U.S. Rep. Jeff Landry, R-City on a Hill, is nothing if not persistent. He also possesses a myopic view of the role of higher education. So there’s that.
| Photo Illustration (obviously) | |
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| Rep. Landry’s leather codpiece shields his package from university elitism. He brooks neither namby nor pamby. |
Landry’s ongoing pandering to the nabobs of intolerance whose satin boxers have become uncomfortably wedged within the cleft betwixt their pink, flabby hindquarters over UL Lafayette’s LGBT Studies minor continues unabated. What’s a salt-of-the-earth teacup poodle staring at an ignominious end to his brief tenure in Congress to do? Keep the pressure on UL President Joe Savoie to put the kibosh on a program that is merely an aggregation of already-offered courses at the university, one that costs UL and the taxpaying public not a red cent to offer. And hope someone notices. That’s why he posted a letter exchange between himself and Savoie (reproduced below) on his congressional website. More than anything the letters demonstrate that our mild-mannered university prez is both standing his ground and treading the high road.
A little more than a week after Landry's mid-July letter to Savoie urging him to discontinue the LGBT Studies minor, Savoie penned a response. Savoie’s July 27 explanation for leaving the program intact is twofold.
Savoie’s first defense — that doing so could threaten UL’s accreditation and make students ineligible for federal student loans because the university’s administration and faculty followed procedure in establishing the minor — is solid, and he lays it out concisely. But it’s less important than the second defense, which counters a central notion in Landry’s short-sighted worldview: a university’s role in a community isn’t that of a vocational school:
Certainly proper preparation of our students for the current and projected job market is a responsibility and a priority of the university. But we are living in a world where nine-to-five jobs are declining, careers over a lifetime with one company are uncommon, and economic risk has shifted from large institutions to individuals. Our students will know and must be prepared for a world that is much more unstable and fluid than the one of just a generation ago.
That is why we strive to create a learning environment that produces not only a highly skilled, but also a broadly educated, self-motivated graduate, with a passion for life-long learning, aware of their civic obligations and ethically responsible in their careers.
Bravo, Dr. Savoie! What could the congressman possible not understand in all this? Well, all of it. Yesterday, Aug. 23, Landry responded.
“The future of our students and their economic prospects should be our top priority, not placating to political pressures,” Landry writes, in part. “Diverting your limited resources to advance a political agenda at the expense of our students is unacceptable.” And blah, blah, blah. And yada yada.
This is also epic hypocrisy on the part of Landry, a Tea Party patriot who rails against federal meddling in local affairs. The congressman is evidently fine with the federal government meddling in UL’s affairs now that he’s the federal government.
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MAY 17 This post by JR Ball in the Baton Rouge Business Report is an interesting tongue-in-cheek look at recent Baton Rouge economic development efforts. Among the items he examines is the idea that gaining a Costco makes BR a "world-class city." (Really? All you need is a different brand of Sam's? MK!) This effort, and other recent ones, are all built on the taxpayer's back, with tax zones, tax incentives and tax rebates, Ball writes.
MAY 17 Blogger CB Forgotston is critical of the legislature's reliance on a revenue-estimating committee's decision to include projected tax amnesty income in this year's forecast. That's a problem, CB posts, because the deadline for these people to pay their taxes is June 30, 2014. So when do you think these people who haven't paid taxes in years are going to pay their taxes? Surely not before June 30, and that means the money won't be there for this year's budget, he argues.
MAY 17 Here's an interesting blog out of California by a Hollywood writer, attorney and academic named Brian Alan Lane. He blogs about higher ed, and was a whistle-blower in a scandal over false credentials. In this post, he takes aim at LSU's new top dog, King Alexander. It's convoluted and a little confusing, but it sure makes Alexander a lot more interesting than he was yesterday.
MAY 17 Blogger Robert Mann writes about the LSU Board's refusal to allow Dr. Fred Cerise to testify before the legislature about Gov. Jindal's plan to close down all the state's charity hospitals and dump the poor on the private system. It's hard to imagine anyone more qualified than Cerise to testify about that, so why would anyone try to prevent him doing so? Mann thinks it is because the powers that be aren't interested in hearing any truth about the plan.
MAY 17 This post on the Louisiana Sinkhole Bugle, a blog that notes developments in the Bayou Corne and Jefferson Island salt domes, talks about a proposed expansion of the salt dome storage under Lake Peigneur in Iberia Parish. Residents are working against it for several reasons, including two biggies: the sinkhole disaster in Bayou Corne and the continuing, unexplained bubbling on the surface of the Lake.
MAY 17 NOLA police arrested more people Thursday accused of either being involved in the Mother's Day shooting or hiding the suspect afterward, this Gambit story reports. The NOLA police chief said he suspects the whole thing was gang-related and throws out a challenge to the gangs: he's got informants now, he says, and he knows a lot more than the gangs want him to know. The people who live in the neighborhoods terrorized by gangs are ready to talk, he says.
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