Newspaper Page Text
rm%
Gould Schools Open Soon?
GOVID NUMBERS ARE TRENDING DOWN, AND MORE LOCAL NEWS
ignores,” said student organizer Hayes
Taylor, referring both to UGA’s lack of
action regarding a racist Lambda Chi Alpha
group chat directed at a Black female stu
dent, and white individuals’ hacking of a
Hispanic Student Association Zoom call to
spew derogatory phrases, to reference two
recent incidents.
bringing attention to the issue of systemic
racism.
“It felt really good to march down
Milledge and demand justice for people
who probably haven’t talked about what
happened when they were in Greek life or
who have been victimized by Greek life,”
Mbunwe said. “UGA needs to take a hard
The organizers chose to go down
Milledge Avenue after an altercation at
their last protest in September, when a pro
tester motioned for a group of white, col
lege-aged men sitting in the back of a truck
to raise their fists in solidarity. The protest
ers went past UGA fraternity and sorority
houses in the hopes of “making Black Lives
Matter and the issues we’re trying to deal
By Blake Aued and Tyler Wilkins news@flagpole.com
Clarke County School District officials
were cautiously optimistic last week that
public schools could reopen soon—but the
throngs of football fans in town last week
end might have other ideas.
“For the first time in a while, I’m pleased
to report Nurse Amy has some good num
bers to report to you guys,”
CCSD Director of Nursing Amy %
Roark told school board mem- s
-<
bers at an Oct. 1 work session, g
“Our numbers are trending m
down in Clarke County, as 53
everyone is aware, and I am
personally optimistic that they
will continue to do so.”
As of last Thursday, the
Georgia Department of Public
Health reported that Clarke
County had 217 COVID-19
cases per 100,000 people in
the past 14 days. One metric
for schools to reopen, starting
with kindergarten through
second grade, is 175 cases per
100,000 in a 14-day window.
In addition, UGA reported a
third straight week of declin
ing cases, with 63 for the week
of Sept. 21. Those numbers
were backed up by a drop in
the quantity of virus measured
“We are excited to say that we’ve made
contact with almost 100% of our students,”
Chief Academic Officer Brannon Gaskins
said. “What we’ve continued to work and
struggle with is the level of engagement
of all students. We’ve noticed that engage
ment goes down after lunch, and we are
look at itself and ask, ‘Is this who we strive
to be? Is this the Georgia way?”’
The protest continued all the way down
to Five Points, with ACCPD officers camping
out on side streets and circling around the
area. Police officers gave traffic tickets to
at least four protesters, including Zachary
Perry, who’s running in the Georgia State
Senate District 46 race to unseat incumbent
Republican Bill Cowsert.
“Athens has a long history of systemic
racism and the university, as well as the
local government, turning a blind eye
to systemic racism,” said Perry, who was
cycling between the front and back of the
protest and directing traffic. “Thankfully,
we’re getting a more progressive local gov
ernment, but the university still refuses
to acknowledge its history with racism,
slavery and the current reality of racism on
campus.”
Leading the car caravan through
traffic at the start of the protest, ACC
Commissioner Mariah Parker was pulled
over by ACCPD and given a ticket for driv
ing in a turning lane as the protest wrapped
up. In regard to the other drivers pulled
over during the protest, Parker said ACCPD
will “pull people over for literally anything,”
as the officers are “looking for blood, trying
to make their quotas [and] trying to feed
their egos.”
Although the protest was planned
beforehand, it came on the heels of a viral
Stay classy, football fans.
in Athens wastewater. (Read
the full story by Jessica Luton
at flagpole.com.)
However, Roark cautioned that there are
still potential pitfalls, including the looming
flu season and home football games. The
White House Coronavirus Task Force still
lists colleges and universities as a major
concern in Georgia. An announced crowd
of 20,524 mostly maskless and sporadically
socially distanced fans gathered at Sanford
Stadium for the Auburn game (see p. 11),
but the crowd appeared larger on television.
Fans also packed
into downtown bars
while flouting the
local mask ordinance,
as photographer
Whitley Carpenter
documented on flag
pole.com.
Roark said she will
continue to monitor
COVID-19 cases, as well as other indicators,
such as the availability of hospital beds.
Interim Superintendent Xernona Thomas
said she will recommend a reopening date
at the school board’s Oct. 8 meeting.
Ideally, schools will fully reopen for
five days a week, Thomas said, because a
hybrid online/in-person model presents
challenges. For example, CCSD would need
buses both to carry students and to deliver
meals to those learning at home. “It’s like a
web,” she said. “When you flick it, there’s so
many pieces that move.”
