Darts & Laurels: April 20, 2018

Graduation is a mere few weeks away, and you find yourself thinking, more often than usual, “How the heck did I get here?” You think back to unloading your parent’s car in the front of Broward Hall in the sweltering August heat, and you remember the nerves you felt as you walked into your first college lecture hall. It feels like just yesterday, right?

As you tie up loose ends and complete your long list of “lasts,” you realize you’re really going to miss this place.

You decide to have one last get-together with your best friends and meet up at the usual friend’s apartment a few days before the big day with paint, brushes and graduation caps in hand. You all decide to keep it a secret what you’re going to paint on your cap so you can all be surprised later that night.

After a few hours of painting and several cold beers, it’s time for the big reveal. One friend’s cap displays a typical “Thanks, mom and dad” surrounded by flowers. The next has an alarmingly artistic painting of Century Tower. The last friend, however, has gone with a unique design. Their cap reads...

Darts & Laurels

This Monday, Accent Speakers Bureau announced it will host a 30-minute Q&A session with Jodi Kantor, the New York Times journalist who was part of the team to break the Harvey Weinstein story and reveal the Hollywood mogul had been paying off his sexual harassment accusers.

Kantor will talk about her career in journalism and her work on the famous story. Unfortunately, one thing she will not do is receive equal pay for speaking. According to Accent Chairwoman Shelby Buchanan, Kantor will be paid $20,000, which is significantly less than speakers are typically paid.

For reference, Jim Jefferies was paid $125,000 to speak, and John Mullaney was set to receive $85,000. Terry Crews was paid $40,000 — double what Kantor will receive.

Before we go into our gripes about the inequity in payment, we have to award Accent our initial laurel. Bringing in Kantor to speak to UF students grants us all a unique opportunity to hear from one of the most noteworthy journalists and female professionals of our time, which is invaluable. As journalists ourselves, we each found ourselves elated at the chance to see Kantor, but the number behind her visit brought us back down.

The distinction in pay is something we cannot look past or ignore. The inequality is blatant and astounding. As such, we award a dart to Accent as well, for their disrespect of Kantor, female professionals and the field of journalism.

On May 29, many of us will need to run on Dunkin’, because more than 8,000 Starbucks store locations will be closed. The coffee chain announced Tuesday it will close many of its cafes for the day in order to conduct anti-bias training. The decisions comes after two African American men were arrested at one of the stores.

According to the New York Times, officials reported the two men were arrested after they had asked to use the restroom without purchasing anything. An employee refused their request and asked them to leave the store. When the men stayed put, the employee called the police and the two men were arrested.

The situation led to significant upset in the public, as it should have. However, we are impressed with the way Starbucks has chosen to handle the situation. Not only did the CEO issue a formal apology, but the company is choosing to do something about the problem and educate their employees. We are appalled that the incident ever took place, but we must award a laurel to the Starbucks company for taking preventative action so nothing like this happens again.

We realize of course, that the decision to enact this training was likely, at least in part, a publicity stunt. However, regardless of motives, something good is resulting, and that is something we can be happy about and thankful for.