THE FLATS – After three races on the road to open the season, Georgia Tech Cross Country is set to host the Georgia Tech XC Invitational, Friday, Oct. 4., at Bouckaert Farm in Fairburn, Ga.

Twenty-six schools will compete in the GT XC Invitational and the action will begin with the men’s 8k at 8:30 a.m., with the women’s 6k starting at 9:20 a.m.

Course maps and parking information can be found on the meet information page. Live results can be found here. The meet is free and open to the public.

For the men, Tristan Autry, Trent Bell, Billy Carlton, Matt Castronuovo, Ethan Curnow, Hayden Marshall, Jean-Lou Pare and Alex Thomas will compete in the invitational. Sophie Boice, Sarah Burwell, Katherine Bryne, Ava Coffey, Grace Crum, Macy Felton, Katie Hamfeldt, Reagan Mahoney, Riley Perlakowski, Ashleigh Prugh and Allie Walker will compete in the women’s 6k for Tech.

A week ago, the Yellow Jackets competed in the Mizzou Gans Creek Classic, where the women’s team took fifth place out of 38 teams, and the men’s squad finished 11th out of 36 teams.

Devin Wade was the top performer for Tech for the second meet in a row, coming in 30th with a time of 23:55.3. For the women, Kate Jortberg crossed the finish line first for Tech for the second meet in a row, coming in 14th place with a 6k time of 20:24.0.

Yellow Jackets welcome in 13 newcomers, eight on the women’s team and five on the men’s side. Tech returns 25 to the women’s squad and 16 to the men’s team.

Alexander-Tharpe Fund

The Alexander-Tharpe Fund is the fundraising arm of Georgia Tech athletics, providing scholarship, operations and facilities support for Georgia Tech’s 400-plus student-athletes. Be a part of developing Georgia Tech’s Everyday Champions and helping the Yellow Jackets compete for championships at the highest levels of college athletics by supporting the Annual Athletic Scholarship Fund, which directly provides scholarships for Georgia Tech student-athletes. To learn more about supporting the Yellow Jackets, visit atfund.org.

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ATLANTA – Hurricane Helene will not impact Georgia’s elections. That’s the message from Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on Wednesday. 

Raffensperger says his office is working closely with election offices in all 159 counties to keep election operations on track following the devastating hurricane. The storm, which first struck Florida as a Category 4 hurricane, caused widespread damage across southern, central, and eastern Georgia, complicating efforts in some of the hardest-hit areas. 

“Election workers across Georgia had begun the pre-election testing processes of equipment and facilities to be used in the 2024 election,” Raffensperger said. “My office is working hard to make sure the election workers in the affected counties are safe, that their equipment is undamaged and secure, and that their early voting locations will be functional by the time early voting starts.” 

As of Wednesday, poor road conditions and power outages continued to affect the storm-battered regions of the state, slowing recovery efforts. Despite these setbacks, Raffensperger assured voters that the infrastructure needed to conduct the election would be fully operational before early in-person voting begins. 

SEE ALSO: 5K+ DeKalb County voters’ eligibility in question one month before election

In addition to election-related recovery efforts, Raffensperger commended the work of first responders and utilities. “Georgia’s Emergency Management Agency (GEMA), linemen from Georgia Power and other utilities, all the state and local first responders, and legions of citizen volunteers and faith-based organizations are doing a great job at getting people fed, housed, and back on their feet,” he said. “But this was a massive and deadly storm, and recovery is likely to take a while. We applaud Governor Kemp for prioritizing the response.” 

Raffensperger also addressed potential changes to voting locations, stating that counties needing to relocate early voting sites would inform voters through the My Voter Page portal. 

“We have to let the first responders finish doing their jobs, but as power is restored and voting locations can be assessed, we will make sure that the upcoming election is safe, secure, and convenient for all Georgia voters,” he said. 

Georgians will have three weeks of in-person early voting as well as Election Day to cast their votes. Voters with unaccepted absentee ballots can still vote in person. 

A Georgia judge struck down the state’s six-week abortion ban on Monday, in what advocates hope is a sign of growing energy for protecting reproductive rights in the judiciary across the country.

The ruling “demonstrates the momentum that is building… We’ve seen some [state courts] recognize that state constitutions independently protect abortion as a fundamental right,” says Alice Wang, staff attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights and one of the litigators who worked on the Georgia lawsuit. “Regardless of what may happen on appeal, that bell cannot be unrung.”

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney wrote in his decision that the six-week abortion ban, which was passed in 2019 but went into effect after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, violated Georgia’s constitution. The decision allows the state to resume abortions up until about 22 weeks of pregnancy.

In the footnotes of his decision, McBurney rejects the argument that the word “liberty” in Georgia’s constitution has to be interpreted in accordance with what it meant in 1861, when it was included in the document. The judge writes that to do so would lead to a “white male perspective on an issue of greatest salience to women, including women of color” since white women didn’t have the right to vote and “liberty did not exist at all for Black women in Georgia” in 1861.

“The idea that constitutional interpretation should be rooted in the understanding of all white legislators back in 1861 is completely absurd and would yield unjust results,” Wang says.

Read More: Here’s Where Abortion Will Be on the Ballot in the 2024 Election

Georgia isn’t the first state where the courts have recently struck down abortion restrictions imposed by the legislature. In September, a North Dakota judge struck down the state’s abortion ban. In July, the Kansas Supreme Court once again ruled that the state constitution protects the right to abortion, overturning two laws restricting abortion.

McBurney may not have the final word in Georgia. The office of state Attorney General Chris Carr has already filed its notice of appeal, and the issue is likely to head to the state Supreme Court. Kara Murray, a spokesperson for Carr’s office, told The Associated Press after McBurney’s decision that the attorney general’s office believes the six-week ban “is fully constitutional.”

A quickly shifting landscape of abortion rights is something that Georgia providers have had to deal with before. In November 2022, the six-week ban was lifted for only about a week before the state asked for an emergency stay to implement the law again. And the extended legal fight will ensure that abortion remains a central issue in Georgia—one of the critical swing states in the presidential election—this fall.

For now, providers are allowed to perform abortions up until 22 weeks of pregnancy, which could affect people beyond Georgia. All of the states surrounding Georgia—including Florida, Alabama, and Tennessee—have either banned abortion in nearly all circumstances or have prohibited it early on in pregnancy. “This ruling is sort of a sigh of relief, where at least in Georgia, people can access abortion beyond the earliest weeks in pregnancy,” Wang says. “But given that the South is just an abortion desert at large right now, this decision is not enough.”

Wang called the ruling a “bittersweet victory” because the news follows ProPublica’s reporting that two women in the state, Amber Nicole Thurman and Candi Miller, died after they didn’t receive appropriate medical care while experiencing rare complications from abortion pills. “It is just heartbreaking,” Wang says, “that we have seen those harms come to pass.”