The Reveille 5-22-23

HOOVER

HOPEFULS

Read on page 2

LSU baseball gears up for the SEC Tournament.

LSUReveille.com

@lsureveille

SEC PREVIEW

Where LSU baseball stands heading into the SEC Tournament

BY TYLER HARDEN @ttjharden8

The SEC baseball tournament is upon us, and LSU will go to Hoover as the No. 3 seed. It will play on Wednesday at 9:30 p.m. C.T. against the winner of No. 6 seeded South Carolina and No. 11 seeded Georgia.

LSU closed out its regular season with a series win over Georgia, but split its series against South Carolina after the third game was canceled due to weather.

LSU earned itself a top four seed by winning its final regular season series. This means the Tigers are given a first-round bye and will be guaranteed at least two games in the SEC tournament.

With the postseason here, LSU’s biggest concern will be put to the test: its bullpen. The Tigers will be playing every day until the end of the tournament until it either loses twice or wins the championship.

LSU fans would likely prefer to face Georgia over South Carolina, as the Gamecocks gave the Tigers all they could handle in their regular season matchup. LSU needed five runs in the last two innings, including a Gavin Dugas grand slam in the eighth, to come away with its 8-7 win over South Carolina in the regular season.

Paul Skenes has been the answer all season long; whenever he is available, the Tigers can hang with anyone. Skenes leads the country in strikeouts and WHIP and is fourth in the country in ERA.

However, his worst appearance of the season came against LSU’s potential opponent South Carolina. He pitched a season-low three innings and a season-high ERA of 6.00 against the Gamecocks in LSU’s 13-5 loss.

The bullpen, however, looked

better than it had in quite some time in the series against Georgia. Thatcher Hurd and Gavin Guidry both had strong performances in relief, so that momentum may serve the Tigers well.

Hurd pitched 5 innings giving up just 3 hits against Georgia while Guidry closed out the final two innings in LSU’s 8-4 game two win over Georgia without giving up a run.

Similar to Hurd and Guidry, Ty Floyd is also coming off of one of his best performances of the season. Floyd’s last two outings against Georgia and Mississippi State saw him throw a combined 13 innings with 17 strikeouts while allowing just 10 hits and a 3.46 ERA.

This is a large improvement over his season-long ERA heading into those last two games of 5.11. With this being a trend with sev-

eral pitchers in LSU’s arsenal, they may be peaking at the right time. But one thing is for sure, the Tigers will lean on their offense for hope throughout the tournament. LSU leads the SEC in batting average, runs, hits and home runs. They’re coming in with weapons that no other SEC team can replicate in Dylan Crews and Tommy White.

Crews, to many, may be the best player in the country. He leads the SEC in total bases His 58-game on-base streak speaks for itself, so having him available in high intensity situations to come through is something only LSU can say they have.

White, often overshadowed by Crews, is also one of the most consistent hitters LSU has, and he’s peaking at the right time. He is second in the nation in RBI with 89 and leads the Tigers in home runs

with 20. He hit a home run on Saturday against Georgia in the final regular season game.

In Thursday’s extra-inning thriller against Georgia, LSU showed the power of its bats. White was quiet, but others alongside Crews stepped up. Hayden Travinski, Jordan Thompson, Brayden Jobert and Josh Pearson all went deep against the Bulldogs. With this momentum, LSU’s power can bail them out of adversity.

All this being considered, it would be easy for LSU fans to look ahead in the tournament, which is something the team can’t do. If LSU wins on Wednesday, it will play again on Thursday and Friday.

But for now, its primary focus is Wednesday. Until then, LSU will await the winner of the South Carolina-Georgia matchup, and start what fans anticipate to be a deep postseason run.

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CORRECTIONS & CLARIFICATIONS

The Reveille holds accuracy and objectivity at the highest priority and wants to reassure its readers the reporting and content of the paper meets these standards. This space is reserved to recognize and correct any mistakes that may have been printed in The Daily Reveille. If you would like something corrected or clarified, please contact the editor at (225) 578-4811 or email editor@lsu.edu.

