Fall is finally here, and we are being greeted with some of the old traditions that we've come to hold so close to our hearts.
Decked in Gator gear with eyes glued to their campus maps, the new batch of baby Gators struggle to find their way from Broward Dining to the Racquet Club.
The lines at every bookstore extend upstairs and through halls, and the shelves clear out before you find what books you even need. That is, if you aren't waiting for drop/add to finally toss together a decent schedule.
We all know that it wouldn't really feel like the beginning of fall if President Bernie Machen wasn't already fighting the good fight to eradicate the college binge-drinking epidemic.
In response to the group of 128 university presidents organizing to lower the legal drinking age to 18, Machen and Patricia Telles-Irvin, UF vice president for student affairs, teamed up to submit an op-ed column to the St. Petersburg Times railing against the horrors of high-risk, or binge, drinking.
The group of presidents created the Amethyst Initiative petition because they believe that the current legal drinking age has created a "culture of dangerous, clandestine 'binge-drinking' - often conducted off-campus."
From what we understand, this means that playing beer pong with your underage buddies before going downtown is the root of the problem.
According to Machen, lowering the legal drinking age from 21 to 18 would do nothing to quash the trend of top-secret binging but would instead lead to more outright partying by students who are under 21.
We regard this idea with indifference.
Whether you're a freshman or a super senior, if you want to go drink with your friends, then you are going to find a way to go drink with your friends.
While Machen's position certainly comes as no surprise to the Editorial Board, neither should our position as students. That is not the issue.
The issue falls upon the fact that rather than submitting his thoughts and ideas with his own student body through a local publication - whether it's the Alligator, The Gainesville Sun or even The Gainesville Iguana - Machen has reached out to the Tampa Bay-area newspaper to spread his ideas to a larger community.
Machen's decision to choose the St. Pete Times as his outlet comes off as more than a little bit political. Rather than presenting his case to parents, the state and us simultaneously, he has gone over our heads and straight to the unknown world beyond Gainesville.
We know your point of view, Bernie. We've been hearing it for a few years now. As our president, you owe it to all of us to submit something like this to us as well as any other publications.
We know you don't want us to drink from communal sources of alcohol, like kegs. We know you despise games that encourage excessive drinking, such as beer pong and flip cup.
However, as your students, we feel that you are accountable to us. Rather than skipping over us with such an impassioned letter, feel free to run it by us, just so we know what's going on in your world, Mr. President.
