This is an archived page. Images and links on this page may not work. Please visit the main page for the latest updates.

 
 
 
Read my book, TEACHING BEAUTY IN DeLILLO, WOOLF, AND MERRILL (Palgrave Macmillan; forthcoming), co-authored with Jennifer Green-Lewis. VISIT MY BRANCH CAMPUS AT INSIDE HIGHER ED





UD is...
"Salty." (Scott McLemee)
"Unvarnished." (Phi Beta Cons)
"Splendidly splenetic." (Culture Industry)
"Except for University Diaries, most academic blogs are tedious."
(Rate Your Students)
"I think of Soltan as the Maureen Dowd of the blogosphere,
except that Maureen Dowd is kind of a wrecking ball of a writer,
and Soltan isn't. For the life of me, I can't figure out her
politics, but she's pretty fabulous, so who gives a damn?"
(Tenured Radical)

Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Cowed by UGA

Atlanta Journal-Constitution:


'Sadly, a Spot to Drink, Party
Athens fumbles, lets the bars get best of students



The AJC's recent front-page article about student drinking at the University of Georgia is a much-needed wake-up call to a town and a university that love themselves too much for their own good ("Sobering up," Aug. 23).

Sadly, everybody in power in Athens is just too busy making easy money off of these little golden eggs we call students to even think about watching over them.

What little we have to pass for as public media in Athens is too cowed by UGA to ever offer a discouraging word about any of the serious problems our poor little college-town-on-steroids is facing.

Here is the prime issue that is never talked about:

Every town and city in America that even started to become a party haven or a drinking zone has had the sense to put some limit on the total number of liquor licenses they handed out. But not Athens.

In 1987, Athens had three things, UGA, the Bulldogs and a thriving music scene. At that time we had about four clubs and two bars and about the same number of restaurants that we do now. Since then, we've added about four clubs, while the number of bars has increased by nearly 100.

Our population hasn't gone up that much, but we've gone from two bars to 100. For such a small city, that's a dramatic change. Imagine the Buckhead party scene attached to a college. It's a terrible atmosphere for the students to learn and grow-up in.

A small, nonindustrial college town has allowed itself to become "Liquor Disneyland" and the music and the football haven't gotten any better.'