University Diaries » “This was my first visit to Athens for a tailgate and I was stunned at the amount of trash.”

America’s worst university is also its filthiest: As per tradition, thousands of drunken tailgaters have dumped … let’s see.. seventy tons of trash on campus after a recent football game.

“[P]olice estimate we have 15,000 to 25,000 people who come here to tailgate and spend the day with no intention of attending the ballgame,” says the university’s sports-mad president, Michael Adams, who deserves everything he gets, since his asshole-friendly policies created the problem.

**************************************

The headline in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution states the school’s quandary:

IS THE TRASHING OF UGA DUE TO TAILGATING OR DRINKING?

Hm, yes, take your pick. The regular transformation of an American university campus into a puke and piss dump is maybe because of its y’all come on down tailgating policies, or maybe because y’all doesn’t even know there’s a football game going on … doesn’t even know it’s on a campus…

So you don’t gotta choose, really. It’s tailgating and it’s drinking.

*****************************************

Got my headline for this post from a remark someone made on the article’s comment thread.

*****************************************

Here’s another comment: “It was just shocking to see the aftermath,” said Andy Carter, 37, who works at the UGA Library and only recently moved to Athens.

*****************************************

What are these people seeing? Let’s not be coy:

Whole tailgate tents left half-standing. Abandoned portable grills. Urination in campus doorways. Defecation. Trash strewn everywhere.

Oh and they got all sorts of folk comin’ up with all sorts a jackshit excuses — Blamin’ it on the media ’cause they want UGA to have night games and you know how somehow I dunno but somehow folks just do that much more shittin’ in classroom doorways when it’s dark out…

*****************************************

No one’s saying that the university campus has to be a meticulous little monastery. Have your games. Expect noise and mess. But America’s worst university holds that title in part because it’s lost all sense of decorum, all sense that it’s supposed to be a serious place, where people like librarians can go about their business without stepping in Bubba’s shit.

Trackback URL for this post:
https://www.margaretsoltan.com/wp-trackback.php?p=17589

UD REVIEWED

Dr. Bernard Carroll, known as the "conscience of psychiatry," contributed to various blogs, including Margaret Soltan's University Diaries, for which he sometimes wrote limericks under the name Adam.
New York Times

George Washington University English professor Margaret Soltan writes a blog called University Diaries, in which she decries the Twilight Zone-ish state our holy land’s institutes of higher ed find themselves in these days.
The Electron Pencil

It’s [UD's] intellectual honesty that makes her blog required reading.
Professor Mondo

There's always something delightful and thought intriguing to be found at Margaret Soltan's no-holds-barred, firebrand tinged blog about university life.
AcademicPub

You can get your RDA of academic liars, cheats, and greedy frauds at University Diaries. All disciplines, plus athletics.
truffula, commenting at Historiann

Margaret Soltan at University Diaries blogs superbly and tirelessly about [university sports] corruption.
Dagblog

University Diaries. Hosted by Margaret Soltan, professor of English at George Washington University. Boy is she pissed — mostly about athletics and funding, the usual scandals — but also about distance learning and diploma mills. She likes poems too. And she sings.
Dissent: The Blog

[UD belittles] Mrs. Palin's degree in communications from the University of Idaho...
The Wall Street Journal

Professor Margaret Soltan, blogging at University Diaries... provide[s] an important voice that challenges the status quo.
Lee Skallerup Bessette, Inside Higher Education

[University Diaries offers] the kind of attention to detail in the use of language that makes reading worthwhile.
Sean Dorrance Kelly, Harvard University

Margaret Soltan's ire is a national treasure.
Roland Greene, Stanford University

The irrepressibly to-the-point Margaret Soltan...
Carlat Psychiatry Blog

Margaret Soltan, whose blog lords it over the rest of ours like a benevolent tyrant...
Perplexed with Narrow Passages

Margaret Soltan is no fan of college sports and her diatribes on the subject can be condescending and annoying. But she makes a good point here...
Outside the Beltway

From Margaret Soltan's excellent coverage of the Bernard Madoff scandal comes this tip...
Money Law

University Diaries offers a long-running, focused, and extremely effective critique of the university as we know it.
Anthony Grafton, American Historical Association

The inimitable Margaret Soltan is, as usual, worth reading. ...
Medical Humanities Blog

I awake this morning to find that the excellent Margaret Soltan has linked here and thereby singlehandedly given [this blog] its heaviest traffic...
Ducks and Drakes

As Margaret Soltan, one of the best academic bloggers, points out, pressure is mounting ...
The Bitch Girls

Many of us bloggers worry that we don’t post enough to keep people’s interest: Margaret Soltan posts every day, and I more or less thought she was the gold standard.
Tenured Radical

University Diaries by Margaret Soltan is one of the best windows onto US university life that I know.
Mary Beard, A Don's Life

[University Diaries offers] a broad sense of what's going on in education today, framed by a passionate and knowledgeable reporter.
More magazine, Canada

If deity were an elected office, I would quit my job to get her on the ballot.
Notes of a Neophyte

Comment on this Entry

UD REVIEWED

Archives

Categories