YOUNG: Bullet Holes Speak. Very Loudly, As It Turns Out.

By Jensen Young

When I went to church Sunday morning at Jefferson Baptist in Baton Rouge I did not expect the after-church conversation to turn to the fact that our beloved Baptist Collegiate Ministry (BCM) at LSU took bullet damage on Saturday night. As one who worshipped God at the LSU BCM as an LSU MBA student, whose previous church met at the BCM at one point and whose current church is scheduled to help with the BCM at the Texas A&M-LSU football game this hits home.

Unfortunately, after having sent my family an “I’m fine” message after the shooting on the Florida-LSU weekend, I’m not shocked that we still have some problems at LSU that haven’t been addressed.

I agree with everything my friend Scott McKay said in his column.

I do also have some other suggestions to add. After we thank God that no one was killed, we need to be more intentional about investing our time and treasure on our badly needed campus ministries at LSU and other universities. As one who was saved and came to know God because of the intentionality of several campus ministries at Louisiana Tech in Ruston at 18, I can personally attest to how valuable these ministries are. Some of my best friends and political allies to this day come from this crucial period in my life.

Second, while I know New Orleans and other cities need them badly as well, we need to add tailgating at LSU as one of the places we need to deploy the National Guard to.

We can add some of them in strategic recruiting deployments where they can both provide physical security to the areas of campus that are currently not as safe as they need to be and recruit new members to the National Guard. I’d add some water and other non-alcoholic drinks, maybe some tv’s showing some cool things that National Guard members get blessed to do and some other tv’s with some other football games, so folks stop and learn more about the great work our National Guard does. I’d also have some medical teams that can deal with some of the folks who drink a little too much alcohol. While I wish this wasn’t needed it is, especially now that LSU openly sells alcohol all over the stadium.

Lastly, rather we admit it or not we are losing economic & spiritual opportunity by not taking security as seriously as we need to.

As one who has in the past pitched the longshot idea of having Israeli leadership come to Louisiana instead of DC or New York City for the largest ever pro-Israel Christian outreach and tailgate party I can assure you even if Israel would be open to going somewhere other than DC or New York City, Baton Rouge and unfortunately Louisiana will be bypassed for this and other opportunities if we don’t take security at LSU seriously.