ABOUT THE REVEILLE

The Reveille is written, edited and produced solely by students of Louisiana State University. The Reveille is an independent entity of the Office of Student Media within the Manship School of Mass Communication. A single issue of The Reveille is free from multiple sites on campus and about 25 sites off campus. To obtain additional copies, please visit the Office of Student Media in B-39 Hodges Hall or email studentmedia@ lsu.edu. The Reveille is published biweekly during the fall, spring and summer semesters, except during holidays and final exams. The Reveille is funded through LSU students’ payments of the Student Media fee.

MATTHEW PERSCHALL / The Reveille

The LSU baseball team high-fives junior pitcher Paul Skenes (20) as he returns to the dugout on April 28 during LSU’s 8-6 win over Alabama at Alex Box Stadium in Baton Rouge, La.

GRAPHIC BY MADDIE FITZMORRIS

FACULTY UPSET

the way a research minded university works’

BY JOHN BUZBEE @thebuzzbuz

Paragraph by paragraph, word by word, Faculty Senate’s ad hoc committee on information technology nears a month since it first began scrutinizing over 14 new policy statements LSU’s Information Technology Service hopes to advance forward by early June.

The implications of these policies’ current state is overwhelmingly unpopular, not only to the faculty members who make up the committee, but also to those at large – at least, if they’re aware of the new, IT centric policy statement drafts at all.

Faculty Senate’s IT ad hoc committee was formed in mid-April when the senate’s executive committee first became aware of the 14 new policy statements ITS was pushing. According to the committee chair, Param Singh, the new policy statements have been in development for around two years and are designed to update LSU’s current, increasingly outdated measures.

Singh, who is also a professor of physics, said his email has been flooded with dozens of dissatisfied faculty members who believe time and time again, their concerns aren’t being adequately represented by the university’s administration.

To these upset faculty members, Singh said, the language of the new policies is concerning because there’s a high emphasis on punishment, a lack of transparency, a threat to faculty tenure and a threat of firing for noncompliance, even if unintentional.

Jeffrey Roland, another faculty senator on the committee and a professor of philosophy, said there’s a fundamental misunderstanding that faculty members aren’t just regular employees.

Faculty, Roland said, have a much bigger and more irregular responsibility to a college campus than how most other organizations operate. He said that inevitably comes with heightened authority.

Shared governance, he said, has been ignored.

“ITS is trying to turn this into the way a corporation is run,” Singh said, summarizing the concerns he’s seen the committee express. “That is not the way a research minded university works.”

The 14 new policy statements, numbered PS-120 through PS-133, have not been made publicly accessible.

Committee meetings have been a slow deliberation between the committee’s faculty members and the ex-officious of committee representing ITS.

A draft of the new policy statements was read to the congregation of faculty before they’d break down the faults that they saw in them. The committee’s ex-officious followed up, providing explanation to the policy’s present language before both groups entered word by word revision of the draft and found something they agreed upon.

Friday’s meeting was the committee’s fifth and most recent meeting. There, only a few paragraphs of the second proposed policy statement dealing with “System Acceptability Use”, PS-121, were reviewed in the 90 minutes the meeting went on.

During Friday’s meeting, a few specific segments of PS-121 were of concern to the committee’s faculty members.

One of them was a segment on “access control” which read:

“Users must properly log off and/or password protect any information system when leaving the immediate work area for any length of time.”

When asked what that meant, Singh said it effectively meant a faculty member who was found logged into an LSU system after leaving their office unlocked, if caught, could face harsh punishments. They could even potentially be fired, he said.

Another segment under fire was under the “Bring Your Own Device” section. It stipulated that in order to “maintain the security of LSU network, systems applications and data,” all personal devices that used LSU systems had to have a password, be kept on the latest update, could not be jailbroken and were required to have antivirus or anti-malware software.

Singh said this meant that even personal devices, like a faculty member’s iPhone, would have rules applied that the university faculty ultimately had next to no influence over.

He noted that to many of the faculty members, the issues held with PS-121 weren’t ideal, but the punishments, disconnection and vagueness tied to them led faculty to feel they were “draconian.”

