Motorized scooters are great for getting around campus, especially to the emergency room.
Kylan Johnson couldn’t help but flash a smile from ear to ear Saturday afternoon as he sat down to speak with reporters.
I am writing in response to Victoria Fortier’s column, verbosely titled, “It’s time to stop kneeling during the national anthem.” I’m a teaching assistant for ENC 1101 at UF, a class I really enjoy teaching. My students learn how to identify and write coherent arguments. One of the first things I teach them to do is to support claims with “receipts,” commonly known as evidence. I’m calling Fortier out because, while I respect her use of pathos, one of three rhetorical appeals (she’s really trying to rile people up), she hasn’t substantiated her claims with evidence. Dare I call unsubstantiated claims “fake news?” It’s true. More than 30 million people tune in every week to watch football games. It’s true that fans are now watching athletes kneel to protest the continued murder of black men, women and children. I disagree with Fortier’s claim that freedom has nothing to do with making a statement. I would back that claim up by providing my first receipt, the Declaration of Independence. Maybe Fortier has not had the chance to take history yet (however, I think it is a requirement), but this document is a literal statement of freedom written by our Founding Fathers. NFL protesters like Colin Kaepernick are very aware of their rhetorical situation. They understand their audience and have a specific purpose. Protest is a very specific strategy for making an argument. It’s often a dangerous and unpopular strategy in that it does not always care about being polite. While black men and women continue to die at the hands of corrupt police officers, Kaepernick and his fellow NFL players do not have time to be polite. Your plea for protesters to consider where and when they decide to make a statement isn’t needed. They have already considered where and when they protest. They have decided making you uncomfortable for a few minutes at the beginning of a football game is worth your discomfort. The Huffington Post reports that more than 250 black people were killed in 2016. These protesters want the murders to stop. If you were in my class and you turned in a paper without receipts, you’d receive an F.
“You realize you’ll make, like, no money doing that, right?”
Does taking a knee make you uncomfortable? Good. You know what’s beyond uncomfortable? Not knowing whether the police are there to help or hurt you.
Last week, writers, readers and rhyme enthusiasts alike celebrated National Poetry Day. They shared short verses on social media and encouraged others to pick up their favorite collections. Twitter especially lit up with screenshots and quotations from poets as varied as Maya Angelou and Rupi Kaur. It made me think: Isn’t it incredible that there really is a poem out there for everyone?
President Donald Trump’s job of aiding Puerto Rico in recent weeks can be described as pathetic, at best, and his public displays on the issue are nothing less than a disgrace.
Forget about Feleipe Franks’ game-winning pass against Tennessee. Leave behind Luke Del Rio’s game-winning drive in Kentucky. Sure, those moments were exciting, but they were also stressful, unnecessary and downright draining.
What a week it’s been for the Florida Gators.
Go ahead and look away for a second. Pause. Breathe. Relax. You’re going to need a clear head and a clearer conscience for this. Now, I want you to grab your phone, go on Twitter, type “knee” into the search bar and scroll through what pops up.
I’m going to sound like a very stereotypical college-age young woman (college-age English major specifically) and talk about the scene in Sylvia Plath's “The Bell Jar” where Esther is lying beneath a fig tree. Here, she imagines that each fig represents an imagined future — she sees a famous editor, a poet, a housewife — and she cannot make up her mind as to which fig to pluck, since choosing one means losing the rest, and then they all begin to shrivel up, and it is simply too late.
Baseball may be the American pastime, but it is no secret our football players are the ones who are treated like the real heroes. Seriously, more than 30 million viewers tune in every week to worship by screen and watch their favorite teams play on Sundays.
In the late 19th century, economist Vilfredo Pareto demonstrated in his first academic paper that, in his native country of Italy, 20 percent of the population owned about 80 percent of all the land. Pareto then noticed the same pattern of distribution in his garden, where he found that 20 percent of the pods contained 80 percent of the total peas. Named after Vilfredo himself, the Pareto principle, also known as the 80/20 rule or the law of the vital few, is one of the most widely seen statistical phenomena in the world, seemingly evident on both the largest of macro levels (entire country wealth distributions) to the smallest of micro levels (amount of peas in a peapod).
You finally make it back to your apartment after what feels like the longest day of your life. Between classes, meetings and your third Study Edge review of the week, you want nothing more than to plop down on the couch with a glass of wine and the fuzziest of fuzzy blankets.
S--- is about to hit the fan in college basketball.
Kneeling for the national anthem is once again in vogue in America. This weekend, hundreds of NFL players took a knee to protest what they have referred to as the U.S.’s oppressive treatment of minorities after President Donald Trump raised the issue at a rally in Alabama.
For those victim to it, the grotesque fact of racism is difficult to overstate. In furtive glances, tightened chests and cracked bones, it asserts itself with lethal, overwhelming force.
Remember those nights in your dorm common area? All of the usual suspects from the guys’ side and the girls’ side crept out of their crowded rooms, walked down the hall and swiped their fobs. Someone ordered pizza that everyone ate. Something someone wanted to watch was playing softly on the TV. Everyone somehow fit on one couch and five chairs.
This semester, I promised myself I’d get out of my comfort zone for the better. Too often we find ourselves in this Monday through Friday lull where we’ve gotten used to the schedule we’ve set for ourselves, and all we do is blindly follow it. Dear readers, I hope you add some spice into your lives every once in a while, especially if that spice is adding an interesting club to your lineup.
Student Government elections are here again, and the drama has come with it. So far, this election cycle has been defined by the emergence of a new minority party to go up against Impact Party — and memes. Don’t forget the memes.
Solutions by The State News
