Louisiana Voice

On Friday, March 24th, I submitted my application for the open President position at Southeastern Louisiana University, my alma mater.

Numerous colleagues, alumni, and community members have asked me to apply for the position. Prior to the “technology meltdown” and the subsequent questionable leadership in handling of the “hack,” I had no intention of applying for this prominent position. But now I am persuaded to apply. The University—OUR UNIVERSITY—needs strong grassroots leadership. I am answering the call to service.

I came to Southeastern as a high school dropout. As an 18-year-old, I took the GED on campus in the Summer of 1988 and enrolled as a freshman student a few weeks later. Southeastern gave me an emergency student loan and a Federal Pell Grant. I was very involved on campus as a leader, thrusting me into a variety of leadership roles ever since. Truly, nothing good has happened to me apart from Southeastern.

For over 30 years I have served Southeastern in one capacity or another, from student worker to full professor. Indeed, I was President of the Faculty Senate and won the University’s highest award twice, once for artistic activity and again for service. I love Sims Memorial Library and Southeastern. I would like nothing more than to continue to lead in this setting. I have a distinct leadership style and vision. My approach is LOUISIANA STRONG, LOUISIANA BOLD.

On day one, as President of Southeastern Louisiana University, I will begin the process of implementing a clear strategic agenda with my 15-Point Plan: 

1. I will have 4 priorities: Enrollment, Funding, Student Mental Wellness, and Campus Free Speech. Aggressive recruitment of students 24/7/365. Fight for funding from the Louisiana Legislature for raises and deferred maintenance. All hands on deck for a campus culture promoting kindness, empathy, and awareness of mental health. Make the University a Free Speech Zone.

2. I will schedule an open press conference on the Southeastern Internet shutdown. Will answer all questions within my legal right to do so.

3. I will move into the President’s Home and will actually live there with my family. I will only serve as President for 5 years.

4. I will have regularly scheduled open-door events for any student, staff, faculty, or community member to drop by and talk about a campus issue.

5. I will eat weekly meals in the cafeteria and host an open table for anyone to join me.

6. I will host a monthly call-in show on radio and online: “The State of Southeastern.”

7. I will appoint a committee to remove Southeastern from the AAUP Censure List.

8. I will appoint a task force to put KSLU 90.9 FM back on the airwaves. Will have the station broadcasting by September 1, 2023.

9. I will appoint a committee to plan the “CB Forgotston Free Speech Forum,” and I will fund the speakers’ fees personally. Forum to be held bi-weekly during the Fall 2023.

10. I will sign an executive order for all campus employees (including student workers) to make $11 an hour as a minimum campus wage. Effective August 15, 2023.

11. I will propose renaming the Department of Communication the Robin Roberts School of Communication.

12. I will propose renaming the Department of Music to the Bill Evans School of Musical Arts.

13. I will reestablish the Southeastern Social Science Research Center and will propose to rename it the Professor C. Howard Nichols Louisiana Research Center.

14. I will propose naming the Athletic Training Program the Robert “Doc” Goodwin Athletic Training Program.

15. I will launch a contest-campaign to find a second family dog and have students name him or her. This will be a fundraiser for student athletic scholarships.

In closing, I would be grateful for your support and welcome your feedback. There is no place more important to me than Southeastern Louisiana University.

Dayne Sherman lives in Ponchatoula. He can be reached at daynesherman@yahoo.com.

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Rep. Danny McCormick is a damned fool.

That’s the only way to describe a man who uses his six-year-old granddaughter as justification for allowing anyone 18 and older to carry handguns without permits – or training.

McCormick has filed House Bill 131 – for the fourth consecutive year – which would allow adults over the age of 18 to not only carry concealed handguns without permits, but to do so without the currently required training.

McCormick, a Repugnantcans from Oil City, absurdly and thoughtlessly cited the proficiency of his six-year-old granddaughter, who he said used an AR-15 rifle to kill her first deer last year, as the pseudo-sound reasoning behind his bill.

