Every other Wednesday when students, staff and faculty go to the second floor of the Student Center, they walk by a chalkboard advertisement in various vibrant colors of chalk. If they chose to go for a closer inspection, they will notice the Healthy Space, set up with cartons of various colorful produce. These apples, carrots, eggs and more are brought there due to Farm Share.

Farm Share is a campus initiative that provides locally-sourced fruits and vegetables along with a dozen certified humane eggs. Farm Share is brought to Tech through a non-profit group, The Common Market, and through a partnership with the Georgia Tech Office of Sustainability. The Farm Share on Tech’s campus is one of five successful sites
in Atlanta.

The service is hosted in the Healthy Space, a spot set aside on the second floor of the Student Center for students to learn about health and well-being on campus. To reserve a spot, the event or organization must be related to Tech’s community, health and well-being. As a provider of fresh produce, Farm Share made the cut; they reserve the spot every other week to deliver fresh produce to students.

Farm Share consists of two seasons, one that runs from May to October and one that starts in November and ends in May.

Currently, Farm Share is in the last stretch of their first season. Forty-two members of the Tech community signed up and paid the $29 per delivery to receive fruits and vegetables produced by farmers in Georgia and Alabama.

These farmers benefit from the Farm Share because they are paid up front. Farmers often have to wait until after harvest to get paid for their production. This results in large periods of time during the year when farmers have no income. With the Farm Share, farmers receive their investment up front.

Students also benefit, because they are eating fresh, local produce  without having to take a trip to the Farmer’s Market.

Malte Weiland, senior sustainability project manager, helped coordinate the Farm Share effort at Tech.

“If you’re not a vegetable person, you’re going to become one,” said Weiland. According to him, it is common for people at Farm Share to come across a vegetable they have not interacted with before, from Japanese spinach to even bell peppers.

Prior to working with the Office of Sustainability at Tech, Weiland worked on similar programs. One was in a company in Duluth, Ga., while the other was at University of South Carolina. He stated that he coordinates projects that the school body wants.

“As long as the students, the community is interested in it [Farm Share], I’ll keep doing this,” said Weiland.

The challenges Weiland faced with bringing Farm Share to Tech mostly involved logistics.  He had to brainstorm where the Farm Share pick up would be located and extensively market
the initiative.

In addition, he worries about the return rate of the second season of Farm Share.

Return rates often fall low, with about 20-27 percent of the people coming back. If Weiland gets the majority of the participants in the first season to return, he will treat it as a success.

The second season of Farm Share will kick off Nov. 15, 2017. Interested students can go to cmfarmshare.org to sign up for twelve bi-weekly deliveries for $29 each.

Last December, pop scientist Neil DeGrasse Tyson claimed on Twitter, “[s]ometimes I wonder if we’d have flying cars by now had civilization spent a little less brain energy contemplating Football.”

Apart from the fact that we basically have flying cars (they are called helicopters or airplanes, depending on how you define the necessary elements of a ‘flying car’), Tyson’s comment struck me in its dismissal of sports as something worth contemplating.

I am the sports editor for the Technique, so it should come as no surprise that Tyson and
I disagree.

And it is not just because I think that you should read the sports section, whose merit
Tyson is not so subtly questioning; it is because I think we derive real value from following sports.

Sports are as pure a form of head-to-head competition as one can imagine. The playing field is literally evened.

No matter how considerable an advantage an individual or team has in athleticism, experience or any other characteristic, every football game starts with both teams tied, and every
tennis match begins at love-all.

There is something enchanting about that, especially in a world where we are consumed with arguments about who gets a head start in college admissions, justice and virtually every other facet of everyday life.

Sports are also critical to the foundation to identities. In Latin America, socioeconomic tensions are allayed by common interest in a soccer team.

Small towns across the country are bound by their love for high school football games. Watching Netflix’s Last Chance U is a particularly powerful reminder of this phenomenon; a community college can bring a community together. I spent the first three years of my life in Wisconsin, and the only remainder of that heritage I retain is my love of the Green Bay Packers. Introducing yourself as a fan of a team opens a world of compatriots and friendly
reminders.

