Darts & Laurels: June 20, 2019

The time has come to leave this ghost town and return a week later when it’s renewed with young, innocent, naive and hopeful life. It's time to prepare yourself for Summer B. During this interlude you will use the time off to recenter your chakras, align your aura and detox all the negative energy you have toward the younger students who have not had their spirits crushed yet. You refuse to be the crotchety upperclassman who looks upon the younglings with jealousy and a mild tinge of second-hand embarrassment as they send you into a spiral of your own freshman flashbacks. You have taken up meditation in a bid to prepare for the second half of summer madness. You’re breathing in and out. Letting all your thoughts go. Then it pops into your mind…

Darts & Laurels

An independent report on the UN found from 2010 to 2018 the organization showed “obviously dysfunctional performance” in Myanmar leading up to the abuse of hundreds of thousands Rohingya, a minority Muslim group in the country. In August 2017, Myanmar's military started an ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya including the killing thousands of people, the looting of villages and the rape of women and children, as the Guardian reports. We are giving a dart for the UN’s systemic failure as it did not provide enough support against these attacks on humanity. Gert Rosenthal, a former Guatemalan foreign minister who wrote the report, said Myanmar’s government was mostly to blame for the abuses against the Rohingya, so a dart goes to them as well.

Last week, Florida Rep. Ted Yoho voted agaisnt an amendment to a bill that would provide additional resources to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention to better understand the causes of sudden unexpected deaths of children and infants in the United States. He also voted against an amendment to “increases CDC Injury Prevention and Control suicide program funding to enhance youth suicide awareness, research, and prevention efforts by $2 million.” In the former case he was one of 19 to vote no. In the latter case he was one of 30 to vote no. A dart goes to Yoho for seeming not to value unexpected infant death and suicide prevention as a worth-while concern.

The U.S. House of Representatives passed an amendment that prevents a drilling plan in the Everglades for western Broward County. From Oct. 1, 2019 to Sept. 30, 2020, the amendment would set a one-year temporary prohibition of supplying wetland permits in the Broward portion of the Everglades, as the Sun Sentinel reports. We are giving a laurel to the passing of this amendment as it attempts to protect an ecosystem close to many Floridians’ hearts.

On Monday, the Ireland government published a report explaining its plan for net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. More than 180 measures to minimize the country’s greenhouse gas emissions are outlined in the report, with "a rise in carbon taxes, a multi-billion-euro scheme to retrofit houses and a number of other measures to change behavior by institutions, companies and individuals,” as the Guardian reports. We are giving a laurel to Ireland, as it takes strides to overcome climate change as the country’s carbon emission is the third highest in the European Union. The country is being charged more than 250 million euros for missing the 2020 target of reducing emissions and increasing renewable energy, which makes any parking ticket you got on campus still annoying in comparison.

Tighten your bowstrings and sharpen your arrows because we’re going back to Panem. A laurel goes to Suzanne Collins for dusting off her typewriter, parchment and quill or whatever device she uses to write and planning to release the prequel novel to “The Hunger Games” in 2020. You probably thought we wouldn’t care about her new book taking place 64 years before Katniss Everdeen. We may or may not have stopped reading her books after graduating middle school, so save the judgment.

The Alligator Editorial Board includes the Opinions Editor Jackie De Frietas, Editor-in-Chief Mark Stine and managing editors Hannah Beatty and Lindsey Breneman.