Darts & Laurels: March 23, 2018

Despite promising yourself you wouldn’t procrastinate on your homework this week, you find yourself deep in the aisles of Target with your roommate.

You came to buy bananas, but your cart already has 10 items, none of which you actually need and none of which are bananas. “Well, at least this is a stress reliever,” you reason to yourself.

A little embarrassed by the hodgepodge of useless products you collected on your raid, you decide self-checkout is the best option for you. Several scans in, you get an error message. This one, however, is one you’ve never seen before. After clicking “cancel” about 30 times, the screen reads …

Darts & Laurels

A little more than a month after the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, another took place. Tuesday morning, a 17-year-old student at Great Mills High School in Great Mills, Maryland, shot two other students before the school resource officer was able to engage him and stop the threat.

According to CNN, Austin Wyatt Rollins shot a female and male student before he was later pronounced dead. The female, who Rollins had a prior relationship with, was in critical condition with life-threatening injuries as of Wednesday morning. The male who was shot is in stable condition.

Although Rollins’ actions were truly unforgivable, we won’t give him a dart. Instead, we award our first dart to the politicians who continue to block stricter gun control in our country. Young people with this type of disturbed mind should not have access to a gun of any kind. It’s time we start taking guns seriously and limiting who has access to them nationwide. It’s time we stop disasters like this from happening.

In an effort to advocate for gun reform, people across the country will participate in the March For Our Lives protests Saturday. About 20 UF students have been raising money to organize a bus trip so more than 100 students can attend the march in Washington, D.C. They are determined to have their voices heard.

If you plan to march, we’d like to award you with our first laurel of the week. Whether close to home or traveling to a larger protest, we commend you. Your bravery and determination will make a difference, and the whole nation is thankful for you.

Last week, the Islamist militant group Boko Haram kidnapped dozens of girls from a school in Nigeria. The girls were released Wednesday of this week with the attached warning, “Don’t ever put your daughters in school again.”

Kidnapping girls who are pusuing an education is not new for the group. In 2014, they kidnapped nearly 300 girls from their boarding school in Chibok. One hundred of them have yet to return home.

According to the Associated Press, Informational Minister Lai Mohammed told journalists in the capital, Abuja, the girls were released “through back-channel efforts and with the help of some friends of the country, and it was unconditional.”

We award a dart not only to the military group, but also to the bystanders who continue to let this type of mindset exist in the world. No girl should ever be told she can’t attend school or be forced to decide between her life and her education.

Helping to slowly restore our faith in both humanity this week, however, was Gail Johnson. After being elected to the City Commission At-Large Seat 1 on Tuesday, she became the first black woman to be elected citywide in at least 21 years.

We would like to award a laurel to Johnson for her immense success in breaking the glass ceiling and changing the norms that have been in place in Gainesville for nearly two decades. We will also give her opponent, Harvey Budd, a laurel. It’s not always easy to accept a loss, but Budd took it with honor and conceded. He told The Alligator, “She outworked us, and she deserves it.” We wish both the best.