Opinion | Columns - The Independent Florida Alligator

OPINION | COLUMNS

Mediocre Advice: fair skin, bedroom advice

Sep. 7, 2015

Mediocre: adjective. Definition: of only moderate or ordinary quality, neither good nor bad. Language of origin: Latin, from the word mediocris. However, the French adopted this word in the 1580s in the form of mediocre, in search of a term more adequate to describe their culture. Let’s be real, the only good things the French have given to society have been crunchy, fried potato strings and those cute little bulldogs.

OPINION | COLUMNS

Guest column: Students can help preserve Paynes Prairie — here’s how

Sep. 7, 2015

Picture this: It’s Saturday morning and you desperately need a break from studying. So, you head to Paynes Prairie Preserve State Park to enjoy some fresh air and look for bison and alligators. But instead, you find industrial feedlots. And instead of the calls of sandhill cranes and hawks, you hear rifle fire and all-terrain vehicle engines from nearby hunters. The turkeys, ducks and deer you always used to see are nowhere to be found.

OPINION | COLUMNS

Do the right thing — pay for your porn

Sep. 3, 2015

One of my classes started the way one can only hope, with my professor saying, "This semester, we’re going to have some fun."

OPINION | COLUMNS

Whitewashing of Texas’ textbooks, the latest in conservative attempts to rewrite history

Sep. 3, 2015

The topic of public schools has always laid heavily on the hearts and minds of this country’s politically active, conservative, evangelical Christians. Conservative ire over public schools has revolved mostly around our science curriculum. But in the last year or so, these activists have fought for control over how American history is taught, with the disturbing aim of controlling the narrative of American history itself.

OPINION | COLUMNS

The Perils of the Corporatization of Education

Sep. 1, 2015

Last week I discovered that my alma mater, Florida State University, had blocked me from commenting on any of its social media websites. This meant anything posted by its official Facebook page, writing on its wall or commenting on photos posted by the school’s official Instagram account. As far as I understand it, this occurred because I had exercised my rights and been critical of the school and the image it attempts to maintain in social media.

OPINION | COLUMNS

The MTV Video Music Awards: Do they even really matter?

Sep. 1, 2015

So, the MTV Video Music Awards happened.

OPINION | COLUMNS

Guest Column: Access Party calls on students to join party in Fall 2015 Student Government elections

Sep. 1, 2015

My name is Kalyani Hawaldar, and I am your Access Party President. The beginning of September means the start of football season, but it also means the beginning of another Student Government election cycle.

OPINION | COLUMNS

Greek life is more than just its stereotypes

Aug. 31, 2015

With the beginning of the Fall semester comes a myriad of UF activities, but perhaps the most discussed is rush. Whether it’s news coverage, Snapchat stories or traffic halting hordes of impeccably dressed girls, you simply can’t escape it. Consequently, the criticisms of Greek life seem to reach a fever pitch this time of the year.

OPINION | COLUMNS

Mediocre Advice: Balling on the court and in bed

Aug. 31, 2015

Happy Tuesday, gang! What a week it’s been. After last week’s column, some of you may have wondered: "Why mediocre advice? Why would anybody listen to you?" Well, in a world where people still religiously eat Olive Garden, listen to Fall Out Boy, watch MTV and read Buzzfeed to find out if their boyfriend is cheating on them, it seems as though mediocrity is still in.

OPINION | COLUMNS

The ideals of the Confederacy remain lost cause

Aug. 31, 2015

Common wisdom holds for one to be true to thy self. If you’re a self-described Southerner, odds are good you might still be licking your wounds from the flogging the north dished out 150 years ago.

OPINION | COLUMNS

Online privacy needs to become top priority

Aug. 30, 2015

Every once in a while, a website or service finds a new creepy way of gathering data online, and it seems earth-shattering until the next stalkerish way of data collection emerges. In an ideal world, none of this would come as a surprise, as everyone would actually read the terms and conditions when they agree to things — or at least those pesky updates sent out ahead of major changes to a site.

OPINION | COLUMNS

Reflecting on the Iran nuclear deal as a young Marine veteran

Aug. 30, 2015

In the summer of 2015, following my first year of law school at IU-Bloomington, I was fortunate enough to be selected for an internship in Israel with Shurat HaDin, Israel Law Center. As a Marine Corps veteran, my unit confronted terrorists in Afghanistan, and when I returned home, I learned about groups that fight terrorism in different ways. Shurat HaDin is a nongovernmental Israeli organization with the stated mission of bankrupting terror — one lawsuit at a time.

OPINION | COLUMNS

Don’t reduce tragedy to a Facebook post

Aug. 27, 2015

Last week, I logged onto Facebook after a summer of neglect. I was greeted with a familiar but troubling sight: Someone had posted an article about a scorned boyfriend throwing acid in his girlfriend’s face. While that was the first I had heard of that particular story, I have seen similar stories posted on Facebook many times before. The Texas mother who drowned her children in a pool; the Massachusetts teacher who was murdered by a student; the Tennessee couple who were raped and beaten; all were equally tragic stories that had found their way into my life because of a shared Facebook post.

OPINION | COLUMNS

Educational entitlement: dumb, lazy