There is little gray area in sports; it is one of the few arenas in which we can allow ourselves to limit our view to black and white (off-field incidents like national anthem protests and domestic violence notwithstanding).

Maybe you disagree. Maybe you think that watching sports is nothing more than cheering on mistreated college students or millionaires as they do battle.

The winner gets a meaningless trophy. The loser is treated with vitriol. Both are given head trauma free of charge.

Yet while the games themselves may seem trivial, the concepts they represent and the doors they open are far more meaningful. And maybe it’s time we stopped belittling each other for what we enjoy doing in our free time and instead concentrate our efforts on something more meaningful — like criticizing Skip Bayless or making fun of Derrick Rose’s perpetual injuries.

One of my personal favorite debates as a Tech student is discussing which campus department provides the worst services to students. For many people, the frontrunner in this competition in Tech’s Parking and Transportation Services, for giving out frivolous tickets, charging several hundred dollars to park on campus and paving basketball courts to put up additional parking lots. Recently, though, Georgia Tech Dining has made an excellent case for being one of, if not the absolute worst department on campus.

Instead of focusing on providing good food service to students on campus and reducing costs for students to make meals more affordable, Dining has opted to upend their traditional business model in the interest of maximizing their profit without actually making any improvements to their product.

Currently, Dining operates exactly two full service dining halls on campus, both located on East. At either of these locations, students with meal plans can get unlimited food for a single meal swipe. Unfortunately, no full-service dining hall exists on West Campus. Half of all dorms owned by Tech are located on West, leaving a significant portion of the undergraduate body without access to a traditional dining hall. West used to have a dining hall, Woodruff, until it was closed in favor of a ‘dining commons’ which allows students to exchange meal swipes for individual meals at so-called concept restaurants. West Village provides students with exactly $9 per meal swipe. Any and all meal plans which are not the 336-swipe plan cost at least $9.05 per swipe. Every single time a student uses a meal swipe from one of these plans at West Village, they are losing money even if they were able to use all $9 of their allocation. As an added bonus, meal swipes at West Village can only be redeemed for a single order, unlike at either of the dining options located on East.

Woodruff Dining Hall was also open until 2 a.m. on most nights during the week, but at West Village, three of the four concept restaurants close at 10 p.m., with the last one remaining open only until midnight. After midnight, the only places to get food on West are WingZone and Starbucks, neither of which take meal swipes as methods of payment. Students used to be able to spend dining dollars on groceries at the Westside Market, located across from WingZone, but this location was closed so that the space it was using could be converted to conference rooms.

West Village is very plainly designed to extract more money from the pockets of students by providing less food per dollar for food of similar quality.

Dining has shown in their recent actions that their priorities do not lie with Tech and the student body, but their shareholders and bottom line. If Sodexo does not change their focus, then Tech’s administration should seriously reconsider their choice in a food services contractor.

In 1990, the Americans with Disabilities Act was put in place to protect the rights of people with disabilities. More specifically, the law protects people who need service animals from discrimination by businesses. While businesses are permitted to ask if a dog is a service animal and what tasks it performs, they cannot ask for proof of the animal’s services or training. Businesses are only allowed to have an animal removed if it is out of control or a threat to people’s health and safety. While I agree with the overall sentiment of the law, I disagree with some of its provisions.

Primarily, that someone cannot be asked for a special ID for their animal. By preventing businesses from confirming if an animal is indeed a service animal, both people and service animals are put at risk. Within the last month, a seeing eye dog was attacked by a pit bull on the Sacramento Light Rail transit system. While the service animal was only mildly injured, the incident should have never happened. Initially, the pit bull’s owner claimed the dog was a service animal; but once police began looking into the attack, he admitted that the dog was just a pet. Most people with legitimate service animals would prefer to be asked for proof rather than allow able-bodied people to lie about whether their animal is trained or not. It should be the government’s responsibility to issue an ID that proves an animal is trained for a specific task in addition to changing the law to allow businesses to ask for such an ID. Because they are allowed in restaurants and places where food is sold, service animals have to be extremely well behaved, and most pets are not well mannered enough to safely be in food preparation areas.

