University of Georgia
Antoine Fuqua and Will Smith announced they would move production on their runaway slave thriller "Emancipation" out of Georgia in protest over the state's controversial new voting restrictions. This is the first film to pull its production out of the state because of the legislation.
“At this moment in time, the Nation is coming to terms with its history and is attempting to eliminate vestiges of institutional racism to achieve true racial justice,” said Smith and Fuqua in a joint statement Monday.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger's office is investigating allegations that Pro-Trump attorney Lin Wood has allegedly voted illegally in the November general election. The investigation comes after a reporter with WSB-TV in Atlanta published an email from Wood in which he stated he had been living in South Carolina for several months.
"I have been a resident of the State of Georgia since 1955. I have changed my residency to South Carolina yesterday," Wood told CNN. "This is pure harassment by the Georgia Secretary of State."
A statement released and signed by over 850 members of the Academic Faculty of Georgia Tech, states that the current reopening plan of the university "endangers our research and education missions and, most importantly, threatens the health, wellbeing and education of students, staff, and faculty."
"We are alarmed to see the Board of Regents and the University System of Georgia mandating procedures that do not follow science-based evidence, increase the health risks to faculty, students, and staff, and interfere with the nimble decision-making necessary to prepare and respond to Covid-19 infection risk," the statement said.
The Georgia Tech faculty further added four points they believe are the "best way forward to ensure a safer start of the Fall 2020."
Among those points are mandatory face masks everywhere on campus, making remote education the default mode of 2020, on-campus education for a limited number of students "who need access to campus residences and on-campus laboratories or other specialized facilities". The faculty also calls to empower the "President of Georgia Tech to act independently to safeguard the health and safety needs of the Georgia Tech community, informed by scientific evidence."