It hasn’t been an easy year to be an LSU fan.
For many, the national news articles uncovering the university’s and athletic department’s mishandling of sexual misconduct cases have hit like one gut punch after another.
The university, athletic foundation, and several current and former coaches and university leaders are now defendants in a lawsuit filed by students detailing experiences of sexual assault or harassment. The lawsuit reiterates the women’s statements from the investigative report by the Husch Blackwell law firm, as well as from public hearings.
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In June, new LSU President William Tate told the Louisiana Illuminator he plans to have the university approach Title IX cases differently, examining them from a “psychological” and “trauma-informed” perspective.
But however hard it has been for alumni and lifelong fans to grapple with the deluge of horrific stories, there’s one group it’s been especially challenging for: students.
They’ve been living through the headlines the rest of us have been reading.
This spring, professor Len Apcar asked his LSU Manship School of Mass Communication feature writing students to write a first-person essay reflecting on a news story.
After the tumultuous past year, there was plenty to explore, from a pandemic that’s claimed 4 million lives globally; to police killings and protests; to a bitter presidential election.
“There wasn’t a moment of writer’s block,” according to Apcar. “Emotions and words flowed. The result is a time capsule of (the students’) anger and fear, their worries and dreams in this extraordinary moment.”
Out of the 15 resulting essays, three students chose to write about LSU’s Title IX failures.
Here are their words, excerpted from lsumanshipwriting.com and the Feature Writing booklet Apcar published this spring. The essays have been lightly edited for clarity, with edits noted in parentheses.
When It Rains In Death Valley
By Caroline Savoie
I Love My Sisters More Than My University
By Nathan Long
Shame On You, LSU
By Mary Chauvin
Where are they now?
• In March, Les Miles was terminated from his position as head coach of the University of Kansas football team, following the publication of the Husch Blackwell report, which included reports of Miles’ alleged inappropriate behavior with female students.
• That same month, Drake Davis was released from a probation sentence in a 2018 domestic battery case. The judge gave him a warning rather than jail time, despite the fact that Davis was arrested again in 2019 on a new domestic abuse case.
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• In June, domestic assault and battery charges against Derrius Guice were dropped after a settlement was reached with his ex-girlfriend.
• As of press time, Ed Orgeron remains head football coach at LSU. In an April statement, he denied ever having direct communication with Gloria Scott, a Mercedes-Benz Superdome security worker who testified that Guice and his friends had sexually harassed her. Orgeron called Guice’s actions “utterly unacceptable.” Orgeron’s business, O The Rosy Finch Boyz LLC, is now one of several defendants in a Title IX lawsuit against LSU. The lawsuit was filed in April in Louisiana’s Middle District Court, and Orgeron’s company was added as a defendant in June.
This article was published in the Tiger Pride 2021 issue of 225 magazine.