Singh said it’s uncommon all nine of the committee’s faculty members, some senators and others non-senators, can attend the committee meetings at once, given the tenuous nature of the start of summer and the end of finals. Combined with the rapidly impending June deadline, he said it created a further strain on faculty representation. At Friday’s meeting, only about half the members could make it.

Capstone class’ crosswalk created

BY PAYTON MANUEL @payton_manuel04

A new crosswalk with a creative twist has been painted on LSU’s campus to improve pedestrian safety for students.

LSU professor Robert Mann and his political communication students have worked on a collaborative project across two semesters called Tigercross. Tigercross is a student-run project that aims to increase public safety regarding crosswalks on LSU’s campus.

They have made history by making the first, and only, “creative crosswalk” at LSU.

Mann teaches a capstone course within the Manship School’s political communication concentration that challenges students to find an LSU-related issue, then address and solve it within one semester.

“I’ve been teaching this class for 18 years, and every semester I have groups of students who take on some activism and try to find something they want to change on this campus for this community,” Mann said. “It’s really rare that what they set out to do actually happens.”

Mann expressed that the project came close to not being completed with how busy the spring semester can be, but his students were able to overcome it.

“I’m usually telling students at the end of the semester, ‘Well you can learn a lot through not achieving your goals, you learn a lot through failure, you learn a lot through hardship and having people tell you no,’ and that’s a lot of my mantra,” Mann said.

Students demand safer transporation to Tigerland and campus

BY EMILY BRACHER @emily_bracher_

Every weekend, dozens of students head to the Tigerland bars right off campus. Many will use a rideshare app to get there, others a designated driver.

But some students choose to walk the distance home after a night out, despite the closest oncampus dorm to Tigerland being about one and half miles away.

Following the death of Madison Brooks, an LSU student who police say was raped and fatally struck by a vehicle on Burbank Drive after a night at Tigerland in January, students have been advo -

cating for safer and cheaper transportation.

Mass communication seniors

Anna Faucheaux, Amara McKay and Brinon Kruithof have been pushing for different rideshare systems for students to go to and from Tigerland. LSU has shut them down repeatedly.

In her four years at LSU, Faucheaux said a lot of people have died walking home and very little has been done about it. The struggle for change has been an unsuccessful class effort that Faucheux said would just need to be passed to the group behind her.

“We’re kind of at a standstill, we’ve exhausted all things,” Fau-

cheaux said.

The group has pitched ideas for the university to partner with Uber or Lyft to get students home safely. In response, LSU said it would use a budget of $10,000 to partner with Lyft, Kruithof said. The solution is temporary and only allocates for around 1,000 rides.

“It doesn’t seem like there is any real change being made,” Kruithof said. “Everytime we have brought anything up to them, it seems very much like they are just making themselves look better. It doesn’t seem like LSU actually cares about making change.”

Kruithof said the university’s Tiger Trails bus system was ex-

tended, but at the bare minimum. He said navigating the bus can be difficult for students, especially at 2 a.m. in Tigerland.

They said the one positive they were met with was that LSUPD would be more accommodating with its Shield App.

The group noted how President William Tate IV’s campus-wide email following Brooks’ death focused on the underage drinking aspect instead of the safety issues that occurred.

“LSU finds any reason they can to not take blame for things or to put it on anything else rather than just saying sorry for what happened and actually trying to stop

it from happening in the future,” Kruithof said.

Mass communications freshman Elina Vangelatos said she was out with friends in the fall when she was roofied at one of the bars in Tigerland.

“My rideshare was an ambulance,” Vangelatos said. “My friends had no clue what other option for transportation they could have used.”

With the spring semester coming to a close, the group’s efforts with the university will have to stay on hold and be passed along to the next class.

“They just need to do better,” Faucheaux said.

‘Not

see NEW POLICIES, page 4 see CROSSWALK, page 4

COLIN FALCON/ The Reveille

The Frey Computing Services Center sits on a sunny May 16.

NEW POLICIES, from page 3

One fear he shares with the rest of the committee is that there won’t be enough time to address the faculty’s concerns, resulting in the new policy statements being rushed and pleas ignored.

Ilya Vekhter, professor of physics, provided public comment at the start of Friday’s meeting.

