Author: manshipxgr

Published: April 23, 2021

By: Kathleen Peppo, LSU Manship School News Service

BATON ROUGE, La (LSU Manship School News Service) –A resolution calling on LSU to add the COVID-19 vaccine to its list of mandatory immunizations for students returning to campus this fall passed the LSU Faculty Senate 52-1 Thursday.

Inessa Bazayev, one of the professors who proposed the resolution, said 140 LSU faculty members had signed on to it out of concern about the potential health risks for them and their students.

Bazayev, an associate professor of music theory, said the resolution “prioritizes students’ safety by requiring students to be fully vaccinated for COVID-19 prior to the start to fall 2021, given that LSU was planning on a return to face-to-face instruction in the fall, including for large classes.”

Professor Roger Laine, a biological sciences professor, voiced his wholehearted support, saying he was “unwilling to get into a room where my 35 students are not vaccinated.”

Political Science Professor Daniel Tirone said that LSU is scheduling classes at 100% of classroom capacity.

“So it is obvious that the intention is that they’re going to have every seat filled to the extent that they can, but it is not clear that they’re going to maintain the current mitigation measures,” he said. “And so that, I think, only enforces the need for the vaccine requirement.”

The nearly unanimous vote came after LSU’s interim president, Tom Galligan, and University of Louisiana System President Dr. Jim Henderson announced this week that they did not plan to require the more than 125,000 students at their schools to get the vaccine before returning for in-person classes in the fall.

More than 70 universities across the country have said they will require the vaccine, a point continually brought up by LSU professors at Thursday’s meeting. A recent survey indicated that about a third of Louisiana residents do not plan to take the vaccine, raising fears among the professors that a similar percentage of students might return from summer vacation without it.

“I think it’s really important that all the students be vaccinated, and these other major universities have already done this, so I 100 percent support this,” said Laine.

“More institutions join this reasonable and responsible movement every day,” Bazayev said.

The University of California and the California State University systems were among the latest to announce vaccination plans. They said Thursday that they intend to require vaccines for the 1 million students and employees of their 33 campuses once the federal Food and Drug Administration formally approves the vaccines.

Galligan and Henderson have said their campuses cannot require students to be vaccinated because the FDA has only approved the COVID vaccine for emergency use and has not completed its full safety investigations. But other universities have said that the health risks and the possibility of additional COVID-19 variants warrant vaccine requirements.

Read more at The Advertiser

Published: April 23, 2021

By: Sydney McGovern, LSU Manship School News Service

BATON ROUGE — A House committee advanced a bill Thursday to extend the time to prepare and verify absentee ballots prior to election day.

It also advanced a bill that may soon allow teenagers to accompany parents in the voting booth.

Both bills were written by Rep. Lance Harris, R-Alexandria. The bill involving teens would permit children up to 15 years old to enter voting machines. Present law allows parents to bring only a pre-teen child into the booth.

Harris’ other bill would allow parishes, with permission from the secretary of state, to process mail-in and early voting ballots starting three days before election day.

“The changes would provide more time and attention to the verification process and ensure, as we’ve seen in some of these past elections, that the results would be reported timely, hopefully on election night,” Harris said.

Current state law permits parishes to conduct the verification process for absentee ballots the day before an election. The absentee ballots are not counted until election day, but Harris hopes that by preparing the ballots sooner, parishes can certify election results more quickly.

This bill comes in the wake of the November presidential election in which news organizations did not project the winner for three days as some states still counted their absentee ballots.

Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin said the bill would not change the final date to accept absentee ballots. They still must be received by 4:30 p.m. the day before an election.

Read more at The Advertiser

Published: April 21, 2021

By: Emily Wood, LSU Manship School News Service

The Senate Education Committee voted 5-1 Wednesday to advance a bill that requires mandatory kindergarten and school attendance for Louisiana children beginning at age five.

“We have about 2,800 kids who do not attend kindergarten in the state of Louisiana,” Sen. Cleo Fields, D-Baton Rouge, the author of the bill author and the committee’s chairman. “Early childhood education is a necessity. A brain is developed most in the ages from birth to five years of age and this bill will give us an opportunity to take advantage of that.”

