We don't expect to see all these things done over a year, or even before we graduate. The fight for each and every one of these issues will be long and hard. We nonetheless want to explain what we want, why we want it, and how LSU students will benefit from progressive policies. We hope you agree, and even more we hope that these ideas will generate thought, discussion and dialog over the role of the university in society and what sort of school and world we would like to live in and how that might be achieved.

• REDUCE LSU'S ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT: Chartwell's removed the plates and silverware in the Union and replaced them with styrofoam, a nonrecyclable plastic. We want the plates and silverware back. Chartwell's shouldn't sacrifice the environment to make more money. LSU should buy at a minimum 30% post-consumer recycled paper for all its paper needs. LSU already buys 30% recycled colored paper but buys virgin copy paper.
• CAMPUS WIDE RECYCLING PROGRAM: Saves the earth, saves you money. Recycling bins should be available throughout the campus, conveniently located and clearly marked. Recycling can save the university over $50,000 a year. PSA member organizations have fought for over 5 years to get campus-wide recycling.

• MAKE MASS TRANSIT A MASTER PLAN PRIORITY: Making mass transit more convenient will reduce the burden on LSU's parking lots and streets, as well as on neighboring communities. LSU mass transit contract with CTC is currently funded by a self-assessed student fee. Other universities our size and smaller use a mixture of student fees, university subsidization, and fees from parking tags and parking tickets to support bus systems. Master Plan data supports our conclusion that parking is adequate, but mass transit is insufficient for the amount of students who want to use it (60% asked said they would take a bus if the wait were less than 5 minutes!). PSA is working with community groups and the Alliance for Responsible Transportation (ART), and members of the Capital Transit Corporation (CTC) to develop an expanded and efficient mass transit master plan for LSU.
• COMMUNITY HAS RIGHTS, TOO! The community north of LSU will see its main through-street, West Roosevelt, receive a 30% traffic increase under the Master Plan. This street is in the heart of a residential neighborhood and an easy access to Highland Rd. and Nicholson Dr. It also lacks sidewalks and is the home to University Terrace elementary school, where most students walk to class. As well, this area floods often, and LSUs building of the North Campus Apartments in the Kirby-Smith Lot has raised the land, which will worsen drainage. LSU never consulted the community, the city councilwoman for the district, or the principal at University Terrace about their plans. Bill Eskew (LSU Facility Development, Master Plan chairman) has repeatedly ignored the community, and referred to it as a dangerous person that
• SAVE THE HILL FARM FROM BEING BULLDOZED: Temporarily saved! The Hill Farm Teaching facility, conveniently located just north of the Rec Center, provides space for introductory horticultural classes, graduate students' research, and community gardening. It is just four acres. It was originally 40 acres and has been shrunk over the years to make room for Frat Row, the Rec Center, and the Lod Cook Alumni Center. LSU wants to destroy what's left of it. As a result of student pressure, the Hill Farm will not be bulldozed for the moment, but we won't stop until the Hill Farm is permanently protected from being paved over. We haven't forgotten that LSU A&M stands for Agriculture and Mechanics, not Alumni and Money!
• BIKE LANES: Make bike lanes a priority in the Master Plan to make getting onto campus without a car quicker and safer.

