Local & State Headlines

'Jena 6' protests continue

• Jena protesters who stayed in Albany rallied at ASU and Dougherty County High School.

J.D. Sumner

JENA,La. — While 154 Albany State students may have learned the value of speaking out for what they believed was a social injustice in Louisiana, school officials say that their 20-plus hour trip to the Bayou will cost them an unexcused absence from their classes.

Spearheaded by a movement lead by the University’s Student Government Association, the students left Albany Wednesday night to join thousands of protesters in Jena.

Sophia Glover, director of communications for ASU, said Wednesday that the trip does not qualify for exemption of the university’s attendance policy and that the students will be counted absent from any classes they missed.

Glover said that since the trip was not a school sponsored event, the university will have to count the missed classes against the students, but that the university’s policy allows for a certain number of absences before administrative action is taken.

“Our attendance policy bases the number of absences allowed on the number of credit hours a student is taking,” Glover said. “If a student is taking a three-hour course, they can miss three classes before being penalized.”

School officials also said that the students were able to raise almost $4,000 to pay for the cost of the trip through donations, car washes and other fundraising efforts.

Reports from Louisiana indicated the group had arrived in Jena and were participating in the protest.

Locally, students who remained behind held their own demonstration, marching six laps around campus — once for each of the Jena 6.

Some Dougherty County public school students also protested by wearing black, school officials said.

Prosecutors in Jena have drawn the ire of civil rights groups after charging six black students with attempted murder after a racially-motivated brawl at Jena High School in 2006 in which one student was knocked unconscious.

The fight came after school officials declined to expel three white students who had placed three nooses in a tree where black students had begun to congregate.

The charges against three of the students have been downgraded to second degree battery, but three others remain charged with attempted murder.

Thursday, 2nd District Congressman Sanford Bishop of Albany issued a statement about the ongoing troubles in Louisiana, calling the situation “troubling.”

“Whether you are black, white or brown, the inequitable and uneven prosecutorial actions and responses to the events which have occurred throughout this case continue to raise very troubling concerns with respect to the equitable carriage of justice,” Bishop wrote.

Quoting Martin Luther King, Jr., Bishop said that the incident in Louisiana is a stark reminder of the racism and injustice of the past.

The ASU students were scheduled to return late Thursday night.

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