A bid to repeal the Louisiana Science Education Act has failed for the second consecutive year in a Senate committee in Baton Rouge, falling in a 2-1 vote despite the testimony of the science community and the backing of more than 75 Nobel laureates in the sciences.
The fight to repeal the LSEA, which allows science teachers in public schools in Louisiana to “supplement” their biology curriculum with materials that question Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, has been led by Rice University freshman Zack Kopplin, who was a senior at Baton Rouge Magnet High School last year when the first LSEA-repeal bill was filed. Critics of the act, which biology major Gov. Bobby Jindal signed into law in 2008, deride it as a stealth means of inserting Intelligent Design/creationism into public education. No major, mainstream scientific organizations lobbied for the LSEA when it was passed by the Legislature; only the socially conservative Louisiana Family Forum supported the bill.
The bill to repeal the LSEA failed 5-1 last year, and Kopplin says he hopeful based on this year’s vote that a third attempt in 2013 to repeal the act will be successful.
For more on the LSEA and the battle over teaching real science, as opposed to pseudo-science, in Louisiana’s public school classrooms, read our Dec. 8, 2010 cover story, “Devolve!”
David Calhoun and Elizabeth “EB” Brooks are the first two employees of Lafayette Central Park Inc., the nonprofit charged with turning Lafayette Consolidated Government’s 100-acre Johnston Street Horse Farm property into a passive public park. Calhoun was named executive director, and Brooks is director of planning and design.
Is it a crime for citizens to photograph, video, or take notes of a police officer in the line of duty, or a right protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution? Locally, such activity, as witnessed recently, will at the very least result in a night spent behind bars.
At Thursday's State of the Economy luncheon, LEDA President and CEO Gregg Gothreaux said PXP has already quietly hired 180 people for its Broussard expansion.
There will soon be a whole lot of shakin’ going on at Benny’s Sportshack Supplement Depot, a new concept by Opelousas native Benny Nele. Located at 2002 Johnston St., the supplement shop, smoothie bar and café, featuring hot off the press paninis and wraps, plans to open in late May.
This year’s Cool Town issue is all about people who are not native to South Louisiana but made a conscious decision to be here, to be among us, to participate in our culture and contribute to it.
A shelved ordinance transferring $200,000 from a northside drainage project to a south Lafayette development may not break any laws, but it stinks to high heaven.
An effort to restore a shuttered dancehall and document other vacant or razed honky-tonks could serve as a model for saving an endangered species of entertainment.
Lafayette’s gene pool has been host to a long line of eccentric characters who have blurred the lines between crazy, genius, disturbed and curiously entertaining.
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