“The document, as I saw it, essentially talked about possible violations and punishments,” Vekhter said. “It was not clear who was going to dole it out and under what conditions.”

Vekhter said the policy statements ITS was trying to push for-

“But this is one of those projects where they actually got it done, so I’m really excited about it.”

One of the students from the first semester’s Tigercross team, LSU alumna Amelia Gabor, says that this project was “no small task” and that despite feeling discouraged towards the end, she is extremely proud of the testimony that was paid to LSU.

“We wanted to do something big to communicate to people that this is a walkable campus,” Gabor said. “This is one of the only walkable communities people in Louisiana will ever live in for a lot of us, and pedestrians should be

ward were stricter than those of the U.S. national lab he used to work for, which housed nuclear secrets.

To him, based on how the policies are currently written, it seems like ITS has the ultimate say in what is considered “egregious” or not. He fears they can basically revoke tenure according to policies they created.

“It’s creating a load of barriers for the faculty to do their research,” said astronomy professor Juana Moreno.

She sits on the committee without being a faculty senator. Moreno said the policy statements pushed by ITS read as though they

prioritized. They should be safe.”

Gabor also mentioned that the team wanted the crosswalk to be visible and easily communicated to the public.

To determine the location of the newly updated crosswalk, Tigercross analyzed pedestrian infrastructure on LSU’s campus to find the strongest and weakest spots the campus had with accidents involving pedestrians.

After working with campus planning and getting the correct funds, Tigercross was able to collaborate with local Baton Rouge artist Marc Fresh to create ideas for the image they wanted to represent LSU.

“I’m just so grateful that this

didn’t have faculty interests at all in mind. She said ITS should be operating as a service that aids faculty, not limits them.

Moreno said she is discouraged about the timing this is all happening. Caught among securing summer research, finalizing final exams for her classes and navigating non-academic living barely leaves her with the time and ability to represent the university’s faculty.

“They’re doing all of this when most of the faculty is doing research or isn’t on campus,” Moreno said. “This push to get this approved so soon is not good because many faculty will not learn about this issue until August when

could be a largely collaborative process between past and present Manship students, I think it’s not only a testament to campus and walkability, but the power of collaboration in the Manship school,” Gabor said.

Political communications senior Isabella Matthews says that she didn’t think this would ever happen due to all of the hoops the team had to go through.

“I can tell you many times I sat in bed and I was like, ‘This just is not going to happen, all of this work will not see the light of day,’” Matthews said. “Whenever I walked out and concrete was being poured, I almost cried.”

Matthews expressed that this

the semester is starting.”

Craig Woolley, as a liaison of ITS and chief information officer of the university, declined to answer any questions regarding the perspective of ITS.

He said he could only release this statement:

“ITS and the Faculty Senate are working together on IT policy revisions. That work is proceeding and the ad hoc Faculty Senate IT Committee is providing valuable feedback.”

None of the faculty members interviewed believe ITS is intentionally acting behind their back, but most said it certainly feels that way.

project has been a wonderful experience and that the finished work, thanks to artist Marc Fresh, was much better than what she imagined.

Matthews also said that she hopes to see more work like this in LSU’s future. She hopes other capstone classes for Robert Mann will feel inspired by this project, or even other organizations on campus, such as student government or the Office of Multiculturalism, will take this idea and reinterpret it.

“The design can really be anything that they want it to be, and it could be geared towards whatever problem you see on campus,” Matthews said. “Hope -

Roland believes ITS is asking for input after the fact. He said it’s become part of LSU’s general practice in the past few decades to formulate new policy changes and reveal them after the fact.

“In years past, there were people who would accept that,” Roland said. “They thought they were powerless. The current faculty governance leadership is not like that.”

He said the policies ITS has formulated also affect the university’s staff and students. He added that students should be in an uproar.

“We’re not IT professionals,” Roland said. “A lot of professors aren’t even aware it’s going on.”

fully something more permanent next time but I hope that this gets enough attention that it will create some momentum for the next group that wants to do it.”

Matthews said she would like to see this historical moment become a trend for the LSU community, something people can feel proud to take pictures of and post.

