Indivisible Baton Rouge calls for transparent, participatory presidential search process and for the immediate dismissal of charges against members of Students for a Democratic Society
When we send our young people to college, we hope they learn to think independently, get involved in their communities, and develop the courage to stand up for what they believe. LSU administrators recently showed those qualities will be punished at our state’s flagship university.
Amid rising tuition, canceled DEI initiatives, and detention of students by ICE, it’s hard to think of a better way to lose the respect and trust of the student body than with the heavy-handed, needlessly escalatory decision to arrest a student merely for speaking past her allotted time at a public meeting of the university’s presidential search committee and then arresting six of her colleagues for peacefully protesting that.
Louisiana taxpayers fund LSU to educate our people and develop their potential, not to serve as a vehicle for the self-aggrandizement and power consolidation of its administrators. If the LSU administration does in fact prioritize the former, they have some work to do to show it.
This starts by immediately calling for the dismissal of all charges against the seven members of Students for a Democratic Society: Gabriela Juarez, Margo Wilson, Enola Guyer, Ryan Spalt, Carson Wall, Ziad Eissa, and Scott Sonnier, followed by the implementation of these reasonable, commonsense measures to include students in the selection of the next president of their university:
1: Add at least five student representatives to the presidential search committee.
2. Hold three public town halls that allow students to question the final candidates.
3. Make final presidential selection by transparent and accountable campus-wide vote.
The First Amendment to the United States Constitution protects citizens from government suppression of their speech. As a state-funded institution, LSU made a serious error in how it responded to students engaging in the presidential search process. Indivisible Baton Rouge calls on the LSU administration to immediately correct that error by implementing the steps described here.
#standwithSDSLSU
In Solidarity,
Indivisible Baton Rouge