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Together.

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Additional support provided by the Fred Bea and Ruth Ziegler Foundation and the Ziegler Art Museum located in Jennings City Hall.

The museum focuses on emerging Louisiana artists and is an historical and cultural center for Southwest Louisiana and the Foundation for Excellence in Louisiana Public Broadcasting.

With support from viewers like you, students on this campus are terrified.

They're sick, they're tired.

Students can't put up with this culture anymore.

Reaction to the Madison Brooks story.

These are standards that have been very much in place for a decade here, and we're just kind of updating those things.

Louisiana's youngest students and how they learn is once again mired in controversy.

And it was really this question of how do we live with water in a different way?

How do we redefine that relationship?

Can reducing pavement reduce flooding?

Urban Conservancy says yes.

We begin with a Louisiana story that is making international news.

The horrifying death of Madison Brooks, a 19 year old sophomore at LSU.

It has cast a pall of sadness and anger over the Baton Rouge campus and is raising important questions about how we respond to rape culture and underage drinking.

Court records show Brooks was raped shortly before being hit by a car in the early hours of Sunday, January 16th.

She died in the hospital days later this week, authorities charged four men, Tavon Washington, and a 17 year old whose name we cannot release because he's underage.

Both are charged with third degree rape.

The other two case in Carver and Everett Lee are charged with principal to third degree weight.

Now, surveillance video shows Brooks leaving Reggie's bar in the Tiger Latin neighborhood with the four suspects 10 minutes before closing time at 2 a.m., they drove a short distance and parked the car where the assault happened.

And then later dropped Brooks off on Burbank Drive.

LSU President William Tate released a statement calling what happened to Madison Brooks evil while condemning the culture of underage drinking.

Many, though, say his response missed the mark.

I spoke with a leading advocate for rape victims, Morgan Landry, and I have never seen a situation in which it led to the death of an individual.

What ultimately happened to 19 year old Madison Brooks may be a horrific first for star executive director Morgan Landry, but the aftermath, the reasons being battered about are as common as a cold.

It's why Starr gave this statement on their Web page.

Alcohol is not the cause of rape.

Alcohol is used by perpetrators to facilitate rape.

Somebody could have picked up Madison Brooks, who was not a rapist, brought her home safe.

Yes, she could have gotten sick from the alcohol.

But based on the chain of events that happened in this situation, that is what led to her death.

Because rapists are the ones who picks her up, preyed on her, targeted her, and that ultimately led to her death.

So what concerns you?

The most about the aftermath of this?

What concerns me the most, I think, is that when you focus so much on the underage drinking, the same sexual assault happened regardless of if the individuals are underage or not, regardless of if there was ever any alcohol to begin with.

I mean, all of that can still sexual assault can still occur.

And so when we look at those individuals who went to that bar, they were clearly there preying on her, you know, picking her up often.

I think that we need to focus on how to identify perpetrators.

You know, back in the day, you would there would be these whistles they would give to girls, Oh, it was a rape whistle.

Blow your whistle.

Have the buddy system.

We need to shift that focus on perpetrators.

Let's give people who might be perpetrators whistles so that way they can blow the whistle, Sound the alarm if they might assault somebody.

People who have them being in pairs and groups so that way they can have a buddy that stops them if they're going to assault somebody.

And I think a lot of times, you know, we hear these individuals who are like, oh, well, this isn't rape.

You know, when we're we're constantly focused on where the line is and how not to cross the line.

That's that's the wrong way to look at this, because if you're even getting to the line, then that's not a healthy interaction.

And we need to start talking about what is healthy sexual interactions.

But that is always considered very taboo.

But the truth is, if people knew how to have healthy sexual interactions, they wouldn't even want to get to that line because it's not a way to.

It's just not a way to have healthy interactions.

I think that what ends up happening with the narrative about training for LSU or the LSU student was the victim.

So our trainings don't focus on how not to be a victim.

Our trainings focus on how not to perpetrate, how to create a campus climate and culture that is that is safe.

We do not train people to be like, Oh, don't go here, don't drink.

You know that that's the wrong message.

