You remain snuggled up in your bed as your phone alarm blares next to you. This is the third time you’ve hit the snooze button this morning, but, to be frank, you’d rather die than brace the frigid 23-degree weather waiting for you outside.
By the time you finally muster the courage and energy to get out of bed, cover yourself in several layers of clothing and run out the door, you’ve already missed your usual bus. Ten minutes later, you hop on the next available bus, fully aware you will be stumbling into class several minutes late.
As you sprint off the bus, trying to minimize your time in the cold, something falls out of your backpack, but you’re too frazzled and cold to look back at what it was.
Once you sit down in class, you finally realize what it was: your glasses. After several minutes of intense squinting to see what is written on the board when you walk into class, you decide to move up to the front row. Now, with a full view of the projected words, you see they read …
Darts & Laurels
This past week was an eventful one in the world of UF Student Government. We were both saddened and frustrated by SG’s rejection of the proposal to use student fees for free tampons and pads on campus. After 20 minutes of deliberation, the Student Government Budget and Appropriations Committee unanimously voted against the code revision. Its argument for rejecting the proposal? The funding would benefit only the female portion of the Student Body. For this, we give the SG Budget and Appropriations Committee a dart for thinking that just because it doesn’t benefit those with male anatomy means it’s not worth funding.
On a more positive note, we want to award a laurel to the courageous and principled UF Student Body Treasurer Revel Lubin. After he ran for the executive ticket last year with the Impact Party, he quickly noticed the tendency the party has to tokenize minority students. In a letter sent to the Alligator earlier this week, he said minority students, including himself, were marginalized and often were given positions to fill quotas and allow for the use of buzzwords like “diversity.”
This week, Lubin took a stand against the way minority students are treated within Impact. He revealed what many believed about SG — that it can often be an organization obsessed with appearing diverse than actually being diverse. He also announced he will switch to Inspire Party. We would like to commend Lubin for using his platform to make a real difference and stand up against things he does not believe to be just.
When a state employee in Hawaii mistakenly sent out a false alert, warning Hawaiians of a ballistic missile attack, residents were faced with pure terror for more than 30 minutes until the issue was resolved. We understand everyone makes mistakes, but one of this magnitude should surely not be happening in our government. While we sympathize with Hawaiians who had to live through this terror, we give a dart to that one employee because of the lack of carefulness. We can only hope the worker’s actions encourage others to use more caution in their positions.
At the state level, many Florida students got great news from the Florida Senate. This week, the Florida Senate unanimously passed a bill that would permanently expand the Bright Futures Scholarships Program for the top two tiers of scholars and require all state universities to adopt a block tuition system. Although the bill still awaits consideration from the Florida House, we are hesitant to consider it a completely good thing. We give a laurel to legislators for expanding Bright Futures, but a dart for trying to bring block tuition to all state universities.
