Louisiana Voice

Today’s test will consist of a single multiple-choice question.

Is LSU’s Athletic Department:

• a subsidiary of a major academic institution exempted of any real oversight;
• a multi-million-dollar enterprise that places scant emphasis on academics;
• a silent partner with sports betting companies in promoting organized gambling.

The answer, of course, is all three.

That may seem to be a harsh indictment of one of the premier sports programs in the country, but consider this:

An ANALYSIS of graduation rates for the 2012-13 school year at LSU (More recent objective figures were difficult to come by) showed that the overall graduation rate for the school was 64 percent compared to 53 percent for student-athletes.

Report by the Baton Rouge media and news releases by he university tend to put a more positive spin by citing higher rates achieved by men’s swimming and diving, men’s tennis, women’s soccer, women’s golf, and volleyball which led LSU with perfect scores of 100. Other sports with scores of 90 or better included women’s swimming and diving, women’s track and field, baseball, softball, gymnastics, women’s basketball and men’s golf.

But a closer look shows that women’s sports propped up the men in student-athlete graduation rates. The women athletes had a graduation rate of 73 percent compared to a dismal 36 percent for male athletes, primarily football and men’s basketball.

Now we learn, no thanks to Baton Rouge media, that a four-month INVESTIGATION by the Shirley Povich Centers for Sports Journalism and the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism at the University of Maryland has revealed that LSU is one of five major universities are participating in multi-million-dollar CONTRACTS with sports betting companies in an apparent effort to rake in even more money for their programs.

LSU, at least, has been a bit furtive in setting up its 10-year partnership with an outfit called PLAYFLY SPORTS PROPERTIES that currently calls for payments of about $8.5 million to the school. Playfly, headquartered in Berwyn, Pennsylvania. Playfly, in its role as a third-party company, has entered into promotional agreements with sports gambling companies for advertising at school sporting events, raising the question of why LSU is shilling for a gambling casino.

The answer, of course, is money.

In addition to the $8.5 million to be paid LSU by Playfly this year, the school also receives 50 percent of all revenue generated from subscriptions, sponsorships, commercials, vendor agreements, and any other revenue “specific to LSU Gold.

And while both LSU and Playfly will evenly share the operating expenses each year for LSU Gold, LSU’s share is limited to a maximum of $800,000 in any calendar year. That’s against that $8.5 Mil, of course.

Here’s the shame of it all:

The contract between LSU and Playfly went into effect for the 2016-17 fiscal year and runs through 2025-26 and yet, the local media, with notable exception of the Baton Rouge Business Report, has been uber-silent on the agreement, choosing instead to focus on the controversy over the naming of the basketball court in the Maravich Assembly Center. It took an investigative team from Maryland to peer into the specifics of the agreement between universities like LSU and sports gambling companies.

Even as politicians are fretting over the literature available to young impressionable minds in our public libraries, no one seems to be paying attention to the efforts of universities on the make for more and more revenue to inundate thousands of students with a barrage of glamorous advertisements selling them on the potential of big winnings.

And LSU, by climbing in bed with casinos via a third-party contractor, can questionably claim that while the contract with Playfly is a public record, Playfly’s contract with the sports betting company is not. By structuring its agreement in this manner, LSU is attempting to shield its business from the public.

There is a Louisiana Supreme Court decision, however, which could force LSU – or Playfly – to make that agreement public. The case, NEW ORLEANS BULLDOG SOCIETY v. LOUISIANA SOCIETY FOR THE PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO ANIMALS New Orleans Bulldog Society v. the Louisiana Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, more or less ruled that if public funds are involved, then the record should be made available.

The saga of Mandy Miller, the former longtime employee of the West Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff’s Office who has admitted to stealing nearly $160,000 from her employer, took a new twist Wednesday when LouisianaVoice learned that she was arrested eight years ago for criminal trespass and battery on an East Baton Rouge Parish sheriff’s deputy.

Miller, who worked for the WBR Sheriff’s Office “FOR DECADES,” was earning $72,000 as a clerk processing traffic tickets for the office when she admitted to the theft from the department.

She also is the president of Advanced Builders, Inc., a company that constructs high-end houses.

