Have you ever walked down Peachtree Center Avenue either early in the morning or during lunchtime? What about Piedmont Avenue during the mid-afternoon? Many students have, and they know the headache of bobbing and weaving through waves of students to and fro.
Now some may associate that with the sheer number of students who attend Georgia State, while that might be true, what about the collapsing roof at the Alpharetta campus? What about the broken sidewalks on the Dunwoody campus? Georgia State’s infrastructure is falling around students, and the university isn’t doing a thing about it.
Just look at housing: There are dorms full of mold so bad that students moved to other locations, all while there’s still a waitlist for housing. And it’s not even the fact that the funding isn’t there.
Georgia State, in collaboration with the Board of Regents, increased the budget for the convocation center. This comes just a few years after the university bought Turner Field, turning it into a massive football complex, most of which remains unused.
Whether it’s the Kell Hall demolition, which still isn’t close to being finished, or upgrading Piedmont North’s parking lot, Georgia State seems to be ready to improve everything its students don’t need. There used to be a total of four ways to get from Student Center West to Peachtree Center Avenue, and even then, the number of students in these zones was astronomical.
Now, we have only two fully functional zones for walking, and they are almost always stuffed with students walking and talking. But it’s not even simple functionality and safety that’s concerning.
If you have ever been to the Newton campus, you will notice a lot of red. Apparently, Georgia State is so busy that they can’t even remove signs saying “Georgia Perimeter College” from its buildings four years after consolidation.
As Georgia State loves to tout that we are the first public university in undergraduate teaching, it doesn’t matter if students can’t get past other students in the tiny hallways of Sparks Hall or if they are stuck on Interstate 285 as to head to any of the Perimeter campuses.
Every day, students are legitimately risking their lives walking to class, driving to the lots, and other basic activities.
I reached out to facilities management to see if the university had any infrastructure repairs in the pipeline, but I didn’t get a response. While I understand that Georgia State is the largest university in the state and one of the largest in the nation, it’s disappointing to see the state of the university we call home.
It would be remiss by claiming that the university isn’t doing anything because it is. But it’s clearly not doing enough.
With the Summerhill neighborhood growing and more students coming not only to the Downtown campus but also the Perimeter campuses, Georgia State needs to take a serious look at its infrastructure. The city of Atlanta recently announced a plan to make downtown more pedestrian-friendly.
It’s my hope that the university embraces that plan and looks into its digital infrastructure as well. Between subpar internet, outdated websites and a lack of printers, Georgia State is quickly losing its grasp in downtown Atlanta.