While businesses are allowed to remove an animal for health and safety reasons, allergies do not count as a valid safety concern in all but severe cases. I have severe allergies to most animals including dogs, the most common service animal, which leads to asthma attacks, hives and swelling. Day to day, my allergies don’t cause any problems; however, they can become debilitating if I’m in a closed space with an animal. In most public spaces, it’s fairly easy to avoid animals, but sometimes there’s no escape.

Earlier in February, the Supreme Court sided with a student, Ehlena Fry, who fought to bring her service dog to school. The school cited students with allergies and one student with a fear of dogs as their reason for not allowing the animal. Fry’s dog was considered a hypoallergenic breed. It may seem like hypoallergenic breeds would prevent health problems, however most allergists believe there is no such thing. The school also provided Fry with a one-on-one aid to help with mobility, which they claimed was sufficient under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.

Despite the recent ruling, another parent is attempting to work with their child’s school to avoid dogs. Ashley Anne Misinkavitch worries about her son Parker’s severe anaphylactic reaction to dogs. Parker has been admitted to the hospital three times because of his allergy, but his mom isn’t trying to prevent others from having dogs. She believes that the school should be required to provide accommodations for Parker, like they are required to for disabled students.

The law protects both parties but that protection only works if we acknowledge that allergies are not only caused by direct contact and that hypoallergenic dogs don’t exist. Accommodations shouldn’t only be required for “significant allergic reactions” because even mild reactions can be debilitating.

I want to end by saying, I’m not against service animals, but I think too many people forget that there are drawbacks. Service animals are not the perfect solution to everything and we need to take all disabilities into account in public spaces.

In recent decades, health professionals and the general public have drawn attention to rising obesity rates in the United States. Adjacent to the concern grew a body positivity move3wment centered on fat positivity. This movement, also called size acceptance and fat activism, spans social media sites, blogs, magazines, performance art and other media.

While many claim that the fat positive movement glorifies obesity, the movement also draws attention to two inescapable truths that need to be addressed, no matter who brings them into the spotlight.

The first truth is that conventionally attractive people tend to be treated better by society as a whole, while those who do not fit standards of beauty — especially women — are unfairly perceived to be less intelligent, less competent, and even less kind. Fat activists argue (accurately) that fat people face discrimination in the workplace, education, healthcare, and media portrayals, which leads to more psychological and physiological problems. Worth is too closely tied to a person’s outward appearance.

The second truth, which is less intuitive, is that it is easier to be healthy if you are more economically privileged.

The United States stands out when it comes to the relationship between poverty and obesity. Worldwide, more developed countries tend to have higher rates of obesity. The US, however, tends to have higher rates of obesity in areas of lower income. The reason is because economically disadvantaged neighborhoods, both urban and rural, do not have access to the same variety of healthy produce and non-processed foods as wealthier communities.

These areas are called food deserts, which are defined by the USDA as lacking grocery stores, farmers’ markets and healthy food providers. In food deserts, more accessible sources of food include fast food restaurants and convenience stores, locations whose menus include processed and less healthy foods. In addition to lack of healthy food, impoverished areas sometimes also lack parks, gyms and safer places to get exercise.

You cannot reasonably expect a community without access to fresh, healthy foods to have the same physical health as a more advantaged community.

Addressing obesity in any form would also require addressing poverty and food deserts. A study from the American Diabetes Association found that American counties with poverty rates over 35 percent often have obesity rates 145 percent greater than that of wealthier countries, and that those same counties have higher rates of sedentariness, which is linked to poor health, obesity, diabetes and other metabolic disorders. Many fat activists and bloggers have noted this connection, though they also caution tying food justice to size acceptance as that would, in the words of multiple activists, “problematize fat bodies.”

While obesity itself can lead to health issues ranging from diabetes to heart attacks, the fat positivity movement discusses deeper issues that other positivity movements have failed to address.

