Sen. Regina Barrow to appear with Jim Engster on Talk Louisiana this morning at 9

LSU head football coach Ed Orgeron will not testify before the Louisiana Senate Select Committee on Women and Children on Thursday, April 8 as requested by the Committee Chair, state Sen. Regina A. Barrow (D – Baton Rouge).

The chair of the Select Committee on Women and Children, Sen. Regina Barrow, is scheduled to visit “Talk Louisiana” Wednesday at 9 a.m. The show airs on WRKF, 89.3 FM and at wrkf.org.

Orgeron issued a statement to the committee Tuesday in lieu of testimony.

Two other top LSU athletic officials, Athletic Director Scott Woodward and Senior Associate Athletic Director Miriam Segar, also declined Tuesday to testify in person.

n his letter to the Senate committee, Orgeron called Guice’s behavior “utterly unacceptable” and applauded Scott’s courage to testify but denied speaking directly to her after the incident.

“Sometime in December 2017, an athletic department representative told me that Mr. Guice had disrespected an older woman and the representative wanted him to apologize. I was not given the details. I trusted our staff, and like them, believed that if Mr. Guice was disrespectful, he should apologize. The representative brought Mr. Guice to my office after our practice. I was given a number to call, I dialed, and a gentleman answered. I do not recall the gentleman giving me his name. I told the gentleman who I was, and that I was calling with Mr. Guice present, so that Mr. Guice could apologize to Ms. Scott. I do not remember my exact words or the entire conversation.

The gentleman said something to the effect that Ms. Scott did not want an apology, and that instead she requested that Mr. Guice not be able to play in the Citrus Bowl. The gentleman refused to put Ms. Scott on the phone unless I agreed to the terms upfront. I told the gentleman that I would have to get back to him. The conversation ended, as I was not prepared to suspend a student-athlete for a game without a discussion with the University and obtaining more thorough information,” Orgeron said in the statement.

“At the same time it is important to say, that me speaking to Ms. Scott directly or not, does not change the fact that what happened to Ms. Scott in 2017 is unequivocally wrong,” he later said.