• UNIVERSAL DOMESTIC PARTNERSHIP BENEFITS: We Believe LSU Should Recognize Universal Domestic Partnership Benefits Residential Life and married student housing should recognize domestic partnerships. Not doing so unfairly discriminates against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans-gendered persons. Due to frequent harassment of LGBT persons in residence halls, these issues need to be addressed.
• FACULTY DIVERSIFICATION: The administration and faculty are mostly white and male. Support workers and janitors are more likely to be black and female. There is a clear correlation between gender and race and income in employment at LSU.
• EXPAND THE AFRICAN AMERICAN CULTURAL CENTER: The AACC is not big enough to accommodate the organizations that use it.
• LSU's STUDENT HEALTH CENTER SHOULD HAVE A RAPE KIT AND PROPERLY TRAINED PERSONNEL: Because rape on campus is a big, and often underreported problem, we believe our Health Center should have the resources to address it, rather than send students off campus. We believe there is already adequate funding in the Student Health Center fee to provide this service and question why it has not been done already.
• TAMPONS SHOULD BE AVAILABLE IN ALL WOMEN'S RESTROOMS: LSU is a large, public institution of which at least half the population is female. All women's restrooms on campus should provide this basic service, not simply those in the Union.
• BETTER CAMPUS LIGHTING
• BRING ALL LSU FACILITIES TO COMPLIANCE WITH AMERICANS WITH DISABILITIES ACT: Every LSU student should have equal access to LSU's buildings, classrooms, and other facilities regardless of physical disability.
• FULL TIME DIRECTOR FOR WOMEN'S CENTER: Now accomplished!
• CREATE LGBT CENTER: An informational and support center for LGBT students. Currently the Spectrum Alliances Safe Space program has received university backing and now has a graduate assistant working on the project part-time under the Office of Multicultural Affairs (OMA).

• STUDENT DEMOCRACY -- MAKING STUDENT GOVERNMENT ELECTIONS MORE THAN AN ELITE CONTEST: Involving the 90% of students that normally abstain from participating in SG elections by pursuing policies that defend quality, affordable public education in Louisiana, and doing that even if it runs counter to the interests of the powers that be. It also means having the capability and willingness to act outside of normal channels when working purely within the system fails us. It means running LSU as a democracy, in which informed consent of the governed is the prerequisite of governmental action. Thus,
• NO MORE BACKROOM DEALS TO SELL OFF VITAL LSU SERVICES
• TREAT STUDENTS AS CONSTITUENTS, NOT CUSTOMERS
• STUDENTS, FACULTY AND CAMPUS WORKERS STANDING IN SOLIDARITY -- AN INJURY TO ONE IS AN INJURY TO ALL: Students are taught to treat workers and faculty as "other," people who don't share our concerns or experiences. Many of us don't even know the names of the people who clean our classrooms, cook our food, or maintain our offices. This keeps us ignorant of each other and keeps us disorganized, if not antagonistic to each other. A case in point is students being angry when campus workers get a pay raise because we fear we'll have to pay higher tuition, or faculty not identifying as workers like janitors or secretaries for fear of losing their white-collar, professional persona. The PSA thinks it's in our collective self-interest to work together. On our own, we're too weak to change much, but together we have tremendous power to affect policy. We want to build alliances between students, campus workers and faculty to make LSU work for people, not for profit.
• KEEP EDUCATION PUBLIC AND AFFORDABLE: Stop privatizations that raise prices and reduce services. Examples:
  • Cox Cable: Prices jumped 53% overnight, students had no voice in decision
  • Chartwell's: Students forced to buy meal plans
  • Barnes & Noble: Administration ignored 10,000+ student petitions, after takeover course packet, bluebook and book prices increased substantially
  We think of privatization as a tuition increase by other means, a "stealth" tuition increase where the university gets more of our money and simultaneously sheds responsibility for running the university. For these reasons, we say:
  • NO FRESHMAN RESIDENCY REQUIREMENT
  • NO RESIDENTIAL HALL PRIVATIZATION
  • WE'RE PEOPLE, NOT COMMODITIES -- STOP SELLING ACCESS TO STUDENTS TO THE HIGHEST BIDDER: We want LSU to end its predatory lending practice of providing students' names to credit card companies. We want LSU to stop profiting from marketing credit cards on campus and allowing the LSU alumni association to market an LSU Alumni Association credit card specifically for students. The same goes for forcing LSU students to buy their course packets from Barnes & Noble, their food from Chartwell's, or their cable TV from Cox.
• PRESERVING THE QUALITY OF EDUCATION AT LSU
• HANDS OFF TENURE: Preserving academic freedom improves the quality of education. Post-tenure review jepordizes the value of your diploma.
• NO 1,000 STUDENT CLASSROOM -- STOP ASSEMBLY LINE EDUCATION: Bigger classes lead to more outsourcing of education to underpaid graduate assistants. They also make it next to impossible to actually communicate with your professor.
• FUNDING HIGHER EDUCATION
• SPENDING FOR HUMAN NEED, NOT CORPORATE GREED: We want education and social services to be a priority for the state government. We want to fund this by ending the 10-year industrial tax exemption for local school districts, eliminating the federal tax writeoff on itemized state income taxes, making income taxes more progressive, lowering the homestead exemption, and ending the sales tax on food and utilities. We need taxes that grow with the economy, not regressive "temporary" taxes that hurt the poor, leave the state in a permanent fiscal crisis, and don't fund basic, needed social services like higher education and health care. Investment in an educated and healthy population is the best way to promote economic development in Louisiana, not more tax breaks to the chemical industry and the wealthy.