The more obvious issue is that of self-confidence and body positivity, but Americans must also develop an understanding of the relationship between obesity and poverty in this country, regardless of views on fat activism overall.

It should be a given that, as humans, we respect each other and our surroundings. However, we seem to have lost a hold on that concept in today’s society — and never really have. This isn’t an issue that is confined to one demographic either — the lack of respect and rights for women, the impulse to murder innocent people and the hunger for power and control that often is the motive for sexual harassment, assault and domestic violence are pervasive issues around the world.

While children’s television programs may not be the only solution, I know they have shaped me into a person with morals and respect for myself and the people and things around me. I grew up watching Arthur, Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood, Cyberchase and Between the Lions, among many others, and I can wholeheartedly say that these children’s programs have helped me to live a peaceful, nourishing and productive life, and taught me interpersonal skills that have helped me become, at the very least, a non-terrible, non-malicious human being.

In vying for increased funding for his PBS television show, Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood, Fred Rogers spoke to the Senate, reasoning that his television program deals “with such things as the inner drama of childhood. We don’t have to bop somebody over the head to make drama on the screen. We deal with such things as getting a haircut, or the feelings about brothers and sisters and the kind of anger that arises in simple family situations. And we speak to it constructively.”

These children’s programs can teach kids integrity, respect and empathy. They
allow children to experience a wide range of emotions, and learn how to deal with those emotions and understand that having emotions is okay — that feelings of anger, grief, sadness and loneliness is okay.

The television programs I grew up watching discussed the power of communication — encouraging children to articulate themselves in order to understand a rational progression of thoughts and  to follow the steps of conflict resolution through situations that children can relate to.

These programs give children the ability to reflect on their actions and gauge the consequences of their future actions.

Programs, like Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood, give children confidence in themselves, a foundation that will last into adulthood. They tell children that they are special and have worth, especially when a child’s environment is lacking in a developed world-view, or is not a supportive
environment.

In a world where cultures are rapidly integrating with each other and people of different physical and mental capacities interact with one another, it is important to understand that the differences between people are what allow children to grow.

Children’s television allows children to accept and learn from other people’s differences and to make an effort to respectfully learn about them, from learning about people who use wheelchairs, to people who practice a different religion.

Shows involving violence or those that are plotless might be a good temporary resolution to get kids to calm down and quiet down, but wholesome children’s programming has a longer-lasting effect that carries on to adulthood, developing these children into mature, expressive adults.

In his statement to the Senate, Rogers recited a song that he sang on one of his programs.

The moral of the song was to remind children that they are in control of their actions and emotions. “What do you do with the mad that you feel? When you feel so mad you could bite. When the whole wide world seems oh so wrong, and nothing you do seems very right. What do you do?” The lyrics then go on to describe actions children can do when they are angry — punch a bag, play a game of tag, pound some clay into dough.

The end of the song reads, “I can stop when I want to. Can stop when I wish. Can stop, stop, stop anytime. And what a good feeling to feel like this! And know that the feeling is mine. Know that there’s something deep inside that helps us become what we can. For a girl can be someday a lady, and a boy can be someday a man.”

I’m not a parent or a child educator — I don’t work with children in any way.

However, if through public broadcasting for children, Mr. Rogers can help them realize their ability to control their emotions and master that control into adulthood, maybe we’d live in a better world, a world where we can respect each other and have more empathy for each other.

As part of President Peterson’s “A Path Forward – Together” initiative in response to the death of Scout Schultz over a month ago, several action teams held a joint session on Tuesday, Oct. 17 to update everyone about the progress that they have made.

President G. P. “Bud” Peterson opened the hour-long session with a few remarks, saying that everyone there intended to listen and try to learn what they could from the community in addition to letting community members know what they have been doing.

First to talk was the campus culture action team, which is chaired by Bill Todd, professor of the practice in the Scheller College of Business, and Abheer Bipin, a third-year ME.

