This week, we were ankle deep in pollen, blinded by unkind sunlight while we trudged our way to class through sweat and swamp-ass. Luckily, we’ll be getting some time off to compensate for having to endure the god-awful months ahead. In the meantime, here’s a slow-descent-into-finals-and-sweat edition of …
Darts & Laurels
This week, a pair of ever-controversial campus-concealed-carry bills started slithering through the state legislature. The bills intend to open up UF and other college campuses to Concealed Carry Permit holders, allowing them to be armed in class, in dining halls and in recreation areas. Despite overwhelming opposition from everyone who isn’t currently subscribed to American Rifleman magazine, it looks like the bills may pass. Now, granted, anybody abiding by the law would be a licensed 21-year-old with dozens of hours of firearm experience. However, most university students, faculty and staff would rather live and work while not surrounded by conspicuously armed citizens. The problem we have with the bill is that it’s being touted as a one-step solution to campus rape and mass shootings.
We can’t find much unbiased data to support the claim that this would necessarily prevent mass shootings. But handing out glittery, pink pistols doesn’t seem like it’ll solve anything, given that 75 to 80 percent of rapes are committed by someone the victim knows and trusts. Who’s going to shoot a friend, boyfriend or colleague? In context of the skepticism rape victims face, with only 3 percent of rapists ever facing conviction, how can a potential victim be sure any kind of self-defense claim would hold up in court? Is this legislation really just a lazy, reactive solution on the part of pro-gun legislators? Just throw a bone to Second Amendment supporters and call it a day, rather than, you know, actually take steps to prevent rape, such as starting rape-prevention education in middle and high school sexual education classes. Here’s a DART to concealed-carry-on-campus bills.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was re-elected to a fourth term this week, partially due to his skillful manipulation of Israel’s right-wing nationalist elements in the few days before elections ended. He drew support from the right by vowing no Palestinian state would ever be formed under his watch. Netanyahu publicly rejected the two-state solution, which is the basis of all international peace plans, including our own and formerly, one that Netanyahu supported. He also terrified Israelis into voting for him by saying leftist parties were busing Arab-Israelis to the polls. The tactics worked — Netanyahu was re-elected, at which point he reversed his earlier stance on the two-state solution to again support it. Because his 11th-hour promise was disingenuous and used the civil rights of an oppressed minority as a fear gambit, we’re going to DART Netanyahu.
Though it’s only officially been out for four days, Kendrick Lamar’s “To Pimp a Butterfly” is already a modern hip-hop classic to many. It’s both intensely intimate and politically evocative. In the aftermath of a year that saw immeasurable tragedy, the album is Lamar’s response for the black community. It’s the kind of record that only comes out once a decade. Here’s a LAUREL to Kendrick for giving us this gift.
[A version of this story ran on page 6 on 3/20/2015]
