We will take a bit of an esoteric approach today, instead of launching into a commentary on the Oscar picks. We’re sure the events of the Oscars are plastered all across social media. There’s a lot we could talk about: the political overtones of the night, the
This column begins with a disclaimer: Although I served on staff at the Alligator during the past year, I have never claimed to be a journalist. I pulled some long nights with my fellow editors, I helped writers revise their ledes, and I wrote many a headline in my time — but I’ve never gone out and gotten the scoop or snapped the photograph. With that said, I believe my outsider-turned-insider perspective might shed some light on the hard work your local journalists — and their counterparts around the globe — do each day to get the story and get the story right.
A few days ago, I went to visit a friend of mine who was tabling on Turlington Plaza for the Women’s Student Association’s Women’s Empowerment Week. She was there for a good portion of the day alongside other members of the organization, passing out “Girl Boss” temporary tattoos and collecting clothes to donate to Peaceful Paths, a local domestic-abuse shelter.
Last week in Kansas, three men were shot — one killed — by a shooter who was tossing ethnic slurs at two of the men, who were from India (the third had jumped in to help). Last Friday, near the Tampa area, a prayer-hall in the Islamic Society of New Tampa was intentionally set on fire. That’s just in the last week.
A significant part of every American’s upbringing is the instillation of American values and norms. Ambition, self-efficacy, confidence, individualism and a work-horse attitude are all traits taught in classrooms. We are a culture centered about the individual, each one of us acting as the captain for our own life, told since kindergarten that we could do whatever we set our minds to. If you can dream it, you can achieve it. Hidden underneath all of our lessons was a separate curriculum set by culture and society, a curriculum with no assignments or progress reports, but instead a prep course for the long and daunting stretch ahead.
It’s tempting to dismiss human trafficking as the shooting star of the criminal underworld — a series of one-off stories that evince a problem afflicting only a handful of the unluckiest people, inevitable tragedies like Ariel Castro’s decadelong capture of three young women. But the reality is that human trafficking is a global, multibillion dollar industry with branches that twist and burrow in our own communities, around our own friends, siblings and children.
Now that we’re at the end of Student Government election week, let’s get together and reflect on other important events. And if you’re going, “Election? That happened?” you’re not alone, so we will take this time to gather ‘round a metaphorical camp re and catch up on what’s been happening, locally and nationally, in this week’s edition of...
All liberals are leeches. They’re lazy, incompetent and allergic to work.
It’s fair to say that the outcome of the Student Government Spring elections were known well before it was announced.
Last Friday I drove to Tallahassee to play a show. I hadn’t spent much time there before, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. I had heard Tallahassee was “nasty” from many of my peers at UF, but I never quite understood why.
It’s time for my series to reach its conclusion. Valentine’s Day is over, and February is coming to a close. All good things must come to an end, so let’s talk about endings.
In addition to the divides of political affiliation, race, socioeconomic status, gender, sexuality and religion that are rampant across our nation, there is also a generational divide. Baby boomers and millennials especially seem to have it out for each other. Baby boomers call millennials entitled, lazy and selfish. Millennials call baby boomers out-of-touch, hypocritical and unconcerned with the world beyond themselves. (Somewhere, Generation X — saddled between the two — poke their heads out, wondering when people are going to start talking about them.) There are hosts of facts to support arguments for and against millennials and baby boomers, depending on where you’re getting your sources. It’s clear, however, that this divide is vicious.
We’ve done the hard part for you. With Student Government elections taking place today and Wednesday, here’s how we think you should vote on the amendments listed on the ballot and why.
It has been a hectic two years in Student Government. Minority parties surface every few semesters, almost like clockwork, running on promises of being a voice for students outside of the majority party. Access Party was no exception. Despite being among the few minority parties to win the executive ticket, the fall of Access has come and gone, leaving only one executive ticket on today’s and Wednesday’s ballot: Impact Party.
Growing up, I was taught to fear student debt — even when I didn’t truly understand what it was. This lesson didn’t really come from my parents, who worked full time to pay their way through school, but from the horror stories of twenty-something-year-olds haunted by six-figure debt that so often appeared in the news. As I’ve continued my education, these stories have appeared to increase in both frequency and urgency. I often manage to convince myself that this is probably due to my own hyperawareness, but it does seem as though the coverage surrounding the student-debt epidemic is at an all-time high.
Kyrie Irving, NBA superstar, said he believes Earth is flat, and now everyone on God’s green disk is losing their minds.
Everyone at UF is familiar with the time of semester (actually right around the corner) when the students taking Introduction to Statistics 2 hit the Facebook group pages and post survey links, urging fellow students to click on the link and fill out the questions so they can properly study t-tests. These survey questions are pretty simple, and the surveys themselves are short: “Year? Gender? How many alcoholic beverages do you consume per week?”
We have the ability to form and hold opinions. We sometimes take this so lightly, but this is a truly fascinating and incredible concept. We are able to take information from outside ourselves, interpret it and form thoughts about how we feel about it. We can decide if we think something is right or wrong, if it is OK or not OK.
I remember my first MP3 player so vividly. I already loved the portability of my music. As an elementary-schooler before the days of the first iPod, I would grab my cassette player — and later my portable CD player — for any car ride longer than 10 minutes. When my parents excitedly told me we’d received a free Napster MP3 player as part of a BellSouth promotion — yeah, that’s a sentence you’ll probably never hear again — I was pumped: We just download our music from the internet? And this little thing can hold more than 70 songs?
In the year 1840, when the U.S. was not even a century old, Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville wrote the historical “Democracy in America,” the detailed observations of a nation just starting to break on through its initial growing pains. By then, the experiment that was the U.S. had been around long enough for both its citizens and outsiders from Europe to take note of how things were going. If the life of America, thus far was a college course, “Democracy in America” would be the country’s gradebook after a rough midterm week. A point where one thinks, “Alright, how are we doing here?”
Solutions by The State News
