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Thursday, March 28, 2024

Ah, flu season. The undesirable yet familiar scents of hand sanitizer and DayQuil fill the air. Sniffling noses and phlegm-filled coughs can be heard all throughout campus.

“Thank goodness I got my flu shot back in August,” you think to yourself, as you blow your nose for the fourth time that morning. Little do you know, the flu was still able to infiltrate your immune system and wreak havoc on your body.

Within a few days, you’re bedridden and whining to your roommates about how awful you feel. “Can you please brew me some tea?” They’ve heard this phrase about six times a day lately.

Sick of your incessant whining, one of your roommates decides it’s time you go to the Infirmary. Of course, however, the Infirmary leaves you on read and won’t call you back. Your roommate suggests you visit the MinuteClinic, and you start your trek to CVS Pharmacy.

As you sit in the chairs outside the examination room, you grab a few pamphlets to read. One about exercise, one about blood pressure and another about family planning. As you open the first pamphlet in an attempt to entertain yourself, you realize the words inside don’t match the cover. The content reads...

Darts & Laurels

In South Africa, there is an issue not many of us are talking about. The city of Cape Town is running out of water and expected to run out completely by mid-April. Devastating satellite images showing the dangerously low water levels in the city’s main water reservoir can be seen on CNN’s website.

According to CNN, drought, population growth and climate change are all fueling the drought. As of Thursday, Capetonians were restricted to just 50 liters, or about 13 gallons, of water each day.

It is both infuriating and unintelligible that people in the world still refuse to recognize climate change as a real issue when calamitous examples like these are happening all over the world. To the deniers holding us back from making strides in eradicating climate change, we award our first dart.

On campus this week, we saw positive movement in the battle for free access to menstrual products. The UF Student Health Care Center installed menstrual product dispensers on the wall of the Infirmary lobby Friday. The four dispensers provide free pads, tampons and condoms to students.

The change was suggested by Chase Werther, the UF philosophy and political science junior who founded Gators Matter, Period., a movement to advocate for free menstrual products on campus. To Werther, we award our first laurel.

This year, the Grammy Awards left us disappointed. We have to be honest though, we weren’t too surprised — the behavior the award show exhibited this year is one we have seen year after year.

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The award show notoriously grants awards to the safest nominee, and this year was no exception. Bruno Mars won Record of the Year, Song of the Year and Album of the Year. He was a safe, profitable and family-friendly option. Sure, he’s talented, but he has very little to say when it comes to meaningful topics.

Artists like Kendrick Lamar and Kesha, in our opinion, were robbed this award season. Thus, we give a dart to the Recording Academy voting members, who get to vote on the categories. We are sick and tired of seeing the safe option picked every time. It’s 2018. It’s time to branch out.

On a more positive note, we saw something beautiful on our campus this week. To kick off Islam Appreciation Month, students of all religions were invited to wear a hijab for the day and to take it home. Nearly 80 students were able to wear hijabs for the first time and given the opportunity to appreciate Islamic culture. We would like to award our last laurel to UF’s Islam on Campus for putting on such a great event and promoting diversity and culture on our campus.

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