Louisiana Republican Gov. Jeff Landry got it just right in his reaction to a controversy – somewhat chance in nature – over public universities’ responsibilities to have their athletes acknowledging affirmatively the country whose citizens are paying their way.
It all started when in a women’s basketball championship tournament game observers noticed the Louisiana State University squad wasn’t on the floor standing to respect the playing of the national anthem, while the opposition was. That absence had been typical of LSU for some time as its pregame routine as structured precluded that, but nobody really had paid attention to this before.
When national media began to publicize it, Landry weighed in that the state’s higher education governing boards should implement policies requiring scholarship athletes to stand respectfully during the anthem. He argued the least a university’s competitive athletes could do was respect the symbol under which Americans had sacrificed to protect the country and the ideas associated with its founding. He also asked the governing body for many intercollegiate competitions the National Collegiate Athletic Association to implement a rule like that.
Of course, the peanut gallery had some objections. A source the media calls upon regarding constitutional matters opined the request was “unconstitutional,” but failed to distinguish between compulsory elementary and secondary education and its tertiary form, insofar as rights of free expression. Higher education consumption is completely optional as is participation in sports, and scholarships are taxpayer gifts, not entitlements. It’s perfectly constitutional for a public university to condition non-academic scholarship awards on certain kinds of behavior, because to participate in the sport (that is, enroll in a class that awards credit for participation in the sport) isn’t dependent on having a scholarship. And for non-scholarship athletes, coaching decisions whether to have them participate on behavioral grounds can do the trick.
Another complaint, from the biggest attention whore in Louisiana academia, former political hack, and soon-to-retire LSU faculty member Bob Mann, was that Landry’s directive would scare away athletes. Naturally, Mann showed confusion over the purpose of higher education: not as an athletic training ground for future professionals, but to educate, and to offer those with superior athletic skills a chance to receive a reduced price or free education. Whether a directive like Landry’s attracts or repels on athletic terms is irrelevant to the higher education mission.
Whether anything will come of this is another matter. Landry has no direct authority over the Board of Regents or four management boards of Louisiana higher education. However, he does appoint all of the members (except for one student for each) of each. In four years, for example, he will have appointed a majority of regents; if he serves two terms, he will have appointed all. He could let current members of boards know that unless they put such a directive in place, he won’t reappoint them, and from any replacement he has in mind he can extract a promise to implement such a directive.
Nor must he be the only elected official to act. If majorities of it really want to micromanage such an affair, the Legislature could do the trick formally by law or informally through the budgetary process.
What Landry wants would cost little and would ask little of athletes, except for those who think some matter of protest so important that they would turn down a subsidized education. They have the right to engage in that expression, just as taxpayers should have the right not to subsidize that expression if they express that will through their elected officials. Louisiana’s higher education boards should agree with Landry’s request.
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