Myers Hall is a co-ed
dormitoryA dormitory, often shortened to dorm, in the United States is a residence hall consisting of sleeping quarters or entire buildings primarily providing sleeping and residential quarters for large numbers of people, often boarding school, college or university students. In the U.K...
at the
University of GeorgiaThe University of Georgia is a public research university located in Athens, Georgia, the oldest and largest of the state's institutions of higher learning. Founded in 1785, UGA claims to be the oldest public university in the United States....
in
Athens, GeorgiaAthens-Clarke County is a unified city-county in Georgia, U.S., in the northeastern part of the state. The University of Georgia is located in this college town and is responsible for the initial creation of Athens and its subsequent growth...
. Myers is a part of the Myers Community, which also includes Soule Hall, Rutherford Hall and Mary Lyndon Hall. All four dormitories are arranged around the Myers Quad. Myers is located in proximity to UGA Food Service's Snelling and Oglethorpe Dining Halls, as well as the South Campus Parking Deck.
Myers is home to over 400 students.
Myers Hall is a co-ed
dormitoryA dormitory, often shortened to dorm, in the United States is a residence hall consisting of sleeping quarters or entire buildings primarily providing sleeping and residential quarters for large numbers of people, often boarding school, college or university students. In the U.K...
at the
University of GeorgiaThe University of Georgia is a public research university located in Athens, Georgia, the oldest and largest of the state's institutions of higher learning. Founded in 1785, UGA claims to be the oldest public university in the United States....
in
Athens, GeorgiaAthens-Clarke County is a unified city-county in Georgia, U.S., in the northeastern part of the state. The University of Georgia is located in this college town and is responsible for the initial creation of Athens and its subsequent growth...
. Myers is a part of the Myers Community, which also includes Soule Hall, Rutherford Hall and Mary Lyndon Hall. All four dormitories are arranged around the Myers Quad. Myers is located in proximity to UGA Food Service's Snelling and Oglethorpe Dining Halls, as well as the South Campus Parking Deck.
Student life
Myers is home to over 400 students. Approximately half are first-year students in the Honors Program, who get top priority for slots in the dorm. The building has four floors, each divided into north, central and south ends, and is roughly in the shape of a "C". The third and fourth floors are continuous, whereas the first floor's north and south ends are divided by a large lobby. The second floor is mostly continuous, with a balcony overlooking the lobby in the center, commonly known as the Nook or the mezzanine. The third floor is the only floor with a true "central" division - the area between the two suites.
The second and third floors have two six-person suites each, with the fourth floor having two similar five person suites, and the first floor had two four-person suites. The first and fourth floors are co-ed, and the second and third floors are all female and all male, respectively. The latter two are home to the Honors Program residents.
The Myers Community Council often sponsors Myers Community events for holidays, student events such as elections, and campus-wide events such as sporting events.
Services and Amenities
Myers's greatest advantage to its residents may be its central location on campus. It is in proximity to Oglethorpe House Dining Hall, Snelling Dining Hall, the Physics, Biology and Chemistry Buildings, Forestry, Ecology, Pharmacy, Marine Sciences,
Stegeman ColiseumStegeman Coliseum is a 10,523-seat multi-purpose arena in Athens, Georgia. The arena opened in 1964. It is home to the University of Georgia Bulldogs basketball and gymnastics teams. It was also the venue of the rhythmic gymnastics and preliminary volleyball matches during the 1996 Summer Olympics,...
, Boyd Graduate Studies Center,
Sanford StadiumSanford Stadium is the on-campus playing venue for football at the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia. The 92,746-seat stadium is the seventh largest stadium in the NCAA. Architecturally, the stadium is known for the fact that its numerous expansions over the years have been carefully planned...
and the Georgia Center for Continuing Education. It is also located on the expansive Myers
QuadIn architecture, a quadrangle is a space or courtyard, usually rectangular in plan, the sides of which are entirely or mainly occupied by parts of a large building. The word is probably most closely associated with college or university campus architecture, but quadrangles may be found in other...
, a haven for students looking to take in the sun or throw a
frisbeeFlying discs are disc-shaped objects, which are generally plastic and roughly 20 to 25 centimeters in diameter, with a lip. The shape of the disc, an airfoil in cross-section, allows it to fly by generating lift as it moves through the air while rotating...
. The quad also has wireless internet to allow students to enjoy the great outdoors while working on a paper or surfing the web. Perhaps the best amenity offered by the Myers community is its open atmosphere and accepting environment, in which expressions of all kinds flourish. The Myers Quad hosted ESPN's College Gameday on September 27, 2008.
