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(Tenured Radical)

Thursday, August 24, 2006

University of Georgia:
Worst University in America


With this morning's editorial in the Atlanta Journal Constitution and with UGA's latest showing on the Princeton list (see editorial below), and with UD's review of the 29 mentions of Georgia on this blog (key in "University of Georgia" in the blog search engine at the top of this page) over the last year or so, almost all of them about administrative corruption, the cancelling of whole swathes of classes for football games, trustee cronyism and malfeasance, NCAA violations, and rampant alcoholism, it's time to declare the University of Georgia the worst university in America.


In the University of Georgia's student newspaper, a health educator points out that not everyone drinks. "Many students choose to abstain: 22.6 percent of University undergraduates did not drink any alcohol in 2005," wrote Erin English in a recent issue of The Red & Black.

What English fails to mention is that leaves 77.4 percent who did drink.

Too many of them are drinking to the point of drunkenness and alcohol poisoning. Many students and their parents assume the inevitability of alcohol abuse in college. "I have been stunned at the kids who come here already having gone through rehab," says Pat Daugherty, UGA assistant vice president for student affairs. "These kids are living in a whole new culture of excessiveness."

The climate in Athens doesn't help. Bookstores hand out advertisements for alcohol specials and bail bonds to kids buying textbooks. The free-wheeling Athens bar scene has boosted UGA's reputation as party central, landing the university the 12th place "party school" ranking in a popular college guide.

What's even more disturbing about the Princeton Review's new rankings is UGA's eighth-place showing in the category of schools where "students [almost] never study."

The listings, fed by student responses, are unscientific, but it's disheartening all the same to find UGA students themselves reporting that they aren't required to work that hard.

There's been very little public discussion of whether the excessive partying at UGA reflects a student body with too much time on its hands. UGA President Michael Adams has talked about raising academic rigor, but it's difficult to measure whether the school has done so.

UGA has rising SAT scores, owing to the generosity of the HOPE scholarship, but have the academic demands risen with the higher quality of the students?

"Our students are so smart now. I don't think they have to study as much, and we are concerned with creating more challenge for them," says Daugherty. In the meantime, UGA has instituted tougher sanctions on drinking by underage students. A second offense sends the kids packing for at least two semesters.

The university has made a pass at calming football tailgating, but the student newspaper rightfully questions the sincerity of that effort.

A Red & Black editorial states: "On football Saturdays, campus turns into one giant alcohol-soaked party. Good luck finding even one person not drinking.

"What message is President Adams sending to the university by hardly doing anything to curb behavior on those select weekends? If he thinks simply restricting tailgating to start at only — gasp — 7 a.m. on game days will help, he's wrong."

If Adams is wrong, then he and his staff ought to go even further in their pursuit and their punishments of underage drinking at UGA.


Other universities look like UGA in a variety of ways. Why pick on Georgia? Because Georgia's got it all. Everything that can go wrong with a university has gone wrong with Georgia. Know why? It's got a secret weapon: President Michael Adams.