Louisiana lawmakers question LSU president on recruitment, DEI and Title IX

BATON ROUGE, La. (Louisiana First) – Louisiana State University President William Tate was questioned by a legislative panel about retaining students, DEI and Title IX. 

Legislators have been closely monitoring student recruitment and retention since Tate took office over three years ago. He reported a record 66,000 students enrolled across all the campuses, with LSU’s Baton Rouge campus having a record-sized freshman class of 7,900 students.

House Education Chair State Rep. Laurie Schlegel put pressure on the university to speed up its financial awards to be given to the top students faster to prevent them from committing to other southern schools. 

“We need to continue to think about the research and the strategic framework that we have in front of you because it’s that type of experience those students want. And we need to ensure that those students see that we have world-class faculty here in Baton Rouge at LSU,” LSU Vice President of Enrollment Danny Barrow said.

Part of what the university is working on is expanding construction management under the engineering department and getting a nursing program on the Baton Rouge campus to draw in more highly qualified students.

“Some of our very top students who want to come to LSU wanted to be nurses and they come for two years and then they realize we don’t have nursing in Baton Rouge,” Tate said.

Lawmakers question LSU about DEI

LSU was ahead of the curve in doing away with the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion language from its programming. Legislators passed a resolution asking the university to report how much money had been spent on DEI initiatives.

State Rep. Josh Carlson claims the report given to the legislature was missing information compared to the report given to the Board of Supervisors.

“How does this body know that the university, a public institution, is not in alignment with the values and priorities of the state? I think this state would be shocked to know that the university spends millions of dollars a year on diversity, equity, and inclusion,” Carlson said.

DEI was not part of the agenda for the meeting, leading two democratic members to speak against the line of questioning since LSU did not have time to prepare information on the subject.

Carlson pointed to language on the LSU Health Center New Orleans that talked about addressing health inequity that he felt should have been in the report about DEI. Tate defended the notion by talking about how some health matters are impacted by gender and race.

“We can quibble about the language. I wish they called it something else so we could all agree on it. But there are certain things that happen to certain populations in health and health individuals have to be attentive to them” Tate said. “There are disparities in cancer, for example. If we look at that research, are largely driven by certain racial and or gender characteristics and if we ignore it, we won’t solve our cancer problem in Louisiana.”

Lawmakers question LSU about Title IX

Lawmakers also asked about the Title IX office and how they address the reports of sexual violence on campus. The office said they had 250 reports to the office over last year. Of those, there were 13 formal complaints, which is partly determined by the parties involved if they want to take the report that far.

“Of the 13 formal complaints that we receive within that one-year period of time. There was one that went through a full investigation, meaning that parties were interviewed. There was an actual hearing and there was an actual finding of fault,” LSU Vice President of Engagement, Civil Rights, and Title IX Todd Manuel said.

Several other topics were raised but not discussed in the committee with hopes they will return to the table again in the future to go over DEI, NIL, and security around research at the university.

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