Senate Bill 10 will require each city, parish and local school board to offer full-day kindergarten instruction to any child who turns five before September 30th of the calendar year in which the school year begins. Children younger than five may enter kindergarten if they are evaluated and identified as gifted by the Louisiana Department of Education.

Present law does not mandate kindergarten attendance, and a child in Louisiana is not required to start attending school until age seven.

During the hearing, multiple amendments were added to the bill, including one stating that the bill allows for home study programs or nonpublic schools not seeking state approval to qualify as a kindergarten program under the law.

Susan East Nelson, executive director of the Louisiana Partnership for Children and Families, spoke in support of the bill. In 2015, the Louisiana Partnership launched a platform for children with mandatory kindergarten being a major item on the agenda.

She stated that kindergarten gives children healthy meals and developmental screening beginning at a younger age.

Sen. Beth Mizell, R-Franklinton, the Senate’s president pro tempore, disagreed with the bill on the grounds that some children are not ready to attend kindergarten at the age of five.

Read more at KALB

Published: April 21, 2021

By: Adrian Dubose | LSU Manship School News Service

BATON ROUGE, La. – After announcing this week that they will not require students to get COVID-19 vaccines, the presidents of LSU and the University of Louisiana System said Wednesday that they are reviewing how to accommodate faculty members who feel they might be at risk in returning to in-person classes this fall.

Dr. Jim Henderson, president of the UL system, said the nine universities in his system will assess requests by faculty members to teach online on a case-by-case basis assuming that the vaccines are as effective as expected and depending on public health conditions at the time.

Henderson said administrators will consider age, medical conditions and family health concerns, along with the latest public health guidance, in making the decisions.

“Widespread vaccination is just recently underway,” he said, adding that the Centers for Disease Control and other researchers “are collecting copious amounts of data that will lead to much more informed decision-making over the coming weeks.”

But if the pandemic worsens, he said, “we will adapt. Ensuring the health and safety of students, faculty, and staff are paramount,” he said.

“We will err on the side of health and safety,” he added.

LSU Interim President Tom Galligan said his university has not decided whether it would require unvaccinated students to wear masks to class or tell professors how many unvaccinated students were in their classes.

Henderson said the UL System does not plan to make such lists. “The idea of keeping and sharing a list of unvaccinated students for masking is logistically impractical and likely legally problematic,” he said.

“The vaccine is the protection for the faculty members and students,” Henderson said. “If the vaccine is determined to be insufficient protection for the vaccinated, everyone will wear masks. If the environment is still not safe, based on public health guidance, we will go back to widespread accommodations.”

Henderson said he had discussed the options for faculty exemptions with the presidents of the universities in his system. The nine schools together have nearly 92,000 students.

Read more at Fox 8

Published: April 20, 2021

By: Sydney McGovern | LSU Manship School News Service

BATON ROUGE– A bill to allow legislative oversight in selecting new voting machines advanced through the Senate and Governmental Affairs Committee Tuesday.

The bill, authored by Senator Sharon Hewitt, R-Slidell, establishes a Voting System Technology Commission to review voting systems and a proposal review commission to make recommendations to the secretary of state.

“It’s making sure that we have a very fair, open and transparent process as we go forward,” she said. “The statute, then, that I’m proposing is more about process and less about the answer because the idea is to have a process that works today as well as 20 years from now.”

Current law allows the secretary of state to establish rules relating to the preparation and use of voting systems. It also states that the secretary of state is responsible for the procurement of new voting systems. The proposed bill requires these duties to be carried out in coordination with the new commissions.

Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin said he still had some questions about how exactly the process would work. But he promised to work with Hewitt, the committee chairwoman, on improving the legislation as it moves forward, and the committee’s action seemed to be a step toward settling an earlier disagreement about how the Legislature would oversee his efforts to buy new voting machines for the state.

The bill faced scrutiny at the hearing from various individuals who cited unproven claims about election security that circulated after the November presidential election. While they referred to Hewitt’s bill as a first step, they maintained that it did not go far enough.

A number of individuals testified in favor of paper ballots. Craig Schiro, a former engineer in the oil and gas industry, argued that the state can no longer rely on electronic voting systems.

“People want to be able to have trust in their vote, and that means that we have to have, as the document of record, a secure piece of paper that cannot be teleported to China, cannot be teleported outside of the United States of America,” he said.