Even after she admitted to the theft, Sheriff MIKE CAZES inexplicably kept her on the department’s payroll for about three months.

Cazes, who has announced he will not run for reelection this year, has refused interviews about Miller or his office and he grilled deputies for hours about a suspected leak to media on when Miller would surrender to authorities.

LouisianaVoice on Wednesday obtained a two-page ARREST REPORT completed by EBR Deputy James Jamison which indicated that Miller became confrontational and attacked a deputy after she and a companion had refused to leave the L’auBerge Casino in Baton Rouge in the early morning hours of April 4, 2015.

Miller, who includes 18^th Judicial District Attorney Tony Clayton and Assistant DAs Kristi Jarreau Marbury, and Nedi Alvarez Morgan among her Facebook friends (the 18^th Judicial District includes West Baton Rouge Parish), was in the casino along with companion Natasha Valez. Both had been previously banned from the property and when the two were asked to leave the premises, they refused, the arrest report said.

Jamison wrote in his report that the casino’s security supervisor advised that the two had been asked to leave the casino several weeks earlier and told not to return. The report said that Valez “became irate” when asked again to leave and verbally attacked one of the deputies. Jamison wrote that he asked Valez to calm down whereupon she verbally attacked him, as well, and failed to obey his commands.

When Valez was subsequently handcuffed, Miller got up from her chair and started toward Valez. When a deputy reached for her arm to detain her, she punched him in the chest and attempted to hit him again, but missed. Miller was then also handcuffed.

Has Southeastern Louisiana University’s computer system been hacked or did the entire system simply crash?

No one really knows because the administration of SLU, the state’s third-largest public university, has been strangely quiet on the disruption, which has thrown the entire campus into a state of chaos.

The school’s wi-fi, card dorm key readers, Moodle, LeonET, email, and all other SLU computer systems went down around 2:30 p.m. on Friday and stayed down through the weekend and into Monday.

Because of the outage, students were unable to complete assignments, unlock the doors to their dorm rooms, access or send emails, or do laundry. Other campus activities were affected as well, including admission to all athletic events.

The only word from the administration consisted of a couple of announcements saying that the school was “working to restore all systems” on a “significant cybersecurity incident,” but there was no official explanation as to what caused the outage.

Meanwhile, with midterm exams fast approaching, students expressed their dissatisfaction with the lack of communication from the administration. “If there are answers out there,” said one student, “we students aren’t getting them because our emails aren’t working.”

Scott Adams, the creator of the comic strip Dilbert, has created a firestorm of criticism and in so doing, boxed himself into a certain financial hit when he made the blanket referral to blacks as a “hate group” and suggested that whites “stay the hell away” from African Americans.

The outrage was justified and the reaction was swift as newspapers DROPPED THE POPULAR STRIP. Among those canceling Dilbert were the Washington Post, Cleveland Plain Dealer, and the USA Today network of newspapers.

Adams’ comments were reprehensible and certainly not representative of what a free society should be about.

But while I do not agree for a nano-second with what he said, I have to say I believe the media’s dropping his strip was also not what this country should be about. And to feel and say otherwise would be inconsistent with the position I staked out long ago.

I’ve been writing for weeks now about the insane, neo-fascist efforts to censor books in the state’s public and school libraries. My opposition is anchored in the belief that the First Amendment guarantees, among other things, freedom of the press sans censorship. Period. That freedom is sacrosanct.

That belief is in no way indicative to what I would choose to read. If it’s objectionable to me, I simply don’t read it. If it’s inappropriate, I don’t purchase it or check it out. Period.

Along with that freedom of the press is the guaranteed right, as an American, to read whatever I choose to read, be it a book by Sean Hannity or Karl Marx. Just so you know, I would not read either on a bet, but I demand – and have – the right to do so.

It was 50 years ago, when I wrote for the Baton Rouge State-Times, that our sister paper, the Morning Advocate, relegated Doonesbury to the editorial page because of its political content. Other papers just flat-out refused to carry the strip, despite its brilliant topical observations and Garry Trudeau’s unique ability to inject biting humor into the political landscape in a manner evocative of Mark Twain or Will Rogers.

