Louisiana Voice

I don’t like to say I told you so, but….

Oh, hell, yes, I do. I love being able to say I told you so. Everybody does if they’re honest.

There’s just something inherent in our DNA that gives us that warm fuzzy feeling when we’re able to do that.

Take, for instance, my LOUISIANA VOICE post of last Tuesday (Feb. 17) in which I discussed the trend toward political control of higher education and the fact that Gov. Squeaky Toy Landry has, in two years, made five political appointments to heads of Louisiana colleges and universities.

Well, now you can make that six.

Just as I predicted, Ramesh Kolluru was named as the only finalist for the presidency of University of Louisiana Lafayette.

It wasn’t a particularly difficult prediction, though. Here are some excerpts from that Feb. 17 post:

Kolluru was approached last year by an industry-friendly lobbying group called “Committee of 100 for Economic Development, Inc.,” or C100. That was following the Environmental Protection Agency’s three-day public hearing in Baton Rouge about whether Louisiana should be given enforcement responsibility of carbon capture and storage projects in the state. Carbon capture and storage, or CCS, is a method of reducing greenhouse gases by capturing carbon dioxide from the pollution of industrial smokestacks. The captured carbon is transported via pipeline and, ultimately, injected deep underground.

One of the proposed injection sites is in Lake Maurepas in Tangipahoa Parish where a professor has already been reined in for adverse findings of that proposition. The funding for that research was provided by one of the industries proposing to store the carbon.

C100 desired to continue recruiting support for state control of CCS so, Michael Olivier, former head of C100 ASKED KULLURU TO HELP. “We will be seeking influential business leaders in regions of the state to sign OpEds and we will use social media to influence public opinion in the upcoming EPA ruling. Would you be that person in Acadiana? He asked, according to emails obtained through a public records request.

Kolluru’s response? “Absolutely!” So much for objectivity and non-bias in research.

Kolluru was already serving as interim president following the abrupt resignation of Joseph Savoie last July, But guess what his job was before that? He was the university’s vice president for research, innovation and economic development. His eagerness to assist in the promotion of a controversial matter like carbon capture pretty much throws his objectivity into serious question and automatically tarnishes any research from the school.

Climate scientist and Penn State University professor Michael Mann called the relationship between C100 and ULL “deeply problematic,” according The Lens, a respected New Orleans online news service.

Just remember who told you Kolluru was a sure bet for the ULL job.

After all, this is Louisiana.

Cankle Ankle Trump’s $400 million ballroom construction project aside, there is a lot of other proposed mega-building construction taking place throughout the country with but scant information about the potential impact it might have on local communities.

And Louisiana is right in the thick of it all.

On the one hand, ICE is discreetly snapping EMPTY WAREHOUSES for conversion to massive detention centers capable of storing as many as 8,000 to 10,000 human beings indefinitely without benefit of attorneys or due process.

On the other, water-gulping data centers are also cropping up that will perform God-knows-what functions, buildings that promise to dwarf Walmart supercenters.

Squeaky toy Jeff Landry says the announced Amazon $12 billion center in the Caddo and Bossier parish area will create 540 new permanent jobs as well as 1700 indirect new job opportunities in the state’s northwest region.

Already, construction had begun on another $10 billion (but already edging up to $30 billion in cost) Meta-run AI data center about 100 miles to the east along I-20 in RICHLAND PARISH. It promises to eat up more electric power in a day than the entire city of New Orleans on one of those typically sweltering hot August days.

Anthropic plans a similar $10 billion facility in West Feliciana Parish

But get this: the Richland Parish data center, located in the tiny community of Holly Ridge, is registered to use an astonishing 23 MILLION GALLONS OF WATER PER DAY, or 8.4 billion gallons per year. Those in northwest Louisiana and West Feliciana Parish promise to be equally thirsty for water and power, which is certain to adversely affect consumer rates in the area.

But the bigger—much bigger—question should be: just what in the name of George Orwell’s 1984 will these data systems be used for? Besides posing as a significant drain on subsurface water tables and creating unfathomable demands on electric power, questions should abound on exactly what type of data is expected to be gathered by all these data centers.

The industry as a whole has been criticized for its lack of transparency in development decision. In Louisiana, local and state officials have created seeming airtight NON-DISCLOSURE AGREEMENTS (NDAs) in order to hide the economic development process.

But in an era of Trumpian dystopia when Repugnantcans openly espouse less government intrusion in our personal lives while privately obsessing over our bedroom preferences, our health care, blocking our preferences over the quality of air and water we breathe and drink and stripping away our rights little by little, it’s more than a little alarming to contemplate just how much personal information Big Brother is amassing on us in those mammoth data centers.

Perhaps the promise of good-paying jobs for the few is supposed to assuage the concerns of tens of thousands of others living in the area of these monster structures.

As if those concerns are not enough, there’s the hush-hush effort to buy up empty warehouse space for conversion to DETENTION CENTERS to hold thousands upon thousands of people, most of whom have never done a thing to harm us and in fact, probably have a lower overall crime rate than the general population of this country.