Lenar Whitney, a member of the Louisiana delegation of the Republican National Committee, raised concerns of alleged fraud in the 2020 presidential election and echoed the desire for paper ballots.

Read more at BR Proud

Published: April 20, 2021

By: Adrian Dubose | LSU Manship School News Service

Two professors are asking LSU’s Faculty Senate to call on the university to require its 34,000 students in Baton Rouge to receive COVID-19 vaccinations before returning to campus for in-person classes next fall.

The Faculty Senate will discuss the resolution on Thursday afternoon. It calls on LSU to add the COVID-19 vaccine to a list of mandatory immunizations for students that includes vaccinations for measles, mumps and other diseases or to implement a COVID vaccine requirement through other means.

In the resolution, the professors, Inessa Bazayev and Tara Houston, who teach in the College of Music and Dramatic Arts, cited the growing number of universities around the country – now at 52 – that are requiring vaccines, and they assert that numerous LSU faculty members have expressed support for the requirement.

A copy of the resolution was released Tuesday, a day after Interim LSU President Tom Galligan announced that the school could not require vaccinations given that federal regulators approved the COVID vaccines for emergency use without completing full safety investigations.

Jim Henderson, president of the University of Louisiana System, cited the same reason in saying that he did not plan to require vaccinations before students return in the fall.

Galligan and Henderson both said they were strongly encouraging the tens of thousands of students in their systems to get the COVID vaccines and that they were considering other precautions like requiring masks or COVID testing. Jim Henderson, president of the University of Louisiana System, cited the same reason in saying that he did not plan to require vaccinations before students return in the fall.

The Louisiana Legislature and the Louisiana Department of Health normally set vaccine requirements, and neither has mandated vaccination for COVID-19.

The Legislature is controlled by Republicans, including some who are skeptical of the vaccines. State Rep. Tanner Magee, of Houma, the second-ranking Republican in the House, said that he did not see any chance that lawmakers would approve a mandate.

Fifty-two colleges around the country have announced plans to require all students to be vaccinated before they return in the fall, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. They include some of the biggest-name private schools like Yale, Columbia, Cornell, Brown, Notre Dame, Wake Forest, and Johns Hopkins as well as Xavier University in New Orleans.

Read more at The Advocate

Published: April 19, 2021

By: Adrian Dubose, LSU Manship School News Service

BATON ROUGE — Louisiana’s higher education officials are encouraging tens of thousands of students to get COVID-19 vaccines before returning for in-person instruction next fall, but they do not plan to require it.

Top officials at LSU and the University of Louisiana System are making their decisions amid a growing national debate about whether universities can or should force students, faculty members and staff to be vaccinated.

Forty-six universities around the country have announced plans to require all students to be vaccinated before they return in the fall, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. They include some of the biggest-name private schools like Yale, Columbia, Cornell, Brown, Notre Dame and Johns Hopkins as well as Xavier University in New Orleans.

Dr. Jim Henderson, president of the University of Louisiana System, said that requiring the COVID vaccines would be complicated since federal regulators approved them under an emergency-use authorization and have not completed full safety investigations.

“Mandating fully authorized vaccines is difficult,” Henderson said. And with the COVID vaccines, “We are still learning about the long-term efficacy.”

“We will work diligently to influence as many as possible to be vaccinated, then work with public health partners on additional safeguards,” he said, noting that a state mask mandate remains in place.

LSU Interim President Tom Galligan released a statement late Monday saying that the school could not require vaccinations given the emergency-use status. He said he was encouraged that more than 10,000 students and employees had already gotten the vaccine, and he’s strongly urging the others to do so before the fall to provide a safer campus.

Read more at The Advertiser

Published: April 19, 2021

By: Sydney McGovern, LSU Manship School News Service

In his first week in office, President Joe Biden signed executive orders to eliminate many federal subsidies for fossil fuels starting next year and pause new oil and gas permits on federal lands.

Louisiana congressional delegation expressed outrage about Biden’s decision. Sen. John Kennedy, a Republican, said the changes would be “devastating to Louisiana,” and Sen. Bill Cassidy, called Biden’s use of the term “Cancer Alley” a “slam upon our state.” Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry is leading a lawsuit against Biden’s moratorium on oil and gas leases.