The team consists of ten faculty and staff and ten students who have looked at previous studies and assessments in order to complete four steps that they have outlined: define campus culture, celebrate the positive parts, understand the negative parts, recommend solutions.

According to Todd, defining campus culture has been one of the challenges so far.

“It is by definition the most nebulous of the groups. In a meeting yesterday I referred to it as ‘squishy’,” said Todd. “We believe that words matter, so we spend a lot of time talking about words.”

The campus culture team has already seen some issues that have begun to emerge: an Institute-wide obsession with rankings and numbers, unhealthy competition, unity around despair and workload instead of successes and a lack of whole person development.

Next up was the mental health team, which is led by Jenny Singleton, a professor of psychology, and Emily Hale, third-year AE. The seventeen members of this team have met four times, and held four “listening sessions” this week during which invested members of the Tech community were invited to share feedback and suggestions.

The team has divided its tasks into different working groups, each designated with a goal such as looking into the history of mental health support at Tech, researching existing programs or gathering helpful statistics about Tech and peer institutions.

The group is also holding interviews with 13 key mental health care providers and stakeholders on campus. The co-chairs indicated that they were not ready to reveal what themes had begun to present themselves in these conversations.

The third action team present was focused on the topic of LGBTQIA community support and was chaired by Steve Salbu, the Cecil B. Day chair and professor of business ethics, and Calvin Runnels, third-year BCHM.

This action team has had conversations with the Progressive Student Alliance, Pride Alliance, the Office of Institute Diversity, the University System of Georgia and many other organizations over the last few weeks.

The LGBTQIA support team chose to split into four subgroups. Housing and facilities will focus on providing gender inclusive housing and restrooms. Health and legal will work with human resources and Stamps Health Center to provide insurance coverage for transition-related care, HIV/AIDS prevention and the legal resources for changing one’s preferred name in Tech’s system.

The fourth action team, campus safety, has not yet formed due to the pending completion of the investigation into Schultz’s death by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.

When President Peterson announced the formation of these action teams, he was flooded with recommendations for who should be members of the groups. He turned over this list, which in the end amounted to around 500 individuals, to the co-chairs of each team, who then decided which would create the most well-balanced and diverse groups.

The floor was opened to questions, comments and recommendations from the audience, which mostly consisted of administrators, faculty and staff.

The existing teams will deliver their official recommendations to President Peterson on Nov. 1, and it will then be Peterson’s responsibility to ensure the implementation of the recommendations as he sees fit.

In response to a student who was concerned about intersectionality of all actions carried out by the teams as well as the way the grief of the trans community is being addressed, John Stein, vice president for student life and dean of students, talked about some specific suggestions that had been presented to him in response to these concerns, as well as the healing of the community as a whole.

“Students made it clear that even if there was a time prior to the tragedy that they did feel safe, they no longer feel as safe,” said Stein. “The question is, how can we as a community restore some of the safety that’s been lost.”

Another person asked two questions: one about graduate student representation and another about dissemination of the information being presented at the this and other sessions held by
the groups.

In response, Bipin talked about how almost half of the student representation for the Campus Culture team was graduate students. Furthermore, he delved into how the anonymous feedback form the GSS had posted online for graduate students.

In regards to communication, Bipin mentioned that all of the teams’ email addresses and updates are available online at the president’s web page.

Additionally, Salbu discussed early meetings of the LGBTQIA action team and how

A question from the live feed on Facebook asked about the staff representation of the groups because they will be the ones implementing the decision.

Each group responded in much the same fashion, that their team had plenty of staff committee members that were representative of Tech.

“Almost everyone who is on these action teams was chosen because these were already issues they were looking at and passionate about,” said Hale in response to another question. “So whilst the action teams might finish on November 1, these people caring about these issues isn’t something that’s going to stop on November 2.”

On Sept. 28, students gathered around the Campanile, stirring with anticipation and eager to see who would be headlining this year’s Homecoming concert.

Following the buildup, the atmosphere of anticipation gave way to excitement as word spread rapidly through campus that Lil Dicky would be headlining the concert this year, with opening acts DJ Steph-O, Apollo and DJ Golden Brain.

