What bone? The one that was thrown to the Augusta community when GRU announced that it heard the public outcry to Save The A. That they would include Augusta in the name of the new university formed by the consolidation of Augusta State University and Georgia Health Sciences University. Well, they did save the A, technically, even if was only stuck on to the existing unpopular name as an afterthought. They threw a bone to the clamoring masses.
What has become of “The A” since then?
We get press releases here at Medical Examiner world headquarters almost every day from Georgia Regents University Augusta. Several a day quite often. None of them ever include Augusta in their name anywhere, not in the body of the press releases, not even in the informational signatures that are at the bottom of each one. There, in the proverbial fine print, is at least one insignificant place where the full official name might be expected to appear, just to be technically accurate. Nope.
The whole name change affair, heavy-handed and unilateral from the beginning, thus ended in dishonesty. It would not be at all surprising to discover that these words (or ones very similar to them) were actually uttered in some behind-closed-doors meeting: “Let’s shut these people up and make this thing go away. Then we can just quietly drop ‘Augusta’ later.”
If that wasn’t said, well, that’s exactly what has been done. That’s more than dishonest. It’s just plain dishonorable.