But local economic and environmental experts say it’s time for Louisiana to join the global shift to renewable energy, both to ease coastal erosion and to offset the economic and job losses that now seem inevitable. The state ranks 38th in the country in renewable energy production, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Experts warn that if Louisiana continues to move more slowly than other states, it could lose business and jobs to the others.

Dr. John Pardue, an environmental engineer and professor at Louisiana State University, said energy states like Texas and Oklahoma, have been developing their renewable industries for two decades, and Biden’s orders will cut further into the demand for Louisiana’s oil and gas.

“That’s going to make it more challenging for the state to kind of move forward, but it should be a clear warning to the states that we’re going to have to start diversifying our economy because this isn’t going to last forever,” Pardue said.

Dr. Terrence Chambers, director of the Energy Efficiency and Sustainable Energy Center at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, said the worldwide shift toward renewables has been driven as much by economics as politics as the cost of solar and wind power has dropped significantly.

In Louisiana, he said, “There’s going to have to be a commitment to make a shift. I think that Louisiana is having this conversation now, and we’re grappling with the issue right now, but I don’t think that we have made the commitment as a state to really make the shift.”

For many Louisianans, renewable energy is still perceived as a threat. After all, Louisiana is known as an oil and gas state, and the industry has long been considered a pillar of the state’s economy.

Read more at The Advertiser

Published: April 14, 2021

By: Brittney Forbes | LSU Manship News Service

BATON ROUGE — Employment in Louisiana’s oil and gas industry has been declining since 2014 and took another big hit during the COVID-19 pandemic, with layoffs of 7,500 more workers.

The high-paying jobs have not come back yet even though world oil prices have rebounded to pre-pandemic levels. And as President Joe Biden pushes to accelerate a shift to renewable energy sources, oil and gas workers from Lafayette to Houma are feeling increasingly uneasy about the future.

Loren Scott, an economist who does consulting work for the industry, said Louisiana has about 27,000 jobs in oil and gas extraction, or 7,500 fewer than in January 2020. That number reflects those working in oil and gas exploration and production.

“The big hit that took place is a result of COVID just dealing another blow to the industry,” he said.

Even with the rebound in crude oil prices over the last few months, the South Louisiana oil patch remains “one of the few sectors of the economy that did not show any improvement” in jobs, Scott said.

Gary Wagner, an economics professor at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, said that an array of businesses that support the oil and gas industry also have lost jobs, and adding these in brings the total job losses to at least 24,000 since the peak in 2014.

Crude oil prices plunged from $106 a barrel in 2014 to $27 in 2016 before bouncing to more than $60 in January 2020.

Patrick Courreges, the communications director at the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources, said the industry suffered last year as Americans cut back on travel and worked from home. That’s because many of the refined products, like gasoline, are for transportation.

Read more at Daily Advertiser

Published: April 14, 2021

By: Kathleen Peppo | | LSU Manship School News Service

A bill to allow survivors of sexual assault to terminate housing leases early moved forward Wednesday.

State Rep. Aimee Freeman, D-New Orleans, who brought House Bill 375, said that she did so for the sake of all sexual assault survivors, but especially for college students who are victims of sexual assault.

“Of course, it’s way more relevant based on all the testimony that’s been happening in this Capitol, even though I started working on it before the stories on sexual assault and the coverup at LSU happened,” Freeman said, referring to criticism of the university’s handling of sexual assault complaints against football players.

Current law allows for survivors of domestic violence to abandon a lease early.

But if a survivor of sexual assault who is not in a relationship with the abuser asks to be released from his or her rental agreement, and a landlord refuses, the survivor has no choice but to continue paying rent until the lease ends.

Freeman’s HB375 would extend the right to abandon the lease to include survivors of abuse who are not in an intimate relationship with their abuser.

Freeman said that it is not only necessary for the safety of many survivors to terminate a lease early, as their abusers often know where they live, but also for their healing.

“Survivors often have flashbacks or nightmares,” Freeman said. “Sometimes it affects their ability to go to school or work.”

One LSU student, Isabella Rovere, who spoke before the House Civil Law and Procedure Committee in favor of the bill described a situation in which she was sexually assaulted and her parents lost rent money on a place where she no longer could bear to live.

Read more at The Advocate