Bringing shame to Bulldog nation

Anyone who knows me knows I am a proud graduate of God’s University in God’s Country. You might know it better as the University of Georgia. Yes, my blood runs red and black. I will indeed bark on command to cheer my team. But this week has not been a good for Bulldog nation. It has nothing to do with sports or academia. It has to do with a fellow alum.

If you’ve been watching the news at all, you’ve probably heard about the Atlanta lawyer who took two trans-Atlantic flights with a highly-resistant strain of tuberculosis. His law school? The University of Georgia.

I thought I heard a mention of UGA during a story about Andrew Speaker yesterday. Then I got an e-mail from my college friend Mark who said he not only went to law school with Speaker, but was friends with him. (Speaker apparently also has an undergrad degree from UGA, meaning he was probably there part of the time I was a student) It made me wonder if I met Speaker during one of those weekends when they were in law school that I went up to Athens for football games and stayed with Mark and hung out with his classmates.

Of course, Speaker is hardly the first former Georgia student to make headlines for all the wrong reasons. Former football star Odell Thurman has made more news off the field than on the field as one of several Cincinnati Bengals arrested in the last year or so.

And then there’s Jennifer Wilbanks. Think hard. You remember her: the wide-eyed runaway bride, who launched a national search two years ago when she bolted days before her wedding. Yep. She went to UGA, too. But I don’t think she ever finished.

Obviously, these handful of examples are in no way indicative of UGA as a whole. But it certainly makes the rest of us shake our head with a little bit of shame.