Guns on Campus

Back in 2016 when the Georgia legislature was considering "campus carry" I wrote about the irony of rules for faculty and staff that prohibit weapons on campus. I am updating that post as the latest "campus carry" bill awaits the governor's signature or veto.

(My money is on him signing it as the exceptions meet some of his concerns last year when he vetoed it)

Quite simply, if the governor signs into law "campus carry," UGA will have to think about its own rules that ban employees from having weapons on campus. There's probably a story here. Just saying.

UGA, in its employment section on workplace violence, says it's against the rules to "possess, use, or threaten to use an unauthorized weapon as defined by the Policy." What's a weapon? At the end of the page it defines a weapon as "any objects that may be used to intimidate, attack, or injure another person or to damage property" and then points you to a page that doesn't exist: http://www.police.uga.edu/weapons.html. Don't bother, it's a dead link. Here's an archived version or here is an updated version with a different URL that sums it up for you. I did all the work. Enjoy.

Take a look at that list of weapons. It includes bats. So you baseball and softball players, you're in technical violation of the law? Nope. There's an exception for "legitimate athletic purposes" and a whole long list of others the law doesn't apply to.

But the real point here is, if the governor signs into law "campus carry," I would think UGA will have to alter its rules some to allow faculty and staff the same access to concealed carry of a weapon that the law would allow for students who are over 21 and meet all the other requirements. That's a good question to ask the administration, I suppose, as if the governor signs the law it will go into force (I think) July 1.

Students By State at UGA

There have been dramatic shifts in what states send undergraduates to the University of Georgia over the last several years. Looking at full-time undergrads from 2000 to 2016, South Carolina dropped from being the 2nd (only to Georgia itself) in 2000 to 8th in 2016. Tennessee dropped from 3rd to 7th, and Louisiana from 7th to 12th. But look at the growth states. North Carolina, up from 5th to 2nd, and Texas up from 9th to 4th.

Rank	2016	2000
1	Georgia	Georgia
2	North Carolina	South Carolina
3	Florida	Tennessee
4	Texas	Florida
5	Virginia	North Carolina
6	Maryland	Alabama
7	Tennessee	Louisiana
8	South Carolina	Virginia
9	New Jersey	Texas
10	New York	New York

In raw numbers, let's look at Texas. Back in Fall 2000, 107 full-time undergrads from Texas attended UGA. In Fall 2016, we have 227 Texans as full-time undergrads -- a 112 percent increase. And Maryland. Back in 2000 only 43 full-time undergrads hailed from there. This Fall, we have 164 students from Maryland -- a 281 percent increase.

When I have time I'll map it for you, but basically the border states send fewer students to UGA while populous, more distant, states send more students. Is it because students from nearby states are less competitive as UGA became over time more and more academically difficult to gain admission to? Or have schools in Maryland and Texas, among others, become harder to gain admission to, thus sending students this way? No idea, but it is interesting.





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Rankings and AAU

I've written before, wondering aloud as to UGA's chances of ever being invited to the Association of American Universities, the big-kid club of research universities. I speculated in previous posts about whether UGA produces enough research -- and research dollars -- given it doesn't have a medical school. It takes big bucks to be asked to the academic prom. Today I approach this from a slightly different angle, comparing AAU membership to the world university rankings that came out this week.

Let's take a look.

The table below orders all the AAU members by their world rankings. Skim it. UGA would be in the bottom of the pile (I put it in the place where it'd sit, via rankings), but it's still better than seven other AAU members. What does this prove? Not much. AAU and the world rankings do rely on some of the same measures, so if you're pulling for UGA to get invited there's a little something here for you, but keep in mind the schools UGA beats in the world rankings (but are members of AAU) have been in for a long time. Missouri, for example, joined in 1908, Kansas in 1909, and the most recent being Buffalo in 1989.

Check on the list below with their respective world rankings. I have a little speculation at the bottom of the list.

SCHOOL	World Rank
Harvard University	1
Stanford University	2
Massachusetts Institute of Technology	3
Columbia University	6
University of California, Berkeley	7
The University of Chicago	8
Princeton University	9
Yale University	10
California Institute of Technology	11
Cornell University	12
University of Pennsylvania	14
University of California, Los Angeles	15
Johns Hopkins University	16
University of California, San Diego	17
University of Michigan	19
Northwestern University	21
New York University	22
University of Wisconsin–Madison	25
University of Washington	27
Duke University	29
University of Toronto	30
The University of Texas at Austin	32
University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign	34
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill	38
University of Virginia	40
McGill University	42
Rutgers University–New Brunswick	43
University of Southern California	44
University of Minnesota	45
Ohio State University	46
University of Pittsburgh	47
University of California, Davis	49
Washington University in St. Louis	51
The Pennsylvania State University	52
Purdue University	56
University of California, Santa Barbara	58
University of Florida	59
Boston University	62
University of Colorado Boulder	65
Carnegie Mellon University	67
University of Maryland, College Park	68
Vanderbilt University	71
University of Rochester	72
The University of Arizona	73
Emory University	79
Georgia Institute of Technology	86
Brown University	87
University of California, Irvine	88
Texas A&M University	98
Michigan State University	106
Case Western Reserve University	108
Rice University	114
Indiana University Bloomington	123
The University of Iowa	125
Stony Brook University	154
UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA	204
Iowa State University	205
The University of Kansas	206
University of Missouri	209
Brandeis University	229
State University of New York at Buffalo	272
Tulane University	288
University of Oregon	342

Who ranks high but isn't a member? Good question, because I'd assume those schools would be competing for an invite with UGA.

Dartmouth isn't a member. Surprised me, but it's ranked #50 in the world. The University of Utah is ranked #66 but isn't a member. Those are far above UGA's #204 ranking, and there are several other schools who aren't in the club but rank higher.

My take? UGA is several years away from an invite despite it's #17 Forbes best public school ranking (also out this week). Medical and engineering programs generate lots and lots of research grant dollars, and UGA's small programs in each are nowhere close to that kind of success and prestige.

Huh?

And so I'm reading a story about UGA cops busting a gambling operation on campus and at the end of the story I see this graf

UGA police were unable to comment due to a university policy change this year that directs questions concerning all police matters to the Office of Public Affairs.

and I think, what the fuck?

I think this because, ironically, I'd recently seen a story by the Alabama student newspaper praising UGA and how the UGA cops could speak directly to journalists instead of, like at Bama, going through the PR wing of the university -- which drastically slows up the news process plus, let's face it, puts a flak spin on everything.

I'm actually gonna ask about this policy and when (and why) it went into effect. Will report back if and when I get an actual response.

Searching for "J-school"

Search for "j-school" via Google (while not logged into Google, GMail, etc., and the first entry, of course, is the wikipedia article on "journalism school." After that, you get a list of schools and other stuff, all 588,000 hits. Where the school is listed below, it's the main site.

1. UC Berkeley
2. UNC
3. Missouri
4. CUNY
5. Columbia
6. Kansas
7. CUNY's Twitter account
8. Florida's Twitter account
9. Wisconsin
10. A MOOC I've never heard of

I gave up looking for my own j-school (Grady, at UGA). I'm sure we're there somewhere. Eventually. And it's kinda funny that UF's Twitter account appears via Google before the college site.

By the third page you start to get articles that use the term "j-school" in them, often in a disparaging manner, but not always so. Me, I'm a fan of the word.