He asked the not-so-rhetorical question, “Why don’t we trust law-abiding citizens with their Second Amendment rights?” in supporting his bill.

Well, first of all, Mr. McCormick, if you give blanket approval such as you advocate, what possible assurance do you have that everyone who takes advantage of this new-found freedom will be a “law-abiding citizen,” as you so eloquently put it?

The Nashville shooter at the Covenant School was “law-abiding,” until yesterday, when she wasn’t anymore.

Secondly, you seem hellbent on defending citizens’ Second Amendment rights while your fellow Rethugnicans, from Rhonda Santis all the way down to frothing-at-the-mouth parish council members embark on a concerted effort to weaken First Amendment rights – or abolish them altogether.

At least some modicum of consistency is called for here, Mr. Second Amendment Rights Legislator. The mob that once called itself the Party of Lincoln is determined to gut women’s rights, voting rights, education curricula, LGBTQ rights, civil liberties, and First Amendment guarantees of free assembly (see Atlanta), free press (see Rhonda Santis in Florida and numerous parish councils in Louisiana).

In fact, the Repugnantcan Party has not seen a single right that we take for granted, which are promised us in the US Constitution’s Bill of Rights, that it not in favor of striking down – including an actual proposal by a Florida legislator to abolish the Democratic Party.

Except, of course, the precious Second Amendment. CAN’T TOUCH THIS is the mantra of the Repugnantcan Party when its faithful aren’t pausing to offer thoughts and prayers for the victims of yet another mass shooting.

But when all is said and done, I haven’t heard of a single drag queen show fatality. I can’t say the same for guns.

The best thing I can say for McCormick’s bill is, in the words of so many Repugnantcans when the subject of gun control is raised, now is not the time for the discussion. But when you think about it, and if you’re truly honest with yourself, you have to ask the single burning question:

When is the time?

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This is the Christmas card of U.S. Rep. Andy Ogles and family. He’s the congressman who represents the school where the children were slaughtered in Nashville on Monday. Like George Santos, he sported a creatively embellished CV until nosy news reporters started doing background checks. Only then did he update his online bio.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Ogles

I’m sure he will have thoughts and prayers.

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John Georges may be about to strike again and that would be good news for the people of northwest Louisiana who still like the feel of a real newspaper in their hands.

You see, The Shreveport Times, for whom I wrote in my formative and naïve early journalism career, once boasted a daily circulation of somewhere north of 100,000 and a Sunday circulation of something like 150,000.

What’s more, The Times, under the leadership of Executive Editor Raymond McDaniel, boasted an investigative team – it was called the Enterprise Team – headed by Marsha Shuler that was second to none in Louisiana – including the Baton Rouge Advocate and State-Times or the New Orleans Times-Picayune.

There was also the Shreveport Journal, the afternoon competition to The Times that, at its peak had a daily circulation of 40,000 (it did not publish on Sundays). Its circulation shrunk to about 16,000 before finally doing what all afternoon papers were doing – calling it quits in March 1991.

Meanwhile, The Times was sold to Gannett, which publishes USA Today (along with the Monroe Morning World and News-Star), for a whopping $54.4 million and the budget cuts began almost immediately. Newsrooms across the board at Gannett publications, The Times included, were sacrificed on the altar of bottom lines. In the five-year period from 2012 to 2016 saw The Times circulation shrink even further each year, from 36,000 daily and 47,500 Sundays to 25,300 daily and a paltry 31,700 Sundays.

As newsrooms were shrunken, so were the circulation figures. At The Times, for the five-year period from 2012-2016, circulation dropped from 35,962 for daily and 47,490 for Sunday in 2012 to 25,324 daily and 31,702 Sunday. Its news content became a joke with only a lone general assignment reporter, one entertainment, and a single sports reporter.

For those of us who grew up in the business, it’s sad to see an industry you love taken down this way, leaving readers dependent on internet news that’s unreliable at best and pure garbage at worse.