In addition, despite best efforts, distance
learning has not been entirely successful.
Chromebooks and internet hotspots are
still on back order, and not all students are
fully engaged.
continuing to try to keep our middle school
and high school students consistently
engaged.” [Blake Aued]
BLM Protesters March Down Milledge
Demanding that the University of
Georgia acknowledge the racism expe
rienced by its students and calling for
changes in the criminal justice system,
more than 100 UGA students and Athens
community mem
bers marched down
Milledge Avenue on
Friday, Oct. 2.
A few protesters
drove cars embla
zoned with “Abolish
the police” and
“Black lives matter”
messages on their
windows while the rest walked or skate
boarded. The protest was organized by the
same group of students that led a protest
at the UGA Arch and through downtown
Athens in late September.
The protesters’ list of demands were
similar to those of their last protest—
reforming the UGA Equal Opportunity
Office, shifting funds away from the
Athens-Clarke County Police Department
toward other community resources and
giving scholarships to Black descendants of
slaves—but the abolition of Greek life and
implementation of student participation in
the appointment of UGA’s presidents were
added to the list.
“There are so many swaths of the UGA
population that administration flippantly
Our numbers are trending
down in Clarke County,
as everyone is aware, and I am
personally optimistic that they
will continue to do so.
with real to predominantly white Greek-life
people,” Taylor said.
Taking part in the protest after being
on the receiving end of racist comments
and threats herself, Arianna Mbunwe, a
vocal UGA student with a large following
on Twitter, said she hopes the protest made
Greek-life members “uncomfortable” by
Twitter video showing a Black UGA student
being forcefully detained. Police used a
stun gun on student London Best, who had
been involved in a verbal altercation with a
bouncer at a downtown bar, according to a
police report. It appeared in the video that
Breed was complying with police when he
was electroshocked, and it drew condem
nation from thousands of people online,
including Parker. [Tyler Wilkins] ©
vm LlCLlll vu_ll
by TOM TOMORROW
HEllo HMCJSM! STill
WBFiCINO ON THE $JjH-
uiACRoh*
US' AS W WW*.
ITS A computer
SIMULATION
WMLAltt ft*
VIRTUAL PSHPEl-
GANGERS WHO
BtLll£v£ th£M-
SELVES to B£
HEAL PEoPiE’-
~V,
fsfi the. fast Four hears.
lit BEEN HuNNiNG A
STRESS TEST ON Amer
ican democrat:* ITSELPi
L MCE toHAlt TMMP
their PRESiREitT-
THE LOUD GLTf
with wEisp hair
WHO'S IN PRISON
FOR TAX fRAUP,
HERE IN THE
REAL WORLD?
THE SAME? AN
WORLD, 'HE
W£ CONTAINED THROUGH
common-S£ nSE RuSlic
health measures has
run itampant sue
TO Hli INCOMPETENCE-'
INKER? AND THERE’S
ONGOING SOCIAL UNREST
A HP A WORSENING CLI
MATE CRISIS AS WELL?
AND WITH THE III ELEC
TION LESS than A MONTH
AWAY, THE PRESIDENT
HAS REFUSED TO CRMMfT
TO A PEACEFUL TRANSI
TION of pcw£R:
HE’S ALSO YRT.UG TO RAM
THROUGH A KHI SUWEME
COURT JUSTICE WHO WILL
ALMOST ffATAJAfiy STRIP
HEALTH CARE PROM MIL
LIONS m THE middle of
A *ANSE Ml c? BUT--TH.S
IS MT ABSOLUTE Pi£c£
de resistance --
--her announcement
was a Sl/PSfr SPREADER
EVENT? AfTER fcjWRSLAYlNG
THE MRUS Foil NINE MONTHS,
TRUMP HIMSElf HAS
CONTRACTED IT? MOSOpV
KNOWS WHAT to EX
PECT NOW! I'VE REALLY
OitTDOHE MYSELF THIS
TIME ?
AS ICING ON THE CARE,
1 SLOWED ISOIWN THE
rate at which thet sub
jectively experience
Xi/AE INSIDE THE SIM"
ulAcRoN? fRft Stm, EACH
DAT SEEMS ™ last
A WEEK'- THE NEXT
month will be excru-
CiATiNS’
You SEEM To BE EN
ABLING THIS A lctTlE
too much, sir.
•^3, *
N0tf5EN!5E*
FTTT Mmm,..Should i
Give them A CoHSTb
TVTIoWAl CRISIS--
ofl A Full loMBIE
APOCAlYPSE?
4
FLAGPOLE.COM | OCTOBER 7, 2020