It is no surprise that students are excited. The concert, which serves as a kick-off to Homecoming Week on the evening of Oct. 13, is central to getting campus excited about celebrating Tech. Many feel that Lil Dicky will do just that.

“The enthusiasm on campus has been contagious,” said Gautam Sowda, fourth-year BME. “People are really excited about the line-up this year. I can’t wait. It’s going to be a great time.”

Lil Dicky, an American rapper, rose to the prominence with the release of his music video “Ex-Boyfriend” and has since continued to his career, releasing songs, such as “$ave dat money,” and the ever popular “Pillow Talking.”

His relevance and current work have students excited to see him perform live here at Tech.

“Lil Dicky is changing the game with his rap style and satire,” said Joe Cooke, second-year NS. “I can’t wait for Friday
the 13th.”

Every year, SCPC in conjunction with other organizations puts in plenty of work to ensure that the concert is as well received as it has been.

This year the homecoming concert will start at 6 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 13 on Tech Green.

The concert is vital to campus and Homecoming festivities, as it sets the tone for Homecoming Week and gets students amped for the fun ahead. This, along with the building excitement, makes the concert a key part of the Homecoming activities.

To make sure that the concert does this, SCPC started working last spring to organize the event.

“We started planning earlier in the spring semester than we had in the past,” said Renee Botyrius, third-year CS and concerts chair for SCPC. “This gave us more options as to who we could bring because artists were still working on scheduling their plans for the fall.”

With more time and options, the committee was able to better align the act to the main considerations of SCPC: student body opinion, artist cost and availability and artist reputation and relevance.

Last year SCPC decided to have two smaller acts rather than one big one in order to cater to different music tastes. Unfortunately one of the artists (Bebe Rexha) backed out last minute to host the European Music Awards instead. This left SCPC scrambling to find another artist and they later signed Timeflies (after the original artist announcement).

“We send out a survey every spring, and from the information that we received this past year, my committee and I narrowed the list down to the top five options based on the student voice,” Botyrius explained of the student input process.

“We also take into consideration the overall popularity of every artist that we consider and how relevant they are today,” she continued.

After ranking the possible artists, the committee consults their agent who provides information about the artists availability, how easy they are to work with and how much money to offer them. Then the committee will send the artist an offer.

“At this point, the ball is in their court, they can choose to accept the offer and we continue into the contracting process,” Botyrius stated. “However, if they choose to decline the offer, then we refer back to our list and reconsider everything that I mentioned above.”

This year the stars aligned, and the hard work and early planning paid off.

“My committee and I are extremely excited about the event this year,” Botyrius said. “Unlike in past years, we only sent out one offer and that was really exciting to hear back from our first choice with an acceptance.  I’m sure this excitement will carry us through to the concert.”

However, just because the artist has been chosen does not mean the work is over. As with any large event, work will be going on behind the scenes up to and even after the event to make sure that it is a flawless experience.

“As far as work that we still have to do, we mainly have to finalize all of the logistics,” Botyrius explained. “They entail working through details with all of our vendors as well as working on the day of schedule and how that day will actually flow from setup, to the actual show, to cleanup.”

It is because of all of this work that the concert is able to create such excitement on campus and sustain it throughout Homecoming Week and the festivities it entails.

The Atlanta Braves and Philadelphia Phillies are tied four-all in the bottom of the ninth late in the 2016 season. Neither team has so much as a puncher’s chance of making the playoffs; both are mired in the midst of deep rebuilds. The atmosphere at Citizens Bank Park reflects that futility; the announced crowd of 19,453 is at best restless. Former Los Angeles Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda was fond of saying that “no matter how good you are, you’re going to lose one-third of your games. No matter how bad you are, you’re going to win one-third of your games.” In the midst of a 162-game season, this is just another.

