Don’t get us wrong, we love orange. Supposedly, we bleed it.
We’re surrounded by it at every UF-themed event we go to and store we visit.
But we hated seeing it used in the enigmatic system of color-coded terrorism warnings.
We’ve been stuck at the orange — or “high risk of terrorist attacks” — level for six years.
And we still don’t have a clue what it means. So we’re happy to hear the Department of Homeland Security is phasing out the color code.
The system was designed to be intelligible to normal Americans but fell short of this goal since its inception a decade ago. As Rep. Bennie Thompson said, “Each and every time the threat level was raised, very rarely did the public know the reason, how to proceed or for how long to be on alert.”
By ditching the system, the department acknowledges the public’s need for information. Knowing only that we’re threatened doesn’t make us spring into action — it confuses and paralyzes us. Worse yet, using a code that looks like a band of concerned kindergarteners designed it made some of us apathetic to the government issuing warnings about possible attacks.
The vagueness didn’t help either.
As in any conversation, the best way to inform someone is to tell him or her the facts as an adult. To that end, we say good riddance to the system.
Maybe now we can have our colors back.
