Louisiana Voice

Cornell University has been in the forefront lately regarding the alleged 2024 gang rape of a co-ed by seven male students but sexual assault on college campuses is certainly nothing new.

Neither are attempts by university officials to cover up or at least minimize he damage such news stories can do to a university.

At least two Louisiana universities have their own dirty linen they’d like to keep hidden away from prying eyes.

Most recently, it has been learned that an LSU football player accused of a 2025 rape was at first suspended (not prosecuted, mind you, but suspended) for one year but that was reduced on appeal to two years of probation without restrictions and he was allowed back on the team.

Such is the gilded life of a football player at the Ole War Skule.

Only now, after the victim went public with her allegations last month after a formal Title IX complaint last January failed to produce criminal charges, is the matter being investigated by the East Baton Rouge Parish district attorney’s office.

“Campus sexual assault procedures have drawn renewed attention as universities face questions over how reports are investigated, what discipline follows and how campus findings intersect with the criminal justice system,” said a Sept. 30 post by Alexandra Agraz of LAW COMMENTARY, an online legal news service.

“Louisiana state Rep. Vanessa Caston LaFleur has called for a review of what happens after universities find students responsible for sexual misconduct, including whether students are adequately informed about the limits of campus proceedings,” Agraz wrote.

The response by administrators at Louisiana Tech University in Ruston to on-campus sexual assaults was interesting, to say the least.

In the early 2020s, the student newspaper, The Tech Talk, which had published a weekly edition since 1931, was simply SHUT DOWN as a result of its controversial coverage of the assaults, something any responsible journalist would be expected to do anywhere else.

After all, we can’t have those irresponsible reporters embarrassing the school by printing the truth, now can we? Well, yes we can. We cannot pick and choose what is a legitimate news story and what is not. That would be censorship.

Communication students have indicated to LouisianaVoice a hope that the newspaper will eventually be reinstated.

But the trend on college campuses, be they Ivy League schools like Cornell, state flagship universities like LSU or smaller universities like Louisiana Tech, appears to be to keep pumping out the good news about research grants, etc., but to slap a lid on anything controversial.

Universities seem to consider of their campuses as communities unto themselves and that anything that happens within those boundaries stays there. What administrators do not seem to realize or appreciate is that students, particularly female students, deserve protection from predators. They may be residents of a particular campus, but they are part of a much bigger family that pays tuition so that their loved ones may have successful careers and a better life.

To attempt to cover up criminal activity is doing no one any favors.