The family of 21-year-old UL student Mickey Shunick, who was killed in May by Brandon Scott Lavergne, is inviting the community to celebrate her life this Saturday beginning at noon at Parc International downtown. Gates open at 11:30 a.m.
The Shunick family is emphasizing that the event is a celebration of her life, as well as a show of thanks to everyone who worked so hard to bring the missing student home. IDI Workspace Solution will make a public art wall available for anyone to share art inspired by Mickey. The Little Paint Brush Art Studio will be providing children with an opportunity to create their own butterfly bracelets.
Beer and soft drinks will be sold, and food will be available for purchase from Carpe Diem Gelato, BiBi’s Patisserie, Freetown Fries, and Zeus. T-shirts with a new, celebratory graphic, will be sold by Absolutely Monogramming and Gifts for the cost of printing.
The Community Celebration in Honor of Mickey Shunick will begin with several friends sharing their memories of Mickey. The Acadiana Symphony String Quartet will join us on stage during the formal remembrance. City-Parish President Joey Durel will join family and friends in recognition of law enforcement officers, volunteers, donors, university officials, the district attorney’s office, Texas Equusearch, Special K-9s and the community as a whole. Finally, the Shunick Family will give a personal statement to the community.
Afterwards, there will be live performances from three of Mickey Shunick’s favorite local bands. Whole Damn Town performs first at 1:15 p.m., followed by imagineIAM at 2:15, and closing with Rareluth at 3:30. The celebration ends at 4:15 p.m. with a public bike ride following the route Mickey took the morning of May 19.
Attendees are encouraged to either ride or bring their bicycles to Parc International to join the ride. A free “bike corral” will be managed by Bike Lafayette. The ride will conclude with the permanent placement of a “ghost bike” at the end of St. Landry Street, and 90 live Monarch butterflies will be released as a tribute to Mickey. UL Lafayette President Joseph Savoie will join her family and friends for the dedication of the ghost bike.
The Shunick Family requests that the public continue on to the UL football game where Mickey will be honored with her family present, and the game will be dedicated to her strength and bravery. “This day will honor Mickey’s life and her impact on this community. This brave, young woman inspired us to action and we want her legacy to be that which will continue to inspire love and kindness toward one another,” says Barbara Alexander, a friend of the Shunick family.
For information on the public art wall, contact This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
MAY 24 Blogger Robert Mann posts this entry about the Baton Rouge Chamber's recent report on Louisiana's higher education system. It's critical to economic development, and yet our system is facing a "funding crisis" with no way to resolve it, the report says. The Chamber says control of tuition and fees must be returned to the higher ed governing boards.
MAY 24 Here's a NBC33 story about Tyrann Mathieu. He has signed with the Arizona Cardinals, inking a $3 million, four-year deal. He gets a signing bonus of $265K, but gets another, larger bonus if he doesn't get cut from the team for doing drugs. The deal reportedly includes mandatory tests and meetings for the player.
MAY 24 Jarvis DeBerry posts here about the redonkulus rhetoric that would have us believe NOLA is a safe city with a murder problem. Maybe the city's crime stats don't compare with its murder stats because you can't manipulate a murder, he says: a dead body's a dead body. It just doesn't make sense, he says, and his readers agree: a poll asks if they believe the city is safe, and more than 90 percent say no.
MAY 24 Jindal administration officials announced Thursday that the privatization of public health care is going to cost a lot more than they budgeted for, the Advocate reports here. "I'm so surprised," said no one. Anywhere. The cost they're projecting now is more than $1 billion - a lot more than the $626 million budgeted for it. And, it's more than it cost the state to operate those hospitals. So why are we doing this again?
MAY 24 Blogger CB Forgotston ridicules the recent PR campaign by the state GOP in the wake of a legislative auditor's request to both major parties. The GOP (apparently unaware that the Dems got the same request) started yammering about being targeted because it had "killed" a tax increase. CB finds that laughable, but it's also pretty funny that the GOP was comparing this episode to the IRS scandal (Because the President has so much to do with our state auditor. Right?).
MAY 24 Politico details some recent fund-raising efforts by Sen. David Vitter, which have raised the question of his future political plans. This time, it is a $5,000 per head "bayou weekend" that includes "Cajun cooking" and an all-caps "alligator hunt," the story reports. Funds raised go to a super PAC that can spend money to support Vitter in federal or state races, the story points out.
MAY 24 The pink building on Royal in the quarter was sold at a sheriff's sale Thursday, this Picayune story reports. An injunction that would have halted the sale wasn't enforced because the family failed to post a $150,000 bond, the story reports. So the owner of the mortgages on the building bought it, for nearly $7 million. Now the feuding family will have to negotiate with that company to get a lease on the building that has housed their business for close to 60 years.
MAY 23 This post in Louisiana Voice tells us about a bill by a Winnsboro lege that would require all public high school students to take at least one Course Choice online class in order to graduate. (What?) Blogger Tom Aswell says it's a monument to "waste and corruption," especially in light of the problems he's exposed with the program in recent weeks. Idaho had a similar program, but voters removed it by a 2-1 margin, Aswell says.
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