• NO MORE SWEATSHOPS -- JUSTICE FOR THOSE WHO MAKE OUR CLOTHES: We demand that LSU enforce the labor standards it has agreed to in its joining of the Fair Labor Association and the Worker Rights Consortium. In particular, LSU should uphold its commitment to freedom of association and a safe and healthy work environment at the New Era Cap Company factory in Derby, New York. Workers at New Era have been on strike since July 16th, 2001 because of drastic wage cuts and dangerous working conditions. Investigations by an independent monitor affiliated with LSU - the Worker Rights Consortium - and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration have shown that New Era is violating workers rights to form an independent labor union. New Era workers also suffer extraordinarily high repetitive-motion injury rates and needle-puncture injuries. The workers are asking universities to suspend their contracts with New Era until the strike is resolved and conditions improve. We therefore want LSU to suspend its contract with New Era until New Era respects workers right to organize and makes a commitment to improving working conditions.
• RESIDENTIAL ASSISTANTS AND GRADUATE TEACHING ASSISTANTS DESERVE THE RIGHT TO ORGANIZE: All over the United States, graduate students have organized to get better working conditions and better pay. The wages given to LSU grad teaching assistants (TA's) are insufficient for the work load they must perform. Undergrads should support graduate student organizing because the quality of our education improves when graduate teaching assistants don't need to take second jobs to support themselves and thus have more time to devote to doing quality teaching, grading and advising. Well-paid grad assistants with reasonable schedules will make your education better. We will support graduate students' efforts to organize to achieve this.
  
  At the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Residential Assistants (RA's) are organizing for similar reasons. We think LSU RA's should follow their example. Again, RA's that can speak freely and bargain collectively are a stronger voice than RA's on their own. Together they can get more accomplished to make life in the dorms better than they ever could individually. We will support RA organizing to the same degree as we do TA organizing, providing contact information, legal advice, advocacy, and a sympathetic voice in negotiations with the administration.
• LIVING WAGE FOR CONTRACTED SERVICE WORKERS: LSU is privatizing many essential services around campus. Often, privatization leads to losses in wages, benefits, and the right to organize and collectively bargain for workers. We want all contracted, non-state workers at LSU to recieve at a minimum an hourly wage equivalent to the federal poverty line, or $8.50 an hour, $9.50 if the job doesn't include health benefits. We will also lobby the State Legislature for a wage increase for public sector school support staff, as Louisiana teachers recieved last year. Because we know the federal poverty line is not an accurate measure of what it takes to raise a family, we want to convene a committee to study what a living wage would be for workers at LSU and how it might best be achieved. We define a living wage to be the amount of money it would take to adequately care for a family of four on one forty hour a week salary.

The statements and opinions included on this site are those of the Progressive Student Alliance only. Any statements and opinions included in these pages are not those of Louisiana State University or the LSU Board of Supervisors.