We have those who claim these undocumented people are taking our jobs but an equal number claim they’re freeloaders. They can’t be both. And while they’re claiming that they’re a drain on society, ICE keeps raiding work sites to apprehend them. At the same time, claims are made that they’re taking up our housing while remaining homeless. And Trump’s claim that millions of undocumented types are voting illegally, that is a myth, as well; Even as state legislatures like our very own in Louisiana are passing legislation making it illegal for undocumenteds to vote, it’s already illegal for them to vote and precious few cases of illegal voting have been certified, Trump’s wild claims notwithstanding.

Yet, here we are, building more and bigger prisons to hold these people indefinitely, converting many working people into those wards of the state the Repugnantcans are so damned concerned about.

And more and more, bigger and bigger data centers to keep tabs on the rest of us.

What in the name of Adderall-induced dementia was Mar-A-Lardo Trump thinking when he made the announcement on Truth Social that he was sending a Navy hospital ship—that just happens to be unavailable to sail anywhere—to GREENLAND, which doesn’t want or need the help, on a humanitarian mission to aid in a non-existent health crisis?

Adderall, for the MAGHATS reading this, is taken for the treatment of narcolepsy (not to be confused with epilepsy or necrophilia.)

And just what is Jeff Landry’s role going to be in this head-scratcher?

Could this be a thinly-disguised plan for a military invasion of the country with Landry’s being promoted to Rear Admiral to carry out the attack in an aircraft carrier with a big red cross painted on its bow?

One reader posed the not-so-tongue-in-cheek question, “If part-time governor Landry wants to pull a Trumpian stunt, why not anchor a Navy hospital ship at New Orleans and offer medical care to those who need it?”

Ah, but that makes too much sense to be a viable proactive decision for anyone in Louisiana politics. I mean after all, we have a state legislator from New Iberia as a (legally, I might add) candidate for Congress representing Julia Letlow’s district which is comprised mostly of parishes up around the Arkansas border.

But back to Greenland and that crushing need for humanitarian help. Just what is the urgency, anyway? Well, one American sailor got ill onboard his ship and the good folks of Greenland took him in to a hospital for treatment—treatment that is free in that country, by the way.

And what about America’s two hospital ships? Both the USNS Mercy and the USNS Comfort are themselves incapacitated—sort of like that sick American sailor—because they are in dry dock undergoing maintenance until sometime around July, which kind of makes Trump’s message that a ship is “on the way” seem a little out there in la-la land.

Bear in mind, if you will, this is the same guy who is shutting down FEMA, who denied assistance to the West Coast when it was on fire and who still has not managed to be of much help to the hurricane victims in North Carolina.

That “fantastic” Landry has remained eerily quiet on the topic thus far. What with the 2026 regular session of the Louisiana Legislature cranking up two weeks from today, it would seem that Squeaky Toy would have his hands full splitting time between Baton Rouge and Nuuk.

But one astute reader did note that when she first heard that Cankle Ankles had enlisted Landry’s help, “I assumed we were sending the Cajun Navy to deliver some gumbo to the sick soldier. That’s the most those two might pull off.”

As Larry the Cable Guy would say, “Now that’s funny, I don’t care who you are.”

But, hey, perhaps Landry can dispatch former veterinarian, former pharmaceutical salesman, former congressman, former gubernatorial candidate, former Louisiana surgeon general and former CDC principal deputy director Ralph Abraham (who served in the latter post “with clarity and discipline,” according to a CDC statement) along to supervise U.S. naval and Greenland surgeons with his “clarity and discipline” as they toil to bring this medical catastrophe to a happy outcome. One wonders what the reaction to all this by Doctors Without Borders might be.

Fifth paragraph below photo of Mike Rivault that begins, “Yeargain, who has acknowledged…” should read, “Rushing, who has acknowledged…”

For those who perhaps assumed the dispute between DR. FERESHTEH EMAMI and the administration at Southeastern Louisiana University was an outlier and that all was generally well on the Hammond campus, think again.

There are at least three other disputes between professors and the school’s administration in addition to efforts by the university to charge exorbitant rates for copies of public records—or even examining records. Access to view public records is supposed to be available at no charge, according to Louisiana’s PUBLIC RECORDS ACT, (R.S. 44:1 et seq).

As for accessing public records, it’s pretty much a crap shoot. When LouisianaVoice attempted to learn if SLU had paid for a fluff piece on school President William Wainwright in CEO MAGAZINE, we were first told by SLU spokesperson Mike Rivault that the school had three working days in which to respond to our request.

It doesn’t.

R.S. 44:1 et seq clearly says that the custodian of public records must provide the requested records immediately if they are not in use. If they are in use, the custodian must respond immediately with a date—within three working days—as to when they will be available.

When so informed, Rivault said the payment for the pay-to-play piece was made by the school’s foundation and that he would obtain the information for us by the next day.

He didn’t. When a follow-up request was made, he replied that there was no such record.

