said referring to the quote in The Advocate in which Burgess said she does not stand in the Quad and interact with students.
When he first talked to the Metro Council members about the resolution, some sent e-mails back to him supporting it, Odinet said. Burgess was one of those members.
But he said he does not feel ignored by the council, just a bit bushed off.
Odinet said creating the position would not take money or votes away from the Metro Council members.
“This really isn’t supposed to give us a vote,” he said. “It gives us a voice.”
In the end, Odinet said he would like the Metro Council, members of the LSU, Southern and BRCC Student Government to work something out.
It is a little extra work, he said. But they are willing to do it.