Because the truth is perpetrators, if one individual decides, okay, I'm not going to drink, that may reduce that individual's risk of being sexually assaulted, but the perpetrators are still there.

So they'll just target somebody else.

So when we focus so much on individuals and and who is being targeted, we don't actually address the problem.

And in that situation with LSU, obviously any training that would have been done would not have been done with those perpetrators because they weren't LSU students.

LEMON Very believes the training needs to begin early.

The focus that we really need to emphasize is K-through-12 education.

A lot of people are like, why would we want to teach young people about healthy relationships?

You know, they're too young.

But the truth is, if we're first starting to educate people when they're in college, we're already too late.

We need to be having age appropriate conversations with children from the moment they're in kindergarten all the way up until 12th grade before they're going to college.

And it starts very small.

It starts with what is consent?

When you're a child, people should not be making their kids hug people, their great grandparents included, that they don't want to.

They need to know that their body is their own and that they can control who they interact with physically, emotionally.

And it starts there.

And when you have a focus on that at a young age, that is when we will see a climate shift, a culture shift.

And I think, you know, all of the the pressure on the businesses, that is great to address certain aspects of the problem.

But we really need people to stand with us at the Capitol to get policies passed about K through 12 education, because any time we're trying to deal with policies related to consent and healthy relationships, there is pushback because people assume that means we're going to be teaching people how to have sex, how to engage in risky behaviors.

And what we're actually seeing from the research is when you teach kids about consent and how they relationships, they're, you know, they wait much longer before having a sexual encounter.

And the the likeliness that it would be consensual is much higher in that, you know, their understanding of what consent is.

So that's where we need the pressure.

The the power that LSU has is great.

We need them at the Capitol by our side because she's been under the microscope for a couple of years now with Caroline and with sexual assaults not being reported.

A number of things that gave the university a black eye.

But have things changed?

Do you think that the culture has changed noticeably to directly answer your question about has anything changed?

No, but it's because it's not going to.

And so we as a society really shift our our attention, our energy into changing things from a very young age.

And Phoebe's Lady Miller joins us now on the CW.

I said she's a mass communication student at LSU and an intern here at LPD.

We asked her for an inside look at how the student body is coping with the loss of Madison.

Laney, what can you tell us, Karen?

Andre Last night I went to a feminist and action meeting to speak to LSU students about how they're feeling about all of this that's going on.

They're upset over Tate's emails sent to the student body focusing on underage drinking.

He says that basically in the statement that underage drinking is where we should focus because none of this would have happened if there wasn't underage drinking occurring, which we know is not true, because maybe alcohol didn't help the situation, but rapists are going to rape people.

And that's just that is that's the fact.

Students on this campus are terrified.

They're sick, they're tired.

Students can't put up with this culture anymore.

We need someone to take a bold stance against rape culture and we need someone to dismantle it.

At its root, we need to start holding people accountable, and we need to start seeing results fast.

Or this is going to keep happening like we've been seeing.

What we've talked about, how the students felt about the statement, but what action are they expecting from LSU?

They really want LSU to renew their contract that they previously had with SA.

So we have professionals or professionals on campus to help with that.

You know, LSU ended their contract.

They didn't renew it this beginning of this school year.

And then they also want LSU to create and distribute a list of mandatory reporters on their staff, reporters for sexual violence.

You know, we don't we have some teachers who disclose that information, but we don't have a list of every single person who's safe to talk to around campus.

Want to know exactly who can I go to in case something like this happens?

Right.

Exactly.

Okay.

And so, I mean, clearly, students are organizing, but how are they coping?

How are they really feeling?

What's the mood whenever you walk on campus?

So, yes, they have strong voices, but not everyone does have a voice.

And it's still hard to talk about.

I know I went to class the day after we find out what happened and a professor opened up the closet.

Do y'all want to talk about what happened?

No one even spoke a word.

It was just silent.

And it was an eerie feeling to be in the room.

You can.

You couldn't even hear anyone breathe, you know, like it was that silent.

So, yes, there are strong voices, but it's still pretty silent around campus itself.

And from the students that you talked to and obviously the meeting that you went to, do you think that students expect any changes or are they worried that you know nothing?

