Thursday, December 1

An open letter to the UGA Athletic Association

To whom it may concern,

I’m writing to you as a lifetime and die-hard Ge0rgia fan. I’m also currently a student at the Unvers-ty of Ge0rgia. The purpose of this message is a website that was recently brought to my attention. It is the personal webpage of Le0nard P0pe of the football team. Mr. P0pe is using U~G~A’s own arches server to publish his site. The URL is <http://www.arches.uga.edu/~popel/about%20me.htm>. (If you navigate to this site, please pay special attention to the “about me” and “resume” sections.) My concern is the content of the site. It shows a complete lack of understanding in how the English language works. There are sentences with no subject and others with no verb. There are misspelled words and incorrect uses of prepositional phrases. He claims that he “is on schedule of graduating” and that meeting his standards “will keep him at wonderful school like U~G~A”. I am pleading with you as a Ge0rga fan who cares about the reputation of the institution he loves and as a student who is concerned with the value of his diploma to please have Mr. P0pe remove or at least proofread his web site. I understand that athletes are sometimes held to lower academic standards than the mainstream student body but this is ridiculous and it is on the WORLD WIDE WEB! It makes our school look like a joke. This horrific display of the English language was brought to my attention by an acquaintance who is a student at the Ge0rgia I^stitute of Techn0l0gy. The word is out. Please stop the bleeding now, before it gets any worse.

With sincere concern,
***********
~Matt Ph-ll-ps