Needless to say, there has been a lot of controversy on the Alligator's opinion pages this week.
Our editorial board and columnists discussed everything from unions to female politicians to tuition hikes to crazy animal rights activists to the death penalty.
We hoped you enjoyed the debate and discussion.
So, without further ado, it's time to move into this week's love-us-or-hate-us-but-hopefully-we-got-you-thinking edition of ...
Darts and Laurels
In relation to yesterday's editorial, we hand out a way-to-kick-him-while-he's-down DART to the Supreme Court. At the last minute, the Supreme Court put Troy Davis' execution on hold to review the case, keeping him waiting to die for an extra four hours only to say "never mind." Talk about cruel and unusual punishment.
Up next, we're giving a it's-about-damn-time-we-stopped-being-backward LAUREL to the United States government for ending "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." That wasn't that hard, was it?
The ridiculousness of this next story led us to throw a way-to-be-fiscally-responsible-in-tough-economic-times DART to UF for having to repay more than $192,000 in misused and mismanaged grant money to the National Institutes of Health. Good luck spinning this in your favor.
Love them or hate them, their influence on alternative music is undeniable. We want to give a thanks-for-three-decades-of-innovation LAUREL to REM, who recently announced they were calling it quits after 31 years. Let the "end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it" jokes continue.
We stay in the entertainment world for our last stamp of disapproval this week. The recipient of our stop-recycling-crap-and-be-original DART goes to Hollywood for ABC's remake of "Charlie's Angels." It was a show in the 1970s, two mediocre movie spinoffs in the 2000s, and now, this show tries to restart the franchise again. Stop it, Hollywood.
Finally, we will be giving a thanks-for-your-cooperation-and-response LAUREL to the Gainesville chapter of Students for a Democratic Society. Your response to our editorial was very well stated and made some valid arguments. We appreciate you taking the time to sit down and write out a response.
There is a point of clarification, though, that the editorial board wishes to briefly discuss.
The editorial board did not say that SDS does not have the right to be here. The SDS seemed to imply that we were being discriminatory against its group, comparing that statement to something from the civil rights era.
What we were trying to say was that no one has a right to a college education, in the legal sense. Of course everyone who is accepted and pays tuition has the right to attend UF. It would be ludicrous to imply otherwise.
We wanted to make sure the intentions of that statement were clear to avoid confusion.
Have a fun and safe weekend, and be sure to check back next week.
