Archive for the ‘News’ Category

ESPN College GameDay, the popular college football sports program, will be broadcasting live from the LSU Parade Grounds beginning at 9 AM October 10. The program broadcasts live from college football’s number one game of the week, and will be in town for the sold out #4 LSU (5-0) vs #1 Florida (4-0) game in Tiger Stadium. The game will be broadcasted on CBS starting at 7 PM. In the sixteen seasons GameDay has broadcasted live from a college campus, LSU has hosted the program seven times. The last time GameDay was on campus was for last year’s highly anticipated Alabama game.

The GameDay set is open to the public, and fans can view the broadcast live on the Parade Grounds. Campus will be insane next week, so I’d recommend getting there as early as possible, even the night before, especially if you plan on catching the broadcast.

The Louisiana Department of Education announced today that Sherwood Middle School in Baton Rouge is one of the six schools in Louisiana to earn Blue Ribbon status. The US Department of Education bestows this honor based on academic improvement based on test scores for schools. The schools represented almost 2% of the 314 schools recognized across the nation.

You can read the full press release here →

Earlier this year, Dana Morrison of Sherwood Middle was one of the finalist for the LA Department of Education Teacher of the Year Award.

The Advocate is reporting that the parent firm to insurance company USAgencies has announced that it will move 56 jobs from Chicago and invest $1.2 million in an expansion of the Bon Carré Business Center, where it will relocate about 200 employees from the United Plaza on Essen Lane. These new employees will support about 200 retail locations in nine states, presumably in the Southwest.

We applaud the work of the City Government under the leadership of Mayor-President Kip Holden for their work in proving to the company that Baton Rouge is the ideal economic client for corporate expansion.

Today I got an invitation to join a group on Facebook called “MGMT For LSU Groovin’ on the Grounds Spring 2010″. For those uninitiated, Groovin’ on the Grounds is a special outdoor concert held each spring by the LSU Student Government. It’s a student-planned, student-funded Spring spectacular. In the past, headliners have included Akon, Wyclef Jean, Better than Erza and Three-Six Mafia. This group, started by LSU students Ryan Smith and Lu Seka, was formed in an attempt to get the alternative/indie band MGMT to headline the 2010 event, happening this March. “If we have enough ’signatures’, we will send the names to our [student] government to have our voice heard. Help us help you,” says the group.

I talked with cofounder Lu Seka, who told me that he and cofounder Ryan Smith are “avid fans of their music and wanted to bring a good show to Baton Rouge. The student body pays for the show, so we figured why not have a voice in who shows up to the concert?” The group only started recently, and while serious in their endeavors, Seka told me that they were “surprised that the group grew as quickly as it did.” As of this writing, the group has 1,746 members, growing about 80 members every hour just today. But they’re not letting the success get to their head: “We still have much work to do, such as getting these names to the student government and contacting an MGMT representative, but as of now, we’re staying optimistic.”

The group is indeed growing fast—nearly 26 of my friends joined just in the time I’ve been writing this article. But, they’re not the only ones campaigning for their favorite artist: a Lady Gaga group also has been formed, and has just over 600 members at the time of this writing. In either case, the Baton Rougean supports this initiative by the students to get their Student Government working for them. If they succeed, I’d say this could be one of the biggest wins in LSUSG history. As the group says, “invite everyone you’ve ever known.”

You can join the group here →

And while you’re at it, fan us on Facebook →

Forbes is reporting that an analyst at J.P. Morgan has downgraded Shaw Group, a Baton Rouge-based Fortune 500 company, and cut the 2010 earnings estimate due to reduced demand in a few of their numerous industries. However, Shaw Group still remains strong in many areas, including their commercial nuclear construction divisions, which was recently given a contract to build a nuclear power plant in China. Such industries as this strengthen the durability of a conglomerate despite other weakening industries because the market is limited and the scope of the contracts is enormous. Shaw’s stock dropped about 5.5% at the time of publication because of this.