Sportswriter Nico Van Thyn, a native of Shreveport and former writer for both the Journal and The Times (retired from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram), wrote about the DEARTH OF NEWSPAPER REPORTING way back in 2017. Little has changed since his critique of the abysmal decline in good reporting six years ago, except if anything, it’s gotten worse. The Times today more resembles a high school publication than the professional newspaper of its prime when owned by the Ewing family.

And so it was, according to LSU-Shreveport associate professor Jeff Sadow (with whom I seldom agree on any political subject) WROTE RECENTLY for The Hayride blog that Advocate publisher John Georges, who has already invaded other Louisiana markets in head-to-head competition with existing papers (New Orleans, Lafayette, Lake Charles), has come sniffing around Shreveport with an eye to encroaching on that market as well.

That would be a decided advantage for the news vacuum that exists in the Caddo-Bossier area. A Baton Rouge Advocate retiree related the story of visiting a friend in Shreveport where she learned of a pending tax election scheduled for the following Saturday. Curious, she called The Times and asked a reporter to explain what the tax would be for. The reporter, incredulously, didn’t even know about the election.

The call was terminated but a few minutes later, the reporter called back to ask if she could interview the Baton Rouge resident about the election in Shreveport.

The downside to a Shreveport Advocate, of course, would be the concentration of so much influence in the hands of one individual. Georges’ publications already shy away from hard reporting on the relationship between LSU and gambling interests.

Of course, Georges’ ties to organized gambling have been KNOWN for several years and DOCUMENTED again as recently as last December.

That should be a red flag for journalism purists, but on balance, the advantage of a new kid on the news reporting block outweighs the disadvantages.

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Regular (and in some cases, even occasional) readers of this blog know that I’m not a fan of Louisiana’s junior senator, one John Neely Kennedy.

Kennedy has come off as some sort of hybrid offspring of Forrest Gump and Foghorn Leghorn more times than not in his attempts to establish himself as the Senate’s philosopher-in-residence.

But on Wednesday, he upstaged an obviously unqualified KATO CREWS, a Biden nominee for U.S. District Judge of Colorado.

And while Crews was exposed as one who is clearly not qualified for the position, his very nomination speaks more to Biden’s failure to vet his nominee than it does to Crews’s incompetence.

The exchange was a clear indictment of the Biden administration’s lack of proper background checks in sending someone so incompetent, so uninformed, and so ill-prepared to a Senate confirmation hearing. It also served as an understated example of Kennedy’s superior knowledge in this particular instance.

The Louisiana senator asked a simple, straightforward question of Crews: How would he analyze a Brady motion?

Crews, incredibly and incredulously, responded that he had not “had the occasion to address a Brady motion during his more than four years as a magistrate judge.

What!?

Not satisfied with that non-answer, Kennedy pressed forward, asking Crews if he even knew “what a Brady motion is.”

Crews (shamefully) admitted that the concept of the landmark case was “not coming to mind” since he had never before addressed the issue.

Kennedy then asked if Crews remembered the U.S. Supreme Court case Brady v. Maryland and what the case held.

Rather than admit that he did not, Crews instead tried to bluff his way through the question when he said, “I believe that the Brady case involved something regarding the Second Amendment. I have not had an occasion to address that,” he added as if that lame excuse would compensate for his not knowing what any first-year law student should know by rote.

A Brady motion is the legal concept which holds that the prosecution must hand over any potentially favorable (exculpatory) evidence to the defense. Hell, that concept was the very centerpiece of My Cousin Vinny, a classic Joe Pesci movie.

Several Louisiana defendants have been convicted – and subsequently exonerated – as the result of prosecutors withholding exculpatory evidence from the defense and any nominee for a federal judgeship – or in Louisiana, a candidate for any state judgeship, all of which are elective – should know a Brady motion backwards and forward.

Crews should do the right thing and withdraw his name from consideration. If not, Biden should do it for him.

And while Kennedy on the whole has been an embarrassment for the state, in this particular case, he performed a valuable service and it would be negligent not to say so. Biden, on the other hand, should rightfully feel ashamed at his administration’s lack of follow-through.

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