Is there hope something to happen?

Yeah.

The ones I spoke to, they said, you know, we've been begging for help and change ever since we've gotten here.

We know LSU's have a little issue in the past with things like this.

They said they're not expecting anything to change drastically, but they just want help.

They just want it to be acknowledged that this is what happened.

This is what's going on.

We don't they don't expect a big change, but they they just want a little bit of help.

And then also, I mean, have students been coming out and talking about this on social media?

Because what I've been reading is that some have been coming out with stories of their own, similar to what happened in Madison.

Yes.

A lot of girls that I've followed are girls.

They reshare the post.

A lot of incidents.

Tell back to Tiger Land, you know, similar to what happened with Madison.

A lot of them going to the hospital for help.

But those are only some of the voices.

Those are just the ones who are brave enough to ask for help to go to the hospital to file a police report.

Most of those voices don't actually get heard.

And of course, this is coming from tweets and post on Instagram.

Nothing official.

Right.

All right, Lainey, thank you so much.

We'll talk to you more in the coming weeks about all this.

Thanks so much.

And then we'll look at news making headlines around the state.

Otherwise, lawmakers could soon be considering a proposal to keep sex offenders from becoming election commissioners.

Offenders are required to absentee vote if their precinct is inside of a school, But there isn't anything on the books about precinct workers.

The secretary of state says there have been instances where sex offenders have worked as election commissioners.

But he did not say the number or where the state Board of Election commissioners gave a recommendation for a bill addressing the topic on Monday.

Regular session doesn't begin until April 10th.

A contractor is suing the city of Grand Isle, claiming the resort town is trying to suppress free speech.

He claims the city drafted an ordinance intended to stop him from flying flags using vulgar insults aimed at President Biden and his supporters.

The lawsuit says that he was ticketed a total of seven times for flying the flags on his truck.

He's also suing for court declaration that he was engaged in protected free speech.

The amount of damages was unspecified.

An audit found that LSU's head coach, Brian Kelly, was overpaid by more than $1,000,000 in 2022.

The Louisiana legislative auditor reported that the school double paid Kelly last May and again last June.

The head coach in the school worked out a payment plan to recoup the lost funds.

But this wasn't the school's only financial blunder.

School also misclassified more than 6 million in severance payments as coaching salaries, benefits and bonuses on statement of revenues, expenses.

New Orleans Mayor Latoya Cantrell is asking the White House for assistance fighting gun violence.

Cantrell flew to Washington, D.C. on Thursday.

Her request would include a partnership with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and Explosives.

Additionally, Cantrell was expected to ask the fire marshal to step in when it comes to executing warrants and Louisiana's youngest students and how they learn is mired in controversy again after the state's top school board voted to take another look at new learning standards.

Now, these are standards that they have approved twice and as recently as a month ago, it's very much on the radar of Barry Irwin, president of Council for a Better Louisiana.

Barry, first, what are the new learning standards that we're talking about here?

Well, first, they're an update on standards that we already have in place that were put in place about ten years ago.

And really what that means is even for our youngest kids and I'm talking about birth to age five kids who are, you know, in child care centers or in daycare or whatever it is like that We still have standards to try and help the educators, the caregivers help them develop in those very early stages.

So what we're talking about is not reading, writing, arithmetic, but we are talking about things like making sure at certain ages kids are developing appropriately.

So for instance, maybe at an early age, a child does recognize some colors or some shapes later on, maybe numbers or letters, maybe beginning to say words.

There's kind of a phased period, you know, throughout that developmental process where we try and make sure those kids are on track.

And that's what we're talking about.

Early childhood education.

That's the biggest concern in Louisiana.

That's where the problems began.

Is this somehow politicized, ized or are they concerned about instruction?

It has been to some degree.

You know, for some folks, for actually a lot of folks, there's really no controversy here whatsoever.

These are standards that have been very much in place, you know, an earlier version, you know, for a decade here.

And we're just kind of updating those things.

It uses science.

It uses evidence based research, those types of things.

And it makes just common sense.

However, within the standards that we're talking about, there's some terminology that's used.

It's called social emotional development.