“It is a mural, it’s an art installation and I hope that it has that ‘Wow, this is really cool for my campus’ factor on people,” Matthews said.

Visit the historic creative crosswalk made between LSU’s Student Union and Memorial Tower located on Tower Drive.

CROSSWALK, from page 3

SPORTS

COLUMN: LSU’S FALL & RISE

HENRY HUBER @HenryHuber_

My first article was published on Jan. 31, 2020, 18 days after LSU’s 2019 football team cemented itself as arguably the best college football team of all time and six weeks before COVID-19 shut down the sporting world.

At that time, the athletic department seemed to be back on the rise. After earning 12 national championships in the 2000s (eight from track), it had just garnered its first since 2015 and second of the 2010s. It did so on the biggest stage in college sports and 13 days after the new decade began, potentially symbolizing a prosperous 2020s for LSU sports.

The pieces were there after all.

Despite recent controversy, third-year head coach Will Wade had just led the men’s basketball team to its best record since 2000 and first SEC regular-season title since 2009. That came two seasons removed from one of its worst seasons in program history.

Just one day after my first article went up, it won its tenth straight game to put it at 17-4 overall and 9-0 in SEC play. That corresponded with the women’s best start under Nikki Fargas since 2014, as it improved to 18-5 after winning eight of its first 11 games in SEC play, four of which came against ranked competition.

Beach volleyball was one point short of attending its first national championship in 2019 and sported much of the prior year’s talent heading into 2020.

Men’s track and field was fresh off its first SEC championship since 1990.

Gymnastics was coming off its third NCAA runner-up finish in four years.

Even with a few key retirements expected in the near future, plenty of programs possessed the promise and potential to keep the title train rolling onward after football’s victory.

Two titles since then is great, but just one of those came with a head coach that was here in 2020. 12 other head or co-head coaches that were here then are gone now.

COVID

Falling short of national prominence stings, but it’s a completely different story when it’s out of your control.

Considering the mystery surrounding COVID at this point in history, it wasn’t a huge surprise when everything around us, including college sports, was shut down as the world did what it could to mitigate the spread of the virus.

That unfortunately meant the abrupt end to multiple champion-

ship runs across the country, some of which would’ve been the first in that program’s history. For LSU, that was the case for beach volleyball and gymnastics.

While it was early in the season, beach was No. 1 in the country and had been picking up steam for weeks, sporting an 11-match win streak that included three wins over teams ranked No. 4 and above and five wins over teams ranked in the Top 20.

Gymnastics under D-D Breaux was always a threat to claim the title, but had never managed to do so. It ranked No. 6 in the country with a 14-2 record and 11-meet win streak.

And after 43 years with the program, Breaux would unknowingly coach her last event on March 6, as its last regular-season match was cancelled shortly after. She retired that summer, partially due to the virus but mostly because she wanted to spend more time with her grandkids.

That came just under a week before SEC Championships and over a month before the season concluded, with other sports like basketball having their seasons cancelled during postseason.

Though their strong starts to 2020 fizzled out, each basketball team made the tournament, with the men’s team being a particularly dangerous No. 8 seed.

For Nikki Fargas, it would eventually prove to be her last shot at coaching an NCAA tournament game, as her LSU career concluded at 10 years following a 9-13 finish to 2021. She elected to pursue a

career outside of coaching at the season’s conclusion and currently serves as the president of the Las Vegas Aces WNBA team.

Fall from Grace

Apart from Breaux and Fargas, there were seven retirements and resignations between April of 2021 and May of 2022.

Among those departures was legendary baseball head coach Paul Mainieri, who announced his intention to retire in April of 2021. That became official after the Tigers were eliminated by Tennessee in the super regionals. His last hoorah came in the form of a regionals run that featured four straight victories in win-or-gohome scenarios.

He finished his 39-year coaching career with over 1500 wins (641 at LSU), six College World Series appearances and one national championship in 2009. All but one of his CWS appearances came with the Tigers.

Other key departures included volleyball coach Fran Flory, swim coach Dave Geyer, diving coach Doug Shaffer and men’s tennis coach Andy Brandi. These departures marked bittersweet but anticipated endings to extensive eras of their respective sports. They were met with justified praise for their accomplishments and what they brought to their programs in terms of culture and discipline.