Yet, Rivault had earlier quoted an actual price of $1250 to another individual for the same information. Bear in mind, if you will, that a simple accounting for a single cost item should probably run more than one page—a $1250 page. Yet another request for the same information by the group Louisiana Citizens Against Censorship (LACAC) was met with the bargain basement price of a paltry $128 which, according the state law, is still a tad steep.

SLU’s Senior Marketing and Communications Leader Mike Rivault. At right is Louisiana Federation of Teachers representative Tara LaFrance.

But hey, that’s chicken feed at for a public record at SLU. One other individual, a professor on campus, was quoted $21,000 at $25 per page just to view another set of records.

But public records requests and SLU’s non-compliance aside, there are larger issues that beg the attention of the courts.

In Steven J. Rushing v. John Yeargain, a case that has its origins in September and October of 2018, more than seven years ago, Rushing is appealing the DISMISSAL of his lawsuit by the U.S. Middle District Court in February 2025.

In another curious lawsuit, it seems that Peter Gratton, a history an assistant professor of political science may have actually had the appeal of his termination denied before the appeal board had even met to consider his appeal.

Rushing, who has acknowledged he suffers from depression and bipolar II and is “an idealist and a gadfly” unable to ignore what he considers an injustice, claims he was heckled and removed from a faculty senate meeting on Oct. 3, 2018, subsequently refused the school’s efforts to have him undergo psychological evaluation and eventually fired from his music professorship position.

He claims that his intended addressed to the faculty senate on Sept. 26 and Oct. 3, 2018, “were not routine workplace grievances, but instead research findings protected by academic freedom and commentary on matters of public concern, including:

Fraud, misrepresentation, and breach of public trust at Southeastern Louisiana University, such as administrative deception, violations of SELU fraud policies, and false budgetary claims regarding the use of public funds at a state university;

• Lack of faculty governance and procedural compliance for FS meetings, highlighting violations of Faculty Senate Constitution and Bylaws, suppression of faculty proposals, and administrative manipulation, restricting the ability of faculty to conduct true open meetings;

• Insufficient leadership accountability and oversight of the Faculty Senate Executive Council, raising issues of transparency in the governing of a publicly funded university;

• Academic freedom and the right to publish, emphasizing the public’s interest in promoting scholarship, teaching, and research;

• Viewpoint discrimination and free-speech suppression, addressing how the selective silencing of faculty based on criticisms of institutional policy in a faculty-governance forum violates the First Amendment;

• Grievance and due process failures, exposing failure to provide due process as required by university policy and state law, and failure to investigate illegal acts.

• Broader reforms and public accountability in Louisiana’s higher education system, urging adherence to contractual, ethical, financial, and academic standards.

Gratton began his sixth year as an assistant professor at SLU in 2023. Once in his sixth year, he became eligible for tenure review and he so informed his department head of his intent to apply. SLU, however, notified Dr. Gratton of his non-reappointment during his sixth year. While the decision to grant tenure is within the discretion of SLU, Dr. Gratton’s eligibility for tenure review during his sixth year is not discretionary based on SLU’s and the Board of Supervisors’ own policies, his lawsuit asserts.

He said SLU’s Policy on Termination and Non-reappointment of Faculty, “[n]otice that a probationary appointment is not to be renewed shall be given to the faculty in advance of the expiration of the appointment “at least 12 months before the expiration of an appointment after two or more years of uninterrupted service at the institution.” That required notice, he says, was not given.

He says in his petition that on Aug. 30, 2023, he received a letter from the department chair requesting that he (Gratton) change the date on the My 31, 2023, non-reappointment letter “to render it compliant” with the school’ policy on termination. He says he refused to do so.

He said he informed his department head of his intent to apply for tenure on Sept. 5, 2023, a full 10 days ahead of the Sept. 15 deadline. Once a faculty member expresses intent, the tenure review process commences, he said. Instead, SLU notified Dr. Gratton of his “non-appointment” on Sept. 11, 2023, with an effective date of Dec. 17, 2024.

Because he felt SLU had deviated from its own policies, he filed an internal grievance with the university. The Faculty Senate Grievance Committee chair did not attend the committee meeting so it was ruled that the committee did not have authority to adjudicate the issues relating to tenure, promotion and reappointment.

Consequently, Gratton simultaneously filed an external grievance with the Louisiana State Board of Supervisors for Colleges and Universities.

This is where it begins to get a bit dicey.

Prior to the commencement of the (board of supervisors’) committee hearing—and before Gratton had an opportunity to be heard—“Dr. Gratton discovered, in the electronic folder for the hearing, the decision of the board with respect to Dr. Gratton’s grievance.

“This decision Dr. Gratton discovered before the hearing was identical to the decision conveyed to Dr. Gratton after the hearing and stated the process used by [SLU] regarding Dr. Gratton’s grievance be upheld and that no further consideration be given” his appeal.

Uh oh.

Someone screwed up by releasing the final decision of the board before the board even met. That equates to sloppy—but perhaps typical—Louisiana political chicanery.