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(Tenured Radical)

Thursday, December 21, 2006

"The Public Face of the
University of Georgia"


The Athens Banner-Herald -- a newspaper UD admires more each day -- editorializes about the local school's latest problem.


A Dec. 15 Athens-Clarke County Police Department report says Gene Whitner Milner III is 6 feet 2 inches tall and that he weighs 163 pounds. What it doesn't say is that every single inch and every single ounce is nothing but pure, unadulterated punk. Nor does it say that Milner, for the time being anyway, is the public face of the University of Georgia.

Milner, 21, is a UGA student with an arrest record including charges of underage alcohol possession, possession of a fake ID, giving false information to a police officer and a probation violation. His antics got him barred from Athens-Clarke County for a time.

Milner managed to make the news again last week, as Athens-Clarke County police officers found themselves rolling up one more time to the 555 Riverhill Drive house where he lives, to investigate yet another complaint of a loud party. Early on the morning of Dec. 15, Milner found himself charged with providing alcohol to underage persons.

Despite his run-ins with the law, Milner managed to re-enroll at UGA for the recently concluded fall semester, a circumstance which the university has blamed on the fact that a student who is out of school for just a semester can re-enroll without attracting attention from the university administration.

Obviously, university officials ought to be questioning any circumstance that keeps someone like Milner enrolled when there's ample reason he shouldn't be on campus.

But that's not the most important question arising from the tragicomedy playing out between Milner and UGA. The most important question is what dreams are being dashed and what potential is going unrealized as long as Milner warms a seat in any UGA classroom. And we're not talking here about Milner's dreams or Milner's potential. Anyone who's watched this spectacle unfold can guess Milner's dreams don't extend much beyond his next house party, and his potential likely is going to be measured in terms of how successful he can be in keeping himself out of jail over the course of his life.

No, what we're talking about here is the question of what worthy student Milner is keeping out of the University of Georgia. Is it someone from rural Georgia, perhaps a young woman who sees UGA and the HOPE scholarship as her ticket out of a town too small to contain her dreams? Or someone from a suburban Atlanta school system, whose work in a gleaming high-school science lab has given him the potential to become a shining star among students interested in the university's burgeoning commitment to biological and health sciences? Or a single mom looking for a college degree to increase her earning power so she can give her kids everything they need? Or an Iraq war veteran wanting a start on a post-military career?

It's those dreams, and that kind of potential, that were at stake in the university's inability - or failure, or whatever it's been thus far - to keep Milner from further sullying the reputation of the state's flagship institution of higher education, and making a laughingstock of a university administration that has waged a model campaign against underage drinking.

There is, however, some reason for hoping the university will eventually do right by that prospective student whom Milner is keeping out of the school. It's a hope provided, ironically enough, by Milner himself, whose past record suggests strongly that, sooner or later, he'll screw up again and wind up in the back seat of a patrol car on his way to the Clarke County Jail. Thus the university will, sooner or later, have all it needs to rid itself of a "student" clearly not yet ready to accept the responsibility - or recognize the privilege - of getting a college education.

In that hope, we'd like to be the first to bid Milner goodbye. And in case he doesn't make it to graduation, here's an abridged commencement speech for him - courtesy of Dean Vernon Wormer, the character in the movie "Animal House" who uttered these immortal words:

"Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son."