The generation that's going to save the planet is off to a rough start on the University of Georgia campus.
The shady North Campus area looks like an above-ground landfill after every Georgia football home game -- today's being the season's last -- despite repeated pleas from the school for students to respect their campus and the Earth.
Mounds of litter are only the tip of the trashberg: It got so bad that the school had to close the library to stop drunken students from urinating between rows of books and vomiting in the stairwells and fighting in the lobby.
These young men and women are supposedly 21 or older -- otherwise, they wouldn't be drinking, right? Yeah, right -- but parents nonetheless entrust their children to the University of Georgia. Allowing them to carry on like whacked-out gutter snipes is the university's responsibility to stop.
We agree with Chronicle sports columnist Scott Michaux, who says UGA needs to take drastic measures to stop the drunken daylong Woodstock on the North Campus.
Some ideas:
Establish a massive police presence and ticket or arrest every litterer, drunk and under-age drinker.
Form a committee of alumni to patrol the grounds and restore order.
Close the North Campus to tailgaiting.
Outlaw open containers of alcohol at the North Campus or campus wide.
As Michaux notes, an alcohol ban would certainly rile the alumni.
In this case, they need to be riled.
Don't you think?
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How do you know these are all students? In my experience at UGA gamedays.. this rowdy behavior and littering of campus is perpetrated most often from visitors and often by alumni.
Close the library, provide porta potties, provide adequate garbage cans and dumpsters, organize voluntary clean-ups after the game and Sunday. Charge non students $20 to enter the area to fund these measures. Don't mess with the fun.
A strong uniformed police presents will end the tailgating at the North Campus, but the party will just move.
I liked the "whacked-out gutter snipes" description. They're everywhere these days!
I will always remember the weekend of the Georgia/Florida game in 1980. A local artist spent weeks painting a beautiful mural on the outside wall of our restaurant, only to have it tagged with spray paint by some crude UGA fans. And ours wasn't the only business to suffer tagging incidents. One Georgia fan actually spray painted "[filtered word] Florda" on the side of a bridge. This was not only an undeserved slap in the face to our beautiful beach community, but the scoundrel couldn't even spell Florida. Crude and stupid seem to be the norm for many UGA students and fans, even in 2009.
Oh where, oh where is "smartie" (not) when the Athens Asylum is exposed for the trash and trashy people that are to be found there. If only just some of the millions of dollars that are poured into that cesspool would be diverted to the world-class Georgia Tech, where folks are actually seriously interested in learning and teaching and researching. On the one hand, the state of Georgia has a technical institute in Atlanta whose graduate school ranks behind only MIT, Stanford, and UC-Berkley, ahead of all the Ivy League schools and other well known ones such as Purdue, Cal Tech, Michigan, Duke, Illinois, etc. On the other hand, the state of Georgia has in Athens an embarrassing post-high-school-hangout for adolescents who have never matured (certainly, there are exceptions). Gee, I wonder where taxpayers money would be best invested? Would it be the favored locale for the uncivil party-hardy-ers; or an institution, that because of its recognized excellence, attracts hundreds of millions of dollars in research funding each year. Boy, this is really hard to figure out.
Ever heard of beating a dead horse??? It's not just from UGA fans! If you drive downtown on gameday and pass North Campus, you'll see PLENTY of opposing colors on display tailgating. It was the ONLY spot I saw Arizona State fans at that weekend. Unfortunately its on our campus though. Georgia Tech of course doesn't have this problem because no one shows up for their games... Way to generalize the ENTIRE University over this one recent problem. Seriously... I am positive i would be able to dig up some dirt on your little wasps. Over/Under 2 google searches...
Hey avid, I am sorry if it was indeed UGA fans damaging your business. ALL schools have their bad eggs when it comes to fans. Like in 2007 after our shocking win over Florida... my co-workers car was destroyed by some Florida fans in the parking lot of the hotel they stayed at for the weekend. $1,000's of dollars worth of damage. Why? Because they left their UGA flags and magnets on the car... I guess it seemed like a good idea at the time?
Avid, you are talking about something 30 years ago. Dang. For the record, Jacksonville covets the GA-FL game and pays UGA millions to host it. If you don't want the game in Jacksonville, I'm sure Atlanta and Charlotte will pay lots for the pleasure of taking the money of the thousands of fans. Come on folks, take practical measures to clean up the place and encourage responsible behavior. You can't stop drinking and tail gating.
Knave sure seems proud of the trade school on North Ave, doesn't he. Insecure you think? Or jealous?
Of course it isn't just students making the mess, but the mess is there, isn't it? It wasn't just students attending games in past years, but there was never that much mess then. What is the difference? You tell me. According to the description, it looked like D.C. after the last inauguration.