Former LSU President F. King Alexander defended his record at LSU in a radio interview Wednesday, saying that he worked to diversify the university during his seven years there and that LSU was trying to create a Title IX office even as university officials were absorbing huge budget cuts and drawing up financial exigency plans.
Alexander said on Talk Louisiana with Jim Engster on Wednesday that he's going to "keep fighting for students," despite being forced to resign shortly after his arrival at Oregon State University over allegations that complaints of sexual misconduct among students were mishandled during Alexander's time at LSU.
Alexander emerged as a key figure in a review of LSU's Title IX policies by the law firm Husch Blackwell. The firm found LSU was not putting enough resources into enforcing the federal law, which prohibits discrimination by gender and requires institutions to investigate allegations of sexual misconduct and domestic violence among students.
Former LSU President F. King Alexander, former Athletic Director Joe Alleva and a group of past and present members of LSU's Board of Supervis…
“The great disappointment was that we were trying to manage an institution that was going through the worst budget cuts of any state in the United States, 16 budget cuts in eight years," Alexander said. "And in fact, the year we created the Title IX office under (former LSU general counsel) Tom Skinner’s leadership, who did a great job in investigating everything the Title IX office heard about, we had to find money while we were also, if you remember, trying to figure out how to plan for financial exigency.”
Alexander said that one of his proudest accomplishments at LSU also earned him a significant number of enemies: He tried to institute a "holistic admissions" standard in 2018 that evaluated potential students based on more than just their test scores and grade-point averages.
LSU had previously required students to have a 3.0 high school grade-point average or a 25 ACT composite score to be admitted. The university also had a long-standing policy to exempt up to 4% of a class from those requirements.
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Alexander faced backlash over the holistic admissions requirements, with some academics and governmental officials arguing that LSU was lowering its standards and moving in the wrong direction. But Alexander said Wednesday that holistic admissions requirements centered on race, and that White and wealthy families often had an unfair advantage over Black and other minority students from disadvantaged backgrounds.
He said that the 4% of exemptions that LSU already allowed disproportionately went to athletes. After LSU adopted holistic admissions that trend continued: 6% of freshmen who were not athletes were admitted through the exemption, while 27% of freshmen who were athletes were admitted through the exemption, he said.
"Clearly, that 4% threshold was to allow students of color to play football or basketball for LSU, but not to allow qualified lower-income students of color who were not athletes to participate in the classroom and in the laboratory," he said.
Alexander described the clash as being between "old LSU and the new LSU that it could be."
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"It was by far the right thing to do, I was just surprised that we would have such resistance from the Board of Regents and others," Alexander said. "But now I realize it's because we were leveling the playing field for disadvantaged students who needed LSU more than any other student needs great faculty and a great flagship university."
