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.

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

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

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.