Author: manshipxgr

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

Published: April 16, 2021

BY: Emily Wood, LSU Manship School News Service

Early childhood education and childcare programs are popular among Louisiana residents even if it means raising taxes to support them, according to a recent report by LSU researchers.

The report states that three-fourths of the 781 residents surveyed support more spending on childcare for infants and toddlers from low-income families, and 69% support more state spending on childcare from all families regardless of income.

More than 50% of the respondents said they would be willing to pay more taxes to expand these programs.

The findings were in the final report on a survey of state residents by the Public Policy Research Lab at LSU’s Manship School of Mass Communication.

On Monday, April 12, Gov. John Bel Edwards said early childhood education is a priority, but did not offer any amount he would allocate toward it. He made the comment in his State of the State Address as a new legislative session began.

Read more at The Drum

Published: April 13, 2021

By: Matthew Bennett | LSU Manship News Service

Constant phone calls and entering names onto growing lists, deleting old names and re-arranging others after cancellations and no-shows, juggling a varying number of COVID-19 vaccines from one period to the next – this is what mom-and-pop pharmacies around the state have been doing along with their regular services.

“You might have to make a list of a thousand phone numbers, and a hundred of those have probably already gotten the vaccine,” said Jimmy Taylor, lead pharmacist at Don Chaucer’s Pharmacy in Hammond. “We’ve never done anything like this. You can’t just walk in and get a COVID vaccine like the flu. It’s a learning curve for all of us.

“If we have a heavy day, we have to bring in nurses to give the shots for me so I can keep running the pharmacy,” he said.

Out of the 486 vaccine providers in the state, 102 independent pharmacies represent over a fifth of distribution sites, according to the Louisiana Department of Health. While distribution of the COVID-19 vaccines was a new and challenging task for all distributors, many of the independent pharmacies lacked the infrastructure of the drug-store chains and hospitals to be able to administer large quantities of shots daily.

Randy Creel, the owner of Creel’s Family Pharmacy in Franklinton, described the distribution process as “very hectic.” He said he has spent most of 2021 giving 20 vaccines a day while filling prescriptions and handling other duties.

“We were getting people from all over South Louisiana coming in,” Creel said. “It’s just an extra amount of work by the time you do the paperwork, get the patient’s information, get the insurance and put it in the computer. You do that 20 times a day on top of checking prescriptions [and] talking to doctors and customers.”

Despite these challenges, mom-and-pop pharmacies are a crucial piece of the vaccination puzzle, particularly in rural areas.

Rural Louisianans trail urban residents by 31% in COVID-19 vaccinations, according to a recent analysis by The Daily Advertiser in Lafayette.

With more than 2.5 million Louisianans living outside of urban areas, local pharmacies could help boost those rates by giving people a chance to receive the vaccine from familiar faces they trust.

That could become even more important with news Tuesday that federal regulators are pausing deliveries of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine to check into a rare blood clotting problem. There have not been any safety problems with the earlier and more widely distributed vaccines made by Pfizer and Moderna.

Read more at The Advertiser.com

Published: April 8, 2021

By: Kathleen Peppo | LSU Manship School News Service

BATON ROUGE–State senators on Thursday took turns blasting LSU for its failures on sexual assaults at a hearing at which not a single LSU official listed on the agenda was in attendance.

The Senate Select Committee on Women and Children had called for the testimony of nine LSU employees and one attorney at Taylor Porter, a Baton Rouge law firm that represents LSU, on how it has handled sexual assault complaints involving football players and others.

But the LSU officials, including Head Football Coach Ed Orgeron and Athletic Director Scott Woodward, opted to send written testimony instead, and only Winston DeCuir, LSU’s vice president for legal affairs and general counsel, showed up to testify in person.

DeCuir said he had advised the others not to attend after a former LSU football employee said she was bringing a $50 million suit against the university. The suit, filed Thursday, alleges that Les Miles, Orgeron’s predecessor as head coach, had sexually harassed her and that her superiors and coworkers retaliated against her after she reported it.

“Based on the announcement of threatened litigation, I have to be cautious in that circumstance,” DeCuir said. “The only prudent step was to caution the university they should not be giving testimony under oath on these issues with a threatened lawsuit coming down the pipe.”

But Sen. Karen Carter Peterson, D-New Orleans, was having none of that.

“Heads need to roll, and we’re not going to just believe people’s written statements,” Peterson said. She said the scandal “warrants dismissal of some of the players.”

Allegations of rape and sexual violence by former LSU football star Derrius Guice and others have surfaced, sparking criticism that LSU has ignored or mishandled reports of sexual misconduct.

Peterson and other lawmakers have been upset that LSU has only suspended two athletic employees temporarily in response to the revelations. Meanwhile, former LSU president F. King Alexander has had to resign from Oregon State University and the University of Kansas has fired Miles as its football coach over other harassment allegations from his days at LSU.

Read more at KATC3

Published: April 9, 2021

By: Mahogani Counts | LSU Manship School News Service

BATON ROUGE — An LSU survey shows that Louisiana residents disagree on the role that racial discrimination plays in our society, with 84% of Black residents believing more changes are needed to achieve racial equality.

Only 39% of whites agree. Twenty-six percent of whites think the country has made the necessary changes to achieve equal rights, and 30% of whites think that it has gone too far in making changes for the rights of Black people.

This study was conducted by researchers in the Public Policy Research Lab at the LSU’s Manship School of Mass Communication. The researchers polled 781 adults throughout Louisiana to understand their views on race and class.

Respondents also differed on the extent of racial discrimination in several socioeconomic areas. Blacks and whites in Louisiana staunchly disagree on the degree to which racial discrimination plays a part in the job market, the service industry, applications for loans or mortgages, voting and healthcare.

A majority of all Louisiana’s residents — 55% — believe that Black people are treated less fairly than white people in interactions with the police. But when the responses are broken down by race, 86% of Black people say police treat Blacks less fairly, while only 42% of white respondents agreed.

This finding comes as the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin looms over the American public. Chauvin is on trial for second-degree murder after a Black Minneapolis resident, George Floyd, died in his custody. Investigators say that Chauvin knelt on Floyd’s neck for more than 9 minutes after officers placed him on the ground.

Read more at Shreveport Times