And for certain groups and certain parents, that's kind of a flag, a red flag and a buzzword that gives them concern that maybe it's not just what I'm teaching a kid to, you know, deal with colors and letters and shapes, but maybe it's like an open door to seep into things like gender identity, racial, you know, discussions, that type of thing that they feel are inappropriate for kids at that age.

So that's kind of where the controversy I mean, these are babies.

This is like child care.

I don't even think of it as school, but it is right.

I don't see what the confusion really would be if what you're doing is helping them develop, which is something that their parents would be doing if they were at home with their parents.

It's hard to see that for me in the same way.

And I would say for, you know, transparency, say cable is supported these standards and we think they're very strong.

However, you know, we've seen this played out at the upper grades already with things like critical race theory.

Exactly how American history and social studies are taught controversies there, you know, even library books on the shelves in libraries.

We're seeing that already in that part of the educational system.

And now it's kind of seeping down into those very early ages.

I think a lot of these parents are maybe not necessarily necessarily afraid they're going to get totally indoctrinated, you know, at birth to age five.

But they do worry about some vagueness that they feel like opens the door for some things that they don't think they want their kids to learn at that age.

And we're finding the public comment is a huge influencer here because that's really what has triggered this.

Taking a look at it again.

That's right.

We had a task force that began looking at these things more than a year ago.

They spent a full year actually going around the state to some degree with a lot of different open meetings going through these.

And we're talking about experts in the field, child care providers here in our state, higher ed people here in our state.

So this is not out-of-state people that are coming in telling us what to do.

But after the standards were, you know, recommended by this task force, some groups began to look at them and say, I'm not so sure about this.

And so they opened an online portal for comments.

And, you know, they got inundated with, I think, 600 or so comments that raised some concerns.

You know, I'm wondering, it seems like when you're teaching this, there is right and there's wrong.

There's very basic things that you would have thought 500 years ago, a thousand years ago, and you'll teach 100 years from now some of the basics.

I don't see those really changing.

And it seems that that's what is being taught here.

Well, if you look at the standards themselves and if you're a parent or have been a parent at all any time in your life, you look at those things, you're going to say, hey, I know exactly what they're talking about.

I did this with my child.

I did that with my child, whatever they are, the very basic things.

But there is a concern.

You know, some people call it the culture wars, whatever term you want to use that, you know, there's that that schools in particular and now we're talking about child care centers might be, you know, introducing some concepts and some thoughts at ages that, you know, some families don't feel like they're appropriate.

Now, I will say this.

It's not the majority of people in our state.

It's a very vocal and active minority, but it does cause some political heartburn for maybe some B.C.

members and some legislators.

And so that's why we're kind of going through this again.

And those being hurt right now or the little kids themselves.

Well, right.

We do have standards in place, but the key is we review them every so many years because we want to make sure they're updated with the best evidence that the research has.

And that's kind of what these new standards do, is they they don't make drastic changes, but they give us the most updated best practices, if you will, for how we can help kids at these early stages develop.

And so we certainly want those to be in place as soon as we can.

All right.

We're happy that your eyes are on it.

We're keep an eye.

All right.

Thanks so much, Barry.

All right.

Good to see you.

And as heavy rain becomes more common with climate change, communities are looking for new ways to alleviate flooding.

Pavement accounts for an increase in high water and flood prone places.

The Urban Conservancy's Front Garden Initiative has a plan to reduce the risk of runoff in New Orleans and areas beyond.

So the front yard initiative is trying to help with things like climate change, flooding, all of the bad weather that we normally get here in Louisiana.

Can you tell me a little bit about it and how it got started?

Yeah, we really came out of the post-Katrina awareness awakening that our relationship with water in the city was not healthy.

And it was really this question of how do we live with water in a different way?

How do we redefine that relationship?

So a lot of things were happening at that time all throughout the city, and we recognized that this was an opportunity around 2016 or so to help address an issue of over paving in the city.

We first addressed it.

We first approached it as like, how do we punish those people who are paving too much?

And we quickly learned there were lots and lots of people who had inherited more paving than they wanted.