Myers Hall was completely gutted and redesigned in 2003, so all the facilities are relatively new. Before the renovation, the facility was not completely air conditioned (some offices did have window units, but student rooms did not). Each floor has a kitchen and a laundry room, as well as several study and meeting rooms and public and private bathrooms. The facility has won several awards for its architectural design, adapting the original structure to twenty-first century needs.
Frisbee League
Started in 1997, the Myers Community sponsors an
UltimateUltimate is a limited-contact team sport played with a 175 gram flying disc. The object of the game is to score points by passing the disc to a player in the opposing end zone, similar to an end zone in American football or rugby...
league, which consists of between seven and ten teams dependent upon the semester. Games are played once a week, and the four teams with the fewest losses enter into a bracket-style tournament during the last few weeks of each semester.
Quidditch League
The Myers Community and Quad is also home to a start-up
quidditchQuidditch is a fictional sport developed by J. K. Rowling for the Harry Potter book series. It is described as an extremely rough but very popular semi-contact sport played by wizards and witches around the world. Matches are played between two teams of seven players riding flying broomsticks,...
league, which is loosely based on the sport of the same name from J.K. Rowling's
Harry Potter series of books. It began in 2007 with 60 members divided into four teams, and can be found as a Facebook group listed as UGA Quidditch. Games are announced on the Facebook group and usually take place on Sunday afternoon.
History
Myers Hall was built in 1954 and named for Jennie Belle Myers, longtime house mother at nearby Soule Hall. It gained its greatest notoriety in 1961, when
Charlayne Hunter-GaultCharlayne Hunter-Gault is an American journalist and foreign correspondent for National Public Radio, and the Public Broadcasting Service.-Early years:...
, UGA's first black female student, lived in a private apartment there. On her third day on campus, the Georgia
basketballBasketball is a team sport in which two teams of 5 players try to score points against one another by placing a ball through a
10 foot high hoop under organized rules...
team lost a close game to
rivalA sports rivalry is intense competition between athletic teams or athletes. This pressure of competition is felt by players, coaches, and management, but is perhaps felt strongest by the fans. The intensity of the rivalry varies from a friendly competition on one end to serious violence on the...
Georgia TechThe Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets men's basketball team represents the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets in NCAA Division I basketball. The team plays its home games in Alexander Memorial Coliseum. Under the tenure of Bobby Cremins, Georgia Tech established itself as a national force in basketball...
, a game played at UGA's
Woodruff HallWoodruff Hall was a 3,000 seat multi-purpose arena in Athens, Georgia. It opened in 1923. It was home to the University of Georgia Bulldogs basketball team. It was replaced when the Stegeman Coliseum opened in 1964....
just steps away from Myers. Subsequently, a
race riotA race riot or racial riot is an outbreak of violent civil disorder in which race is a key factor. A phenomenon frequently confused with the concept of 'race riot' is sectarian violence, which involves public mass violence or conflict over non-racial factors.- United States :The term had entered...
broke out near the dorm. Police were called and reportedly used tear gas and fire hoses to quell the crowd. Hunter was removed from school due to safety concerns, but the decision was quickly overturned.
Controversial Display
The
desegregationDesegregation is the process of ending racial segregation, most commonly used in reference to the United States. Desegregation was long a focus of the American Civil Rights Movement, both before and after the United States Supreme Court's decision in Brown v...
issue again reared its head in early 2005, when University Housing unveiled a museum-style display in the Myers
lobbyA lobby is a room in a building which is used for entry from the outside. Sometimes referred to as a foyer or an entrance hall.Many office buildings, hotels and skyscrapers go to great lengths to decorate their lobbies to create the right impression....
that chronicled the civil rights struggle in Georgia higher education. The campus NAACP chapter and others protested the use of a racial slur on the exhibit and called for its removal, setting off a firestorm across the campus and state. Hunter-Gault herself weighed in with a letter to
The Red and BlackThe Red & Black is an independent daily student newspaper of the University of Georgia.-History:Students published its first issue in tabloid format on November 24, 1893, from offices in the Academic Building on North Campus....
, UGA's student
newspaperA newspaper is a publication containing news, information, and advertising. General-interest newspapers often feature articles on political events, crime, business, art/entertainment, society and sports. Most traditional papers also feature an editorial page containing columns that express the...
, in support of the slur's historical value on the display. In the end, the exhibit was redesigned to remove the phrase, and to include Hunter-Gault's
letter to the editorA letter to the editor is a letter sent to a publication about issues of concern to its readers. Usually, letters are intended for publication....
.
There is now a plaque commemorating the historic process of desegregating the University of Georgia.
External links