re: Outside of Starkville, is Baton Rouge the trashiest SEC college town?

Lived in BR for several years late 90s, undergrad and few years working. Obviously a lot has changed there and many places since, so I could be wrong in many ways, but BR doesn’t seem any worse than any other city of comparable size and demographics. And especially relative to LSU campus and surrounding areas, that have actually improved in later years.
Avoid North BR, which isn’t hard because there’s no reason to go there anyway. A couple other roughish areas around as well.
Doesn’t seem nearly as bad as people make it out to be.