Yet for former Georgia Tech standout Jed Bradley, the game is something more. It is his major league debut. Standing on the mound, he hardly has time to reflect on his tumultuous journey. Years spent bouncing around minor league clubs, bearing the pressure that comes with being a first-round draft pick. The difficulty of acclimating to life as a professional athlete. The trade that brought him from Milwaukee home to Atlanta. This was the payoff. Strike one, strike two, strike three. Phillies outfielder Tyler Goeddel is sent away swinging, and Bradley has his first ever major league strikeout.

This at-bat — captured by a soon-forgotten box score and a YouTube video with 353 views at time of writing — would be the highlight of Bradley’s short career in the big leagues. Yet Bradley’s story is far more interesting than any statistic might suggest. It is a story of frustration, redemption and now, a resumed education.

Bradley started playing baseball as a five-year-old. Living in rural Tennessee on a family farm, the sport was less a passion than a way to kill boredom. “It started as an outlet; I needed something to do,” he said with a laugh. “Thankfully, I was good at it.”

Bradley was more than good. He was left-handed, an ideal characteristic for a pitcher. He threw his first pitch at age 8. By age 14, he was committed to playing that position. It was his best shot at playing professionally. Pitching, lucrative as it might be, is physically demanding. It requires repetitive exertion of a concentrated muscle group, and without the right training, severe injuries are virtually inevitable. So Bradley threw himself into training and rehabilitation, making sure he was preserving his arm.

He continued to excel, and as the time came to choose a college, Bradley leaned towards the University of Michigan. He had lived in the state for much of his high school career, save for his senior year, and with former greats such as Barry Larkin and Mike Matheny as alumni, the pedigree was undeniable. On a whim, he accepted an invitation to a Tech baseball camp. He met head coach Danny Hall and was hooked. Ten days later, the would-be Wolverine was a Yellow Jacket.

It was only in his second year at Tech that Bradley realized he had a legitimate chance of being an MLB player. “The way things were lining up, I looked at my physical skills, I looked at the role I was going to play that year, and it kind of clicked. I could do this,” he said. When the time came for him to pause his education in favor of the major league draft, his family was supportive. They knew it was his longtime aspiration.

Yet the path was far from smooth. Bradley had potential in the eyes of scouts — physically talented but not nearly polished enough to play at the sport’s highest level. Spending years in hotel rooms from Oklahoma City to Helena, Bradley wondered whether he would catch a break. That break came in the form of a trade between the Milwaukee Brewers and Atlanta Braves. Milwaukee would get cash or a player to be named later. Atlanta would get Bradley. It is the sort of quiet transaction that takes place too often to count. Yet Bradley remembers it as “the best moment of [his] career.” Just a few months later, he was taking the field in Philadelphia, making his major league debut. It was the realization of years of effort.

Unfortunately, it would not last. “I broke down a couple of times,” Bradley says, including an injury that he admits “funneled [him] to the door” of his professional career. He is quick to clarify that injuries did not force him into retirement. They just kept him from playing the game at a standard he found satisfying. In May, now a member of the Baltimore Orioles, he announced his retirement, sudden to outsiders but decidedly final to him, the result of a series of injuries.

What does the future hold for Jedidiah Bradley? Coming back to Tech was a foregone conclusion; his contract mandated that the Brewers pay for the remainder of his undergraduate education. Afterwards, he says, he is “kicking around a lot of options.” For the only Tech student who has struck out a Major League Baseball batter, those options are sure to abound.
Nowadays, Bradley is basically indistinguishable from any other student at Tech. He does his homework. He asks and answers questions in class. But beneath the surface, he is rich with experiences that few of his classmates have. He is the only one who can speak fondly of “shenanigans” in the Braves bullpen in the early innings of games. He is the only one who has firsthand experience with star outfielder Ender Inciarte, the only one who has demonstrated his craft in front of tens of thousands of people.

Don’t let his humility fool you. Jed Bradley is far from a typical student. He is a former professional athlete, a hometown kid made good and entirely at peace with his up-and-down foray into professional sports. In fact, he worries more about the potential for injuries in young athletes today than he does his own career. Yet Bradley is more than another athlete with a set of statistics meant to describe his career; he is a captivating person.