BATON ROUGE -- According to LSU, a law that passed in 2024 is making it tougher for universities to punish students and student organizations for hazing, claiming it's given them very little power to do so.

The law's author, Representative Dixon McMakin (R-Baton Rouge), says he was disappointed by the comments, saying that universities across the state helped them write the bill.

"The goal of that bill was to increase the standard that universities had to use when punishing their students. Right now, what I saw across universities, across our state was they really had no evidence, no proof of anything, and were punishing the students, so that law was built in to protect students vs overzealous universities and university officials," McMakin said.

Last year, McMakin helped push through the new law, which would require universities to meet a burden of proof called clear and convincing evidence, which is higher than in a civil case but lower than a criminal case, which requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

Under the law, universities must abide by the standard of clear and convincing evidence when a violation is punishable by suspension of ten or more days or expulsion, or when a violation by a student organization is punishable by suspension or removal of the organization from the institution.

"It's typically found in fraud claims, civil fraud claims. It is a unique burden of proof. It's not widely applied. The most common ones are the preponderance of the evidence in a civil lawsuit and beyond a reasonable doubt, which is found in criminal proceedings. This is in the middle of those two," LSU General Counsel Trey Jones said.

However, Jones told WBRZ the changes have made it difficult to get information to move forward with suspensions or expulsions.

"There are two processes when a hazing claim comes in. Initially, the police handle the initial investigation on the criminal side. If they're able to gather evidence, great, and we're able to use that in the student process, but if they're not able to gather a lot of evidence, then the student process, which is run through the office of student affairs, is unable to force people to cooperate, unable to subpoena records," Jones said.

The Max Gruver Act, which was passed after the 2017 hazing-related death of the LSU student of the same name, gave the university some tools to go after hazing on the campus.

However, Jones says the new law limits their power because universities can't do things that police or the district attorney's office can do, such as issue subpoenas or gather documents.

"We can only get what people are willing to give us or what we're able to entice people to give us, and that creates some difficulty there," Jones said.

McMakin says his disappointment also comes from the fact that he had not heard a thing from university officials.

"If they have a problem, they know how to reach me; I'm here in Baton Rouge. Come find me and let's talk about it, but we already in that bill, we lowered the standard, the original bill was going to be beyond a reasonable doubt, and we actually lowered it to clear and convincing with their help," McMakin said.

Jones says he has not had a discussion with McMakin recently, but is certainly open to one.