The same can’t necessarily be said for the rest.

With no baseball to look forward to in spring of 2020, fans anxiously anticipated the 2020-21 football season and the news sur-

rounding it. Eventually, the SEC would establish a 10-game all-conference schedule, with the Tigers arguably possessing one of the easier ones.

LSU entered the preseason polls ranked No. 6 in the country. Many would think that’s way too much hype for a team losing most of its key players, its defensive coordinator and passing game coordinator.

Many would be right.

While it could be expected for the Tigers to take a step back following a legendary season, divided focus and uninformed hirings from head coach Ed Orgeron caused more of a stumble than a step. It would start the season with multiple embarrassing losses to Mississippi State and Missouri before finishing it with its worst record since 1999.

When losses of that nature carried into 2021 and his off-the-field issues piled onto one another, his firing was quickly announced.

A New Beginning

Exactly two years after SEC sports were suspended in 2020, Will Wade was fired for violating his contract and committing five Level I violations against the NCAA. That marked the perceived end of the previous era of LSU sports, as football, men’s and women’s basketball, baseball and gymnastics all either had or would soon have new head coaches.

Following D-D Breaux’s retirement, co-head coach Jay Clark would take over as the third head coach in LSU gymnastics history. Though his 2021 and 2022 seasons

were shaky by LSU standards, he managed to lead the Tigers to the Four on the Floor for the first time since 2019 this April.

Within the span of a year, athletic director Scott Woodward effectively replaced the four other vacancies, with three of those proving to be incredible hires so far.

The hiring of legendary Baylor women’s basketball coach Kim Mulkey produced the quickest results, as she led the Tigers to their first title win in program history in just her second season. With the acquisitions of Hailey van Lith and Aneesah Morrow over the offseason, who join a squad featuring first team All-American Angel Reese and SEC freshman of the year Flau’Jae Johnson, it’d be a wonder if they failed to produce another one next season.

In just one season with the football program, Brian Kelly had LSU on the cusp of making the College Football Playoff and immediately re-established it as an SEC contender, winning the SEC West in his first season with the program and having them slated as favorites to repeat in that regard.

It’s ranked No. 4 in the preseason FPI Top 25 and No. 7 in ESPN’s Power Rankings, making it a potential national title contender heading into the 2023 season.

Jay Johnson picked up where Paul Mainieri left off in 2021. Though they’ve had their bullpen struggles lately, they currently rank in the Top 5 heading into postseason and have a realistic chance at making a College World Series run if they can find a way to work around those problems.

And while Matt McMahon struggled in his first season coaching the men’s basketball team, the verdict on his hiring won’t be fully established until next season.

Due to its success in 2022 and 2023, the fandom is more alive than it’s ever been. When football beat Ole Miss and Alabama in Tiger Stadium, fans poured onto the field, giving us some of the craziest pictures we’ve ever seen throughout our coverage here.

Alex Box Stadium is consistently packed with crowds of over 10,000 people, producing thunderous roars after each pivotal strikeout and sky-shattering home run.

And prior to COVID, the PMAC averaged under 2000 in attendance for women’s basketball games, a number that was quadrupled in the 2022-23 season. It broke a PMAC attendance record back in February, with over 15,000 witnessing LSU’s 76-68 win over Tennessee.

In a decade or two, we may look back on this period as one of the golden eras of LSU sports. No matter what the case may be, it’s been a pleasure covering sports at this university.

REAGAN COTTEN / The Reveille

LSU football fans storm the field on Saturday, Nov. 5, 2022, after LSU’s 32-31 victory in Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge, La.

Rev Rank: James Gunn ends his MCU trilogy on a high note

BY SAM SEDILO @samsedilo

James Gunn has been building the “Guardians of the Galaxy” trilogy for almost 10 years.

As the final adventure has come to an end, he might have outdone himself as “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” could not have ended the trilogy any better.

