Up Front | Letters to the Editor

December 2000: Vol. 80, No. 1

WRITE US!
Kent Hannon
Stegeman Coliseum/301A
UGA, Athens, GA 30602

Advice To Sororities: Follow Golden Rule

It was infuriating, but not new news, to read of the sorority being suspended for racial discrimination at UGA. When will these shallow Greeks learn? I'm not perfect, but I've always tried to live by one simple rule: Do unto others. I met an African-American girl in the dorms during my rough sophomore year and we became friends, and when I came back to school my junior year we became roommates. We lived together for three years and we are still friends 20 years later. She's like another sister to me. I became friends with a group of her friends at UGA and we still keep in touch. What difference does skin color make? A friend is a friend. However, some people have never (and will never) learn. It's a shame. Don't let this incident bring UGA down.

MICHELLE MORAN (ABJ '83)
Atlanta

'Unbundle' Theory May Apply to Academic Areas

I want to thank Sen. Zell Miller—and Georgia Magazine—for publishing the enlightening article on the implications for higher education of the economic forces at work in our global society ["A Cautionary Critique," Sept. '00]. Faculty, as well as alumni, need to understand the constraints upon our practices effected by the marketplace. We should also acknowledge that the University of Georgia will have to make choices in the next few years regarding what scholarly areas of our present curriculum we would want to strengthen and what areas we could leave to other institutions in the state system to build up.

Sen. Miller suggested that universities may want to "unbundle" the operation of auxiliary services, such as residence halls, parking, and student entertainment. He said, "Maybe it's time to come to terms with our strengths and strategies, and outsource functions for which we do not have a unique advantage." In the next hundred years, individual research institutions may recognize the need to "unbundle" their encyclopedic sets of disciplinary offerings to expand the fields in which they have a unique advantage.

In closing, I should also say that I don't normally read sports articles, but I read your "Affair of the heart" essay in the recent (and beautifully done) issue, and I felt compelled to compliment you on your captivating writing! I really enjoyed that essay.

BETTY JEAN CRAIGE
University Professor of Comparative Literature
Director of the Center for Humanities and Arts

Libraries Story Brought Back Fond Memories

Thanks so much for the story on the UGA Libraries' Special Collections in the September issue. Stirred up some fond memories of researching through a fabulous newspaper collection for a couple of papers I wrote in Prof. John Talmadge's courses. Especially remember climbing up into that little cast-iron "cage" atop some precarious stairs where the earliest Georgia newspapers were housed—such as the "Spring Place Jimplecute"—to sort out some mysteries from the past.

And there were some personal ties associated with your story. Dick Russell was my father's friend from youth. In the picture of him with LBJ (p. 46), it feels like the moment Russell told LBJ the war in Vietnam was a disaster and unwinnable, as described in a recent biography I read about Dean Acheson. Also pleased to see Walter Lundy's papers on integrating UGA preserved for posterity. Many fellow reporters and other editors on The Red and Black in my generation shared his views. Lundy and his sister Dottie were my good friends at Georgia.

So glad to see the collections have grown so much they are looking for a new home. Wouldn't it be fantastic if the fund drive were as successful as one would be for a sports facility? The Georgia I knew celebrated the large number of Rhodes Scholars among its graduates, along with its athletes (regarding your lead story on a wrestling alum).

Speaking of libraries, isn't the building pictured in your notice about the UGA campus being designated an arboretum (p. 10) actually the Main Library as we knew it in the Fifties? [It is.] UGA definitely is one of the most beautiful campuses in our country, and when last there for The Red and Black Centennial I wondered why I ever left it.

FRANCES DIXON TURQUETTE (ABJ '52)
Champaign, Ill.

Editorial Diversity Prompts More Debate

After having read your past two issues, I have come to a conclusion. You are using your publication to push your liberal political agendas on Georgia grads who read your magazine. There is nothing wrong with an article here and there about how UGA grads are out in the world helping lost causes and the like, but to grace the cover with the Dalai Lama and the lost people of the rain forest may be a little too much.

I know you have to be politically correct to be in the media nowadays, but show us more campus life and pictures of what is affecting Athens and the surrounding areas of the University. Then you can give us your diatribe on how we can save the world. One of your letters last month was correct: "These [issues] are more adequately covered in "National Geographic, New York Magazine, Rolling Stone."

LINTON WEST (BA '88)
Greenville, S.C.

I must take exception to Pratt Secrest's letter to the editor in the September 2000 issue, relative to your subject matter in a prior issue. That is, if I wanted to read more on the subjects to which he refers, then I would read those other publications. But nowhere in those other publications would I find the accomplishments of my fellow alumni in great detail. At the most, there would be a one-line blurb. I'm glad to read of such successes in your magazine.

With tongue firmly in cheek and in defense of Pratt, perhaps he is not old enough, at about 77, to realize the significance of achieving life-long aims. After all, he was only a freshman in 1942 and I was a lofty junior when I first saw him. By way of trivia, we were both members of KA fraternity, and at the same time his brother was a faculty member—director of religion. They were both KAs, too. So perhaps Pratt's vision is somewhat beclouded by all of this and the passage of time.

I enjoy reading about the achievements of my fellow alumni—perhaps because my own biography would be so devoid of such successes and I'm envious. And I particularly enjoyed the Central Park article to which Pratt referred because it hit close to home. For 13 of the last 37 years, I worked in New York City. My office was on the 22nd floor of what in 1983 was known as the Gulf & Western Building at Columbus Circle overlooking Central Park.

But it was good to read of Pratt. There are a dwindling few of us left from the pre-WWII era.

PHIL REAGAN (M '43)
Alpharetta

Thanks for publishing my letter. (I guess.) The Thomasville newspaper has a column entitled "Rant and Rave" in which complaints of readers are published. My letter in Georgia Magazine was bracketed, fore and aft, with letters praising the Dalai Lama and editorial diversity.

Put me in my place, it did! Made me feel like one of those rant and ravers . . . not in keeping with my self-image!

I repent. I am happy about all this diversity and will try to think of some of the weird experiences I have enjoyed in Greece, Italy, Kenya, Blackpool, Paris, Moscow—and Athens. Hang in there!

PRATT SECREST (ABJ '47)
Thomasville