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Thursday, November 06, 2025

Opinion

Florida Alligator
OPINION  |  EDITORIALS

Spring Break: Great for economy, not for state image

Mar. 9, 2014

USA Today reported Sunday that Florida remains the go-to Spring Break destination for American students, and for good reason. South Florida residents live in a perennial tropical paradise, which explains why so many people from New York and New Jersey tend to retire — read: drive badly and complain about the lack of good pizza — there. And, of course, Panama City Beach in the panhandle remains a popular Spring Break destination, famous for its cheap accommodations, wild beach parties and inevitable drunken falling-off-balconies incidents.

Florida Alligator
OPINION  |  COLUMNS

Lake Okeechobee restoration efforts shouldn’t be turned over

Mar. 9, 2014

The Florida Legislature is attempting to seize total control of Lake Okeechobee, eliminating the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers from the process and giving total water management control to the South Florida Water Management District. This proposal is a bad idea, as it overlooks the history of the management of the lake and related water bodies in regard to the Clean Water Act.

Florida Alligator
OPINION  |  COLUMNS

Conservatives fail to accept changing US

Mar. 9, 2014

Conservatives flocked to Washington, D.C., last week for the Conservative Political Action Conference to rally behind conservative leaders and discuss their core ideological beliefs. Sadly, the week produced the same rhetoric spouted by conservatives — most of whom identify as Republicans — that many young Americans and minorities, more often than not, reject.

Florida Alligator
OPINION  |  DARTS LAURELS

Darts & Laurels 2/28/14

Feb. 27, 2014

For all of you still lingering on campus and not burning rubber on the highway bound for Panama City Beach, here it is: your Spring-Break-forever-y’all edition of

Florida Alligator
OPINION  |  COLUMNS

Venezuela column wrong

Feb. 27, 2014

Eric Brown’s guest column demonstrated hypocrisy in two ways: Its title and its content emphasized why the viral video explaining today’s situation in Venezuela is one-sided. He then went on to emphasize the few improvements the Venezuelan government has accomplished while completely disregarding the country’s significant increase in murders, scarcity in basic day-to-day needs, tyrant rule over peaceful protests and censorship of the media.

Florida Alligator
OPINION  |  COLUMNS

Venezuela column doesn’t give whole truth

Feb. 27, 2014

Last Tuesday, a column ran in the Alligator titled “Viral video is one-sided” by UF student Eric Brown, in which he discussed Nicolás Maduro, Hugo Chávez and Venezuela. After reading it, I realized some things he said were partially true and some partially false.

Florida Alligator
OPINION  |  COLUMNS

‘Religious freedom’ bill ignites controversy

Feb. 27, 2014

The land home to the Grand Canyon brought a slew of controversy this week when reactionary legislators passed a religious freedom bill. The bill is an amendment that rides on the shoulders of an act that began after Native American Church members were fired for using psychedelic cacti more than a decade ago. It enshrines Arizona citizens’ rights to religious freedom by declaring that anything done or not done because of a “sincerely held” religious belief is well and good, so long as it doesn’t conflict with government interests.

Florida Alligator
OPINION  |  EDITORIALS

Age and attitude: What accounts for alcohol abuse?

Feb. 26, 2014

Predictably, as March approaches, news outlets will start releasing “shocking exposés” revealing the “dark side of Spring Break” as if we didn’t know drunken college students fall off balconies in Panama City every year. Trend writers would have you believe all students view Spring Break as a weeklong free-for-all, and while this isn’t necessarily true — we have Habitat for Humanity and other things to do, after all — it’s true that alcohol abuse is a pervasive problem in American university culture.

Florida Alligator
OPINION  |  COLUMNS

Net neutrality is a thing of the past

Feb. 26, 2014

Think about the nature of the Internet. It’s anything and everything at your fingertips whenever you want it. One day, we will tell our children we lived in a time when information was truly free.

Florida Alligator
OPINION  |  LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Beato’s minimum-wage column

By Jeremiah Tattersall | Feb. 25, 2014

On Feb. 18, Michael Beato wrote a highly erroneous piece about increasing the minimum wage. Today’s minimum wage is far below what it should be historically and continues to lose value every year. If the federal minimum wage had kept up with inflation, it would be about $10.75 an hour instead of $7.25. If the minimum wage had kept up with productivity, it would be $18.75. If it had grown at the same rate as wages for the top 1 percent, it would be more than $28.

Florida Alligator
OPINION  |  EDITORIALS

FCAT merit-based teacher pay: an unfair indicator

Feb. 24, 2014

Luckily, our FCAT days are behind us. After all, the snacks used as bribery tactics and all of the time out of class in the world couldn’t make up for the fact that state standardized testing is a waste of schools’ time and an unfair indicator of teacher and student success.

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