We’ve been keeping an eye on the Swine Flu situation at LSU. We were the first to publish about the first confirmed case; then student health center confirmed 27 cases, 20 of which were sorority girls, and then we picked up news that even the formidable Athletics Department wasn’t immune from the wrath of Influenza Type A.

But today, The Reveille reports that over 200 cases of H1N1 are suspected on campus by the student health center. That means approximately 1 in every 175 people on campus have been infected—and the SHC is seeing this number growing daily. The University is taking necessary measures to ensure those infected are properly treated and is urging any others possible infected to receive treatment as soon as possible.

The Reveille is reporting that LSU senior associate athletic director Herb Vincent has confirmed several cases of Type A influenza. The exact number at this point is unconfirmed, and the Athletic Department suspects that its a spillover effect from the general student population so no epidemic within the athletic community in particular is suspected. All athletes are being urged to follow the same precautions Chancellor Michael Martin issued the student body earlier this week. The Department is dealing with illness on a case-by-case basis. No swine flu (strain H1N1) has been diagnosed yet within the Department, but as with all flu this season is presumed to be so.

I doubt this will adversely affect in any way the opening of the football season in eleven days, but we’ll keep this story updated.

About a month ago, we picked up news that Texas A&M had publicly challenged LSU on Facebook, who at the time had the largest Facebook fan base of any college. Soon after, major online media outlets began covering the news as well, just as Texas A&M started to gain on LSU. Since then, we’ve been monitoring the progression as both schools set their eyes on being the first university with 100,000 fans on Facebook. As it stands now, LSU has 75,084 fans, a mere 2,833 fans less than Texas A&M, who after their initial challenge, has been consistently ahead of LSU. LSU reignited the challenge this week with a press release in which they talked about their ambition of once again being the top Facebook university. They also talked about the 100,000 fans 100,000 pennies competition by BlueFuego, a social media consulting group for universities who was the first to crown LSU as the biggest Facebook university. For the first university to reach 100,000 fans, BlueFuego will donate 100,000 pennies ($1,000) to the school or scholarship the university designates.

It’s great to see LSU so active in this social media challenge. Since the challenge first began, LSU has been much more active and engaging in the social media sphere. We’ll keep a close eye on the progression, but until then, fan LSU on Facebook, if you haven’t already. (Also, fan your favorite Baton Rouge news outlet while you’re at it.)

LSU has confirmed 27 cases of swine flu on its campus, 20 of which were from a sorority function. The Student Health Center has taken extra precautions since this week is a rush week, but type A influenza, of which swine flu is a strain, is easily spreadable by human contact. The Greek Council has said that all events will continue as planned. The University confirmed that all students lived off-campus. The University is urging any full-time students experiencing symptoms to visit the Student Health Center for treatment to prevent further spreading within and outside of the LSU community.

If you experience any symptoms of swine flu or any strain, please see a medical professional.

Last week we posted an article about KLSU, the student-run, school-supported radio station at LSU, and its recent $10,000 FCC fine for missing paperwork dating back 13 years. It’s really upsetting to see such a huge fine levied against KLSU, especially considering the recent budget cuts. We received some updates concerning this situation. For one, it seems that KLSU will seek a lesser penalty from the FCC. This will help alleviate the burden to the radio station. They’re also seeking mitigating funds from other student-run media outlets on campus. For example, they’re seeking some assistance from The Daily Reveille. Unfortunately, all these other media outlets got cut as well, so it’s unlikely they’ll find any sort of mitigation from them (The Daily Reveille alone got cut $30,000). We’ve also learned that they’re changing their documentation habits at KLSU to avoid this in the future. Apparently they’re now in verbose mode, documenting everything they can, where as before their documentation policy was fairly lax. We’ve also uncovered some of the FCC files for this situation. You can see their requests for documentation going back over a decade. (First PDF; Second PDF)

When we conducted our reader survey a few months ago, KLSU reigned as the most listened radio station in Baton Rouge, and KLSU is a historic tradition for LSU student-run media. As fellow independent local media, we hope that KLSU can clear this up and continue playing great music.

Thanks to Gregory Schultz of ControlAltTV for for filling in some of the missing pieces.