A little news for the day:

• UGA is back in the top-20 in the public college rankings (ABH and AJC)
• 3 letters to the editor in the AJC about sorority rush
• 27 students have been arrested so far this semester (R&B)
• More on SGA VP-gate
• The Athens World blog has two good articles:
  • There were several armed robberies lately downtown
  • A brief review of the UGA Key

Today was the first day of classes at UGA, and the first day of printing for the Red and Black, the student-run campus newspaper.

• More on the UGA police officer charged with molestation (ABH)
• Day 5 in the AJC series on sorority rush
• An article in the AJC explaining the high costs of textbooks
• Student government vice president arrested for DUI and resigns
• Multiple suspensions on the football team, including RaMarcus Brown
• An intro to Georgia gameday by the AJC

The big news of the day is that a UGA police officer resigned after he was charged with child molestation, aggravated child molestation, and violating his oath of office. See the story in the Athens Banner-Herald.

In other news, David Ching and Scout.com are reporting that veteran cornerback Ramarcus Brown has been suspended for the first two games of the season for violating team rules. This is sad news to hear after such a great afternoon of Georgia football news. Also, Georgia quarterback Matt Stafford was added to the Manning Award watchlist.

Also, the AJC continued its series on sorority rush at UGA and included an editorial on delaying rush and an equal time response from a member of the National Panhellenic Council.

A group of students has made The Key available again at UGAKey.com. In case you don’t know, The Key is a grade database for UGA courses that UGA originally put online, but later took down.

The new system is pretty cool, as it is interactive and has all the data from 1999 through 2007 in one place.

Here’s the news release from the creators of the new site:
Continue Reading »

UGA sorority recruitment (rush is a bad word now) made the front page of today’s Atlanta Journal-Constitution (the Sunday edition, no less). See the articles here and here, subscription required.

There was an exciting practice for the football team yesterday afternoon. The thought they were going to the Ramsey Center for indoor workouts, but were surprised when they walked into the pool and saw Coach Richt do a back flip off the 3-story high dive. The team got to play in the pool for the afternoon.

Coach Richt does a back flip - Image by Rebecca Hays

More coverage on the afternoon of “practice”:

• GeorgiaDogs.com has two separate articles, they also have a picture gallery
• Coverage by David Ching
• Article and pictures on the Georgia Sports Blog
• AJC photo gallery of practice
• Dawgpost has a lot of pictures from practice

The Red and Black released AthensScape yesterday, their annual welcome back issue, with a lot of good stuff. Here are some of the highlights, including some good tips for the new students on campus:

• Safety on scooters
• Tips on parking downtown
• Tips on riding the buses
• Campus shortcuts

There are a couple of pictures of a neat event in the Athens Banner-Herald here. A local 17-year-old with liver disease asked the Make-A-Wish Foundation for a bulldog. Jacob Hudson received a bulldog puppy from Mike “Big Dawg” Woods (who apparently is a local dog breeder), a visit from Kelin Johnson and Thomas Brown (to give Jacob “players experience” for the week of the Western Carolina game), and many other goodies.

Athens World talks about the parking decks being free to park in this week and whether Parking Services will pro-rate already paid for parking permits for the month of August.

A couple of good news stories from this weekend and this morning:

• Unexpected tuition hike for some public grad schools in Georgia (AJC).
• Milner gets probation for furnishing minors with alcohol (ABH). Lewis Fish partied at Milner’s house the night he died. Milner is the same guy who got away from ACC police by canoe after they were called to another house party of his.
• Lumpkin Street construction finished (ABH).
• Pharmacy School construction has closed a Stegeman parking lot (ABH).
• On-campus move-in begins this Friday, so stay away from the high rises (ABH).
• University raises $100 million (Savannah Morning News).

The AJC also printed an article on data loss at local universities, mentioning UGA:

Georgia Tech was the first, assigning students randomized student ID numbers in 2003. The University of Georgia and Georgia State University are implementing new student ID systems this fall. Colleges are required by law to notify students or faculty if their Social Security numbers have been breached.

The article also mentions Josh Weiss, a student at UGA.

UGA football coach Mark Richt has announced that tight end Tripp Chandler and backup quarterback Blake Barnes will be suspended for one game. The two were caught with open containers in June.

Also in the same announcement, Ian Smith is leaving the team for *cough* medical reasons *cough*. Smith has a record of drinking problems and was to be suspended for the first 5 games of this season.

For more reactions, see Dawg Sports and the Georgia Bulldog Blog.

Vance Cuff, UGA-recruited cornerback that play for Colquitt County High School, gained eligibility yesterday. UGA appealed to the NCAA a decision that Cuff was academically ineligible because his speech communications class was not a core class. Now Cuff will report with the rest of the players this Friday for practice.

In other news:

• Picture Day will be August 18th.
• Tony Taylor is doing well with the Falcons.
• A woman was arrested at the Intramural Fields Tuesday afternoon with 4 weapons and marijuana. And then on Wednesday morning at the IM Fields a gentleman was arrested attempting to break into a vehicle.

An article in the AJC today (subscription required) indicates that Uga VI, our beloved mascot, will be on the sidelines this football season. There was speculation earlier in the spring about whether Uga would be in good enough shape to attend all the games. From Mr. Seiler himself:

“He’s no spring chicken,” Seiler said of Uga VI, who took over as a 1-year-old for the second game of the 1999 season. “We can’t run him anymore. But he still does his thing, which is mostly eat, sleep and poop.”

In other news, this morning single game tickets went on sale (subscription required) for the Oklahoma State and Kentucky games. The tickets went on sale at 8am, and when I looked at 8:30am they were already sold out.