By Jamari Jordan

“BUGA (n)- The black culture at the University of Georgia.

Synonyms- Messy, Nosy, Ratchet

Antonyms- Positive, Inspiring, Unity”

How do you define BUGA? A lot of people would agree with the definition listed above.
But, how accurate is it?

I define BUGA as a group of promising, talented individuals who are often misunderstood by the public and even themselves.

Do we talk about each other? Yes. Are we in other people’s business? Yes. Are we at times lazy and unproductive? Yes.

But answer this question. Who isn’t? As black people, we often have the mentality that if it isn’t perfect that it’s not any good.
As a race, I feel like we still aren’t happy within ourselves.

At the end of the day, we are human. We make mistakes. We are flawed. You shouldn’t lose hope in a race of people because of a few, trivial shortcomings.

I feel like the campus is in a transition period. Maybe as a freshman, everything seemed so much brighter and bigger, but I felt like organizations did a lot more. I felt like people were a lot more involved.

Now, everyone has an excuse as to why they don’t come to forums, meetings, and programs. None of them true or viable.

Don’t tell me you can’t go to an awareness program because you have to “study” when we both know you’re going back to your room to play 2K for 2 hours.

Go and support organizations that put on amazing programs to benefit the UGA community. Is it going to kill you to sit and participate in a meeting for 45 minutes to help someone else? No.

I see people who lack the drive to join a club to do something positive, but they are the first person complaining how they never get a chance. Aspire to be someone better than you are today.

People don’t reach down to help other people anymore. Everyone is after their own personal success. For me, I celebrate my friends’ successes more than my own.

I’m always going to be grateful to UGA 14 and 15 because they reached down to our class when we came in. I feel like we did a decent job with UGA 17. Now, it’s their turn to do the same with UGA 18.

I just feel like we got lost along the way. It all could be a cycle. I don’t know if it was public opinion, classes, or just life in general, but the campus just isn’t the same.

With that, that’s why I’m deciding to make a BUGA documentary: “Young, Gifted, and Black.” I want to show not only BUGA, but UGA as a whole how positive and inspiring BUGA really is.

I want this to spark conversations on campus on how we can grow and expand. Hopefully after this, the above definition can be replaced with something way more accurate and fitting. Maybe, we can change our own opinion of ourselves and our peers.

In a world where everyone else is attacking and shaming black people, can we really afford to do the same to our own people?