Administration and alumni officials at Louisiana’s Southern University have gone into a major damage control mode in the wake of a series of developments in the last month that have rattled the institution and upset and stirred concern among its base of supporters.
“Anything less than a strong, clear plan will cause us to hemorrhage students and supporters of this institution,” declared Baton Rouge attorney Preston Castille Jr., president of Southern’s 4,000 member national alumni association. “Our resolve has been tested in the last several days,” Castille said in a letter sent last week to Southern alumni.
Castille’s comments, echoing Southern observers, rivals and supporters around the nation, came as the university’s celebration of the end of nearly 10 straight years of steady reductions in state allocation’s to the five campus institution was abruptly muted last month by a series of rapid-fire developments, some still the topic of considerable rumor, gossip and debate.
On June 20, the university said it had been “made aware” of a “private video” featuring “a member of our staff and rumored to include another that was posted on the Internet without the owner’s consent.” The university has begun an immediate “investigation” into the “video matter” to “determine if any university policies or procedures had been violated,” Southern President D. Ray Belton told the Southern community in a detailed letter issued last Friday.
Rumors abound about who is in the reported video posted on several Internet sites that focus on sexual encounters. The university’s investigation may be ongoing.
Meanwhile, people who have longtime relationships with Southern, and say they have seen the video, say faces of known people at the university are visible. They are not offering names, they say, in the event the video may reflect electronic editing that makes it false or misleading. Also, they add, repeating the names would only serve to defame the people shown in a video that was not made for public viewing.
