Bear with us, fellow Gators: one more day. One more long, uncomfortably-balmy-considering-it’s-almost-March Friday afternoon, and we’ll all be free — at least for the next week.
If you’re as exhausted as we are, Spring Break couldn’t be coming soon enough. Whether you’re planning on kicking back at home, lazing around at the beach or traveling the world on a cruise ship, we wish our readers nothing but safe travels and drunken relaxation. With that in mind, it’s time for a sunny, relaxing, beachside-with-a-piña-colada-in-hand edition of…
Darts & Laurels
First of all, we’d like to give a big screw-you shoutout to all of the teachers evil enough to make papers, projects, exams and the like due this afternoon. If you, like some of us, have an essay due at 5 p.m. the first unofficial day of Spring Break, our deepest sympathies go out to you.
Although, perhaps the only thing worse is the professor who decides the Monday we return from a week of debauchery (or perhaps rest) would be the perfect day to have a midterm. Truly, if your Spring Break is at all tainted by an impending due date or exam, we are sorry. A Dart to the professors who just can’t quite let us enjoy our one week to ourselves.
This week in national news came with plenty of highs and lows. One entity we’re actually pretty impressed with is Apple. When the FBI submitted a demand to the company to create a sort of “back door” into the easily breakable yet still beloved iPhone, Apple gave them a big fat No, with a capital “N.”
The company has now filed a motion to dismiss the government’s request altogether. What’s more, Google and Facebook have now joined forces with Apple to oppose the request. To Apple, Google and Facebook we give a you’ve-got-guts Laurel for protecting our privacy.
We pretty much covered our stance on animals in Thursday’s editorial. Here at the Alligator, we love animals of all shapes, sizes and textures, which is why, obviously, we don’t have particularly warm or fuzzy feelings toward SeaWorld (#freethewhales).
But now we’re particularly angry, seeing as SeaWorld’s chief executive admitted Thursday that employees have been posing as activists in order to spy on animal-rights groups.
Sure, the dude said SeaWorld would stop spying on animal activists now, but to us, that’s too little, too late. As far as spying goes, we’re pretty adamant that it clearly shouldn’t have happened in the first place. So here’s a Dart to SeaWorld for both spying on activists and for being all-around terrible.
Now that we’ve covered a few morally ambiguous people, let’s all take a moment to give a big thanks to the college-town heroes of midterm season: the coffee baristas and delivery people.
Seriously, y’all are the real MVPs, fighting hunger and sleep deprivation, delivering food at 3 a.m. and getting up at the crack of dawn to make coffee for us students who look like we just crawled out of a gutter. Remember, folks, not all heroes wear capes — sometimes it’s just a simple shirt with a Midnight Cookies logo. Here’s a Laurel to our hunger-fighting, late-night-driving, sleep-sacrificing midterm heroes.