From struggles that Marvel Studios has had since “Avengers: Endgame” it was a worry for future movies if they would live up to expectations. Releases such as “Thor: Love and Thunder” and “Antman and the Wasp: Quantumania” were underwhelming, but Gunn gives the Guardians a sad, yet marvelous ending.

Gunn delivers a tear-jerking plot line mixed with the guardians’ antics and humor that we all know. He caps off the trilogy with his own words as “a love letter to Rocket,” and it was truly Rocket’s story.

Immediately from the start we are greeted with “Creep” by Radiohead, a tone that sets the movie for what would be one of the darkest and most gut-wrenching stories in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Rocket has felt out of place most of his life and we see the horrendous captivity he had before the guardians. Every flashback to Rocket’s time being locked up and experimented on was hard to watch and makes you think back to previous movies. The defensive reaction to being called a raccoon or vermin, it all falls into place on why he felt so strong about being called names.

Bradley Cooper and Sean Gunn put on a clinic of a performance. The emotion they give both young and older versions of Rocket gives the character one of the most stellar performances in Marvel and caps off an even greater character arc. Cooper and Gunn had fans crying over a CGI raccoon for the majority of the movie.

Through the tough scenes of Rocket’s past, we are given one of the most diabolical villains in the MCU. The High Evolutionary is just pure evil.

His desire for finding the perfect species through animal testing opens a horror of what these animals have to go through. The line “There is no God, that’s why I stepped in,” really shows us the maniacal nature of doing whatever it takes.

Character developments with all the guardians are near some of the best character developments throughout the MCU. All the emotions from the actors were put on display.

Each character had their moment to shine throughout the movie. Their maturity as people and family has grown exponentially as we watched them throughout the years.

Nebula was a real standout in the movie. From the first “Guardians of the Galaxy” where she was out to hunt and kill all of them to becoming part of the team and creating friendships, specifically the

one with Rocket. We forget that when everyone blipped, they were the only guardians left. They had five years together and we see how that time has brought them closer as friends.

The movie also gives another well thought out soundtrack that adds to the movie’s tone and feel. From “No Sleep Till Brooklyn” in one of the best one shot fight scenes in Marvel to “Dog Days are Over” closing the door on their adventures as a group, every song hits the mark of the scenes.

What was best about “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.3” was that it felt like old school Marvel. The

excitement, chills, and all the emotion that we would get when going to premiere days felt like the days of “Iron Man” and “Captain America.”

The guardians always had such a unique feel compared to other Marvel movies. This was a band of misfits that found family within each other, and during the time of its first movie, it was something so different and refreshing to the franchise.

The heart that the guardians have gives the movie such a genuine feeling to it. This movie pulls everything we love about the guardians together perfectly.

Most of the trailers let fans know that it was going to be emotional, but I don’t think most fans could have prepared for what it had in store. The movie did not feel rushed through or overdone. Everything that needed to be said and done was delivered and executed to a whole other level.

The closing to the guardians could not have been any more bittersweet. Gunn signs out his trilogy and tenure with Marvel in glorious fashion. The guardians will stand the test of time and I think it has a great chance to be one of the best trilogies in the MCU.

Letter from The Hayride: Reveille’s concerning liberal bias

changes, it could become the perfect news site.

Husband to Get Back Home to Let You Outside.”

that credibility.

Editor’s note: The following column is satire and the students listed here are all completely fictional.

Dear LSU Reveille, We hope this letter finds you well. We at The Hayride are concerned about the incessant liberal bias of your publication. Sadly, the school’s paper has become a repository for communist propaganda.

After reading the paper, one would think that it was written by Karl Marx himself.

Unfortunately, young minds, even here in the South, have been corrupted by the evil ideology of wokism. You’d be hard-pressed to find a positive story about Republicans or any conservative ideology. We looked through The Reveille archives and couldn’t find a single story about the FBI crime statistics.

The current state of the Reveille is unacceptable, but with a few

EDITORIAL BOARD

Will Nickel Editor-in-Chief

Managing Editor Jayden Nguyen

John Buzbee News Editor

Opinion Columnist Lauren Madden

There should be more conservative voices. Fortunately we have a list of student journalists that applied to our publication that we recommend to you.

