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Originally Posted by fintstone
As I noted, it was an excellent school when I worked there, but not a typical small town campus (where the school "is" the town). The students, professors and curriculum were first rate. We got the brightest and the best. It certainly was not a "party school." There were plenty of Co-op opportunities for engineers and plenty of opportunities for graduates.
As far as the atmosphere, the campus has expanded and experience may be a lot nicer today when I worked there (in the 90s), but it certainly was not then. I expect it has improved some due to the massive urban renewal in that area of Atlanta after the 1996 Olympics where it was Olympic village and fences/security were installed (Assuming they are still there). Also, a couple of the worst tenement housing projects were leveled for UGA dormitories (skyscrapers) at that time. When I worked there, it was in the middle of a ghetto and surrounded by housing projects and bordered by the interstate on one side. The homeless and drug dealers wandered the campus. Rapes and robberies were not uncommon. Movement on parts of campus after dark was considered "asking for it." Homeless people broke into my office more than once and slept there when it was cold. I had to deal with panhandlers daily and criminals attempted to mug me more than once. There was almost no parking or local (off campus) restaurants nearby). It is still in the middle of a large urban center with accompanying crime, parking, and traffic problems. If you compare it to Auburn/UGA or another school I worked at in GA and the difference in atmosphere was day and night. Auburn had cows grazing on campus and traffic was almost nonexistent.
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This kind of baffles me, as it has little to no relationship to my experience there in the same era as a student. Perhaps you came from a different frame of reference. (I grew up in Caracas and Atlanta, and have never lived in even a semi-rural area.) I certainly wouldn't call Midtown Atlanta in the '90s a "ghetto" and I went wherever I needed to whenever I needed to on campus without worry or incident. I then moved to Detroit for art school, and midtown Detroit in the late '90s was no one's idea of thriving, but even that was safe.