State Briefs for April 28

NEW ORLEANS—To make New Orleans safe from flooding, policy-makers should consider abandoning below-sea-level neighborhoods, building more robust levees and raising homes. That’s according to a new report by the National Academy of Engineering and the National Research Council.
The report caps 3 years of investigation by scientists and civil engineers into levee failures during Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
It also says New Orleans should not be satisfied with levees now being built by the Army Corps of Engineers, which the corps says would withstand the force of a once-in-a-century hurricane.
The report says for heavily populated urban areas, where the failure of protective structures would be catastrophic, such as New Orleans — this standard is inadequate.
Cicely Tyson to address Dillard graduates
NEW ORLEANS—Plans for commencement ceremonies are shaping up at New Orleans universities, where students whose freshmen years were interrupted by Hurricane Katrina are about to graduate.
At Dillard University, actress Cicely Tyson and sociologist Michael Eric Dyson will speak at commencement ceremonies on the Gentilly campus, set for May 9.
Dyson and Doris Hicks, principal of the Martin Luther King Jr. Charter School for Science and Technology in the Lower 9th Ward, will receive honorary degrees. Tyson, the recipient of an honorary Dillard doctorate in 2001, will be given the school’s Presidential Medal of Honor.
Regents oppose guns on college campuses
The state’s top higher education board is opposing a proposal to allow concealed handguns on Louisiana’s college campuses.
The Board of Regents agreed Thursday to back the position of the Louisiana Council of Student Body Presidents, opposing the measure.
The student leaders said guns on campuses would increase the risk of accidental shootings and jeopardize safety.
The sponsor of the bill, Rep. Ernest Wooton, scrapped the proposal last year amid strong opposition. But the Belle Chasse Republican refiled it to be considered in the legislative session that begins Monday.
Supporters of the proposal say students, professors and college staff should be able to defend themselves on campus.
GM Shreveport closing for 6 weeks
SHREVEPORT—The General Motors assembly plant in Shreveport will shut down for six weeks this summer as the financially troubled automaker tries to control inventory in the face of slumping sales.
United Auto Workers local president Morgan Johnson says the plant’s 800 workers will be off the job from June 15 through July 27. The company added four weeks to an already-planned two-week summer production shutdown.
The plant assembles the Chevrolet Colorado and GMC Canyon pickup trucks and the Hummer H3 and H3T pickup truck, all gas-guzzlers which fell out of favor with consumers as fuel prices rose last year.
Other GM plants face shutdowns of up to nine weeks.