Grant Dalton, 21, is an LSU student from Banjo Possum, Louisiana who gained notoriety for his opposition to the integration of his high school in 2020. His column is the biggest reason that Garth Brooks High School still doesn’t allow Irish people in its walls. His talents would be a great addition, but his place will probably be taken by another bleeding-heart liberal.

LSU student Mary Ann Buckley, 20, from Youalreadytoldhertwice, Louisiana, should be heavily considered for her impressive track record in writing. Her article, “Why Women Are Dumb and Should Stay in The Kitchen,” made national headlines and has earned her a sizable following. Her audience will only grow upon the release of her new book, “Barefoot and Pregnant:

12 Activities to Make Your Baby Smarter While You Wait for Your

Beau Hayes, 22, is an LSU student from Armalite, Louisiana. He became the youngest member of the military after forging documents to enlist in the army at 5 years old. His job was originally to befriend Iraqi children to find places with the highest concentrations of civilians, to determine the locations for airstrikes. Hayes’ book, “Hide and Seek Weapons of Mass Destruction: My Time as a Child Soldier and Why We Should’ve Bombed Them More” brought him a level of respect in conservative circles that would be great for The Reveille.

Student journalist Chester Moore, 22, from Machinegun, Louisiana, would be another great addition. Work ethic isn’t an issue for him, he makes a daily 1,000-word post to his pro-gun blog, “Shoot To Kill.” We doubt that anyone at the paper owns a gun and thus isn’t qualified to speak on gun control debates. Moore’s arsenal of more than 600 firearms that he displays on the walls of his house will bring

From what we’ve seen the paper is biased in favor of immigration, LSU student Austin Tucker, 19, from, Buildthewall, Louisiana has become a conservative folk hero. Tucker saw the pictures of illegal immigrant children in cages on the border and was appalled at the size of them. Soon after he went down to the US-Mexico border with an ATV and an AK-47 and rounded up kids crossing the border to put them in bird cages.

The Reveille needs someone to bring balance to the LGBTQ discussion, look no further than 20-yearold blogger Jeb Cooper. His post, “Drag Shows? More Like the Holocaust Against Straight People” was shared more than a million times on 4chan.

Former student Clyde Knox, 22, from Sundowntown, Louisiana, would be another valuable addition. After Knox held protests at the university to make phrenology a major, the school did some digging and found out that he was a ranking member of the KKK, and was formerly the president of the

“KKK Kidz Klub”. After his expulsion, he exploded in the audio sphere with his popular program, “The White Power Podcast.” He was also the author of, “Miscegenation, A Broken Nation: The Many Dangers of Race Mixing.” Whether or not you agree with his politics or his frequent use of racial slurs, he would surely provide a counterweight to the Black nationalist propaganda coming from the current publication.

Our illegitimate president, Joe Biden, is a puppet of Barack Hussein Obama, a communist Muslim terrorist who is responsible for the September 11th attacks and possibly the Oklahoma City bombing. Biden’s Department of Education is going into schools and making children get surgery to change their gender back and forth every day and The Reveille cheers this on. Hire at least two of our suggested candidates and see if balance can be achieved.

Let’s go Brandon. Frank Kidd is a 22-year-old mass communication senior from Springfield, Virginia.

Editorial Policies and Procedures Quote of the Week

The Reveille (USPS 145-800) is written, edited and produced solely by students of Louisiana State University. The Reveille is an independent entity of the Office of Student Media within the Manship School of Mass Communication. Signed opinions are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the editor, The Reveille or the university. Letters submitted for publication should be sent via e-mail to editor@lsu.edu or delivered to B-39 Hodges Hall. They must be 400 words or less. Letters must provide a contact phone number for verification purposes, which will not be printed. The Reveille reserves the right to edit letters and guest columns for space consideration while preserving the original intent. The Reveille also reserves the right to reject any letter without notification of the author. Writers must include their full names and phone numbers. The Reveille’s editor in chief, hired every semester by the LSU Student Media Board, has final authority on all editorial decisions.

“They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it’s not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance.”

Terry Pratchett

Author and satirist 1948-2015

MADDIE FITZMORRIS / The Reveille