And we quickly pivoted to how do we help these people take the first steps to getting rid of their paving so they can do something else that helps them, help that helps the city to manage our stormwater.

All right.

So can you explain what over paving is just for people that don't know?

Sure.

There's a legal definition in most neighborhoods that is paving in excess of 40% of your front or side yard.

And you'll see that sometimes when people create as this house was create paving in the front yard to create maybe parking or to reduce maintenance.

But there's also not specifically legal terms, but just paving so much that the water, the runoff becomes an issue for either your neighbors or for your street.

So even if you are complying, you don't have necessarily an overpaid yard.

According to the city zoning.

It can still be over paved in terms of the the damage that it's doing.

So this is an example of a house that had over paving.

Right.

And you guys are trying to combat that with planting just grass and trees a little bit more than that, actually.

So it's not just landscaping.

Green infrastructure is about excavation, creating storage for the water itself.

So it's really what you see on the surface looks like, you know, gravel walkway and parking strips.

But in reality, it's doing a whole lot of work.

And if you were to see the in-progress pictures, you would see that this driveway, for example, is excavated to three feet.

So it's creating space for the water to sit.

And yes, this this yard, this property had over 800 square feet of paving that was removed and replaced with with spaces where the water can go and and yep, native plants do a great, great job in holding water and also tolerating our drought cycles.

But when you look here behind us, this is not just plants.

It's plants in a in a rain garden that can hold additional water.

It's designed to hold water, you know.

All right.

So that's the entire idea.

And has that been working here?

Because if you're looking at other people around this neighborhood, not everybody has such a green landscape in the front.

So is this helping with the flooding on the street?

Well, if you talk to the homeowner, she will tell you that prior to doing this work, they she had standing water and she completed her yard before her neighbor did, who also went through our program.

And on heavily rainy days after she complete her project, there was no standing water here.

And yet her neighbors still had that.

So it definitely makes a difference.

So does it matter what type of plants I know you said native plants specifically, but is that the goal is to make sure that there are native plants only and not necessarily only.

They're also naturalized plants that work perfectly well, but native plants are adapted to this climate.

So if you look at what they're doing under the surface, their roots are going deeper.

They're aerating the soil, meaning they're breaking up the soil in ways that something like Saint Augustine grass sod won't do.

Their root system is very shallow.

And so those native plants are designed to tolerate our extreme weather events.

And as we all know, our climate is already warm and wet, but it's getting warmer and wetter all the time.

And so having as much intervention as it can along these lines is going to help.

And one last question for you.

Is this operation only in New Orleans is there hope that it will spread statewide?

It is.

We're pretty Orleans centric based because of the sources of funding.

We would love to see it spread.

We'd love to work with other parishes, other municipal cities, and teach them what we know and see this seeded elsewhere within Orleans Parish since the program's inception in 2016, we have financially assisted over 140 homes.

We've reduced over 80,000 square feet of paving one house at a time.

We've created over 160,000 gallons of storm water storage per rain event, which translates into over 2 million annually.

That is kept out of our our catch basins.

And we've contributed almost $1,000,000 to the green sector economy.

And these are small contractors in terms of contract and material purchases and that sort of thing.

All right.

Well, thank you so much for telling us about this.

It seems like some really interesting work.

Yeah.

Thank you.

And everyone, that's our show for this week.

Remember, you can watch anything, help anytime, wherever you are with our live KPBS app.

You can catch OPB news and public affairs shows, as well as other Louisiana programs you've come to enjoy over the years.

And please like us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

For everyone at Louisiana Public Broadcasting, I'm Andre Morales and I'm Kerosene Seer.

So next time that's the state we're in.

Every day I go to work for Entergy.

I know customers are counting on me.

So Entergy is investing millions of dollars to keep the lights on and installing new technology to prevent outages before they happen.

Together, together, together.

We power life.

Additional support provided by the Fred Bea and Ruth B Ziegler Foundation and the Ziegler Art Museum located in Jennings City Hall.

The museum focuses on emerging Louisiana artists and is an historical and cultural center for Southwest Louisiana and the Foundation for Excellence in Louisiana Public Broadcasting.

With support from viewers like you.