Today, a true artist named Darrin Bell has an equally observant and funny strip called Candorville that features black characters. To date, far too few newspapers carry this outstanding strip. I fear that in today’s atmosphere of censorship and rewrites of classic books and watering down of history and civics classes, some indignant, self-appointed literature cop is going to take a swipe at Candorville and Bell will be forced to publish some bland, vanilla version of Candorville or find another line of work.

In case you haven’t noticed, a lot of talented editorial cartoonists have retired rather than face the constant scrutiny of editors fearful of antagonizing the wrong political power brokers.

The solution to Adams’ racist tirade is, if it offends you, just don’t read his strip. But to put a muzzle on him just because we don’t agree with him does not measure up to the standards of our Constitution.

There should always be freedom to hold open dialogue on any subject without fear of censorship.

The Livingston Parish Council is the latest to knuckle under to the HYSTERIA being spread by those who would impose their version of decency and appropriateness while inflicting a potentially lethal blow to the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

These are, of course, the same individuals who somehow hold the Second Amendment up as some sort of sacrosanct right, a beacon of liberty somehow etched in stone.

The Livingston council is the latest to cave to the wishes of the likes of Ron DeSantis and Jeff Landry in deciding what books shall be made available to impressionable children in public libraries.

Strange, I can’t recall a single incident of a library book killing anyone, which is more than I can say about the ease with which anyone may obtain an AR-15 and go on a shooting spree at some random school, shopping center, or night club.

The danger that literature poses to our children has somehow crept into the mindset of the Republican Party as a campaign issue more critical than say, deregulation of railroads, banks, and Wall Street (we do remember the failure of all those banks in 1988, don’t we?) and certainly more important than the wholesale slaughter of school children, Asians, gays, and anyone else who gets in the way of some demented nutcase.

Of course, the Republicans are quick to point out that it’s not a gun problem, but a MENTAL HEALTH issue. That being the case, then someone please explain why BOBBY JINDAL, Texas Gov. GREG ABBOTT, former Florida Gov. RICK SCOTT, and Republicans in Congress CUT FUNDING for mental health treatment? (Isn’t it ironic that upon leaving office, Jindal enhanced his personal bottom line by JOINING THE BOARD of a company that thrived financially on Medicaid revenue?).

So, as a diversionary tactic, library books are being made the villains in the never-ending struggle to force everyone to comply with some arbitrary code of decency by allowing a faceless few to decide what we are allowed to read – or more accurately, what our children are allowed to read.

It just seems to me that that’s a decision that should be left to parents, not to some bureaucratic body that answers to no one. It comes down to the question of just who will be the person or persons to make the final decision on what is and what is appropriate?

When we cede that responsibility over to government, isn’t that contrary to what the “less government” Republicans have been advocating all this time? After all, they’re the ones carping about “woke” this and “woke” that when in reality, it’s the Republicans who are actually the “woke” advocates in this equation.

I mean, after all, it was a Republican legislator in Missouri who introduced a bill that would have forbade female legislators to appear on the House floor with arms bared. So much for the women’s right to bare arms.

And Marjorie Taylor Greene, who wants a “national divorce” of red and blue states with the added stipulation that anyone from a blue state who moves to a red state will not be allowed to vote for five years – but without the same proviso for a red state citizen moving to a blue state.

So, bottom line, whether it’s in Congress, a state legislature, or a parish council, it’s all about control.

It doesn’t matter to these people that the kiddos can access porn on their home computers or on their cellphones. It doesn’t matter that they can take “inappropriate” pictures on their phones and send them to friends of the opposite sex.

Nor does it matter that there is a book chock-full of violence, adultery, genocide, disgusting practices and other “inappropriate” material for kids that is on the back of every pew in every church in every parish in Louisiana.

As just one example, read Ezekiel 23:20-21 carefully and slowly. Then go to Solomon and read chapters 1, 4, 7:7-8, and chapter 8, verse 10. Read aloud, slowly and deliberately and then tell me if that is “appropriate” for children.

You see, folks, this isn’t about decency. It’s about control – control of what we read, who can and cannot vote, who can marry, where we can live and go to school, and even what the news media may REPORT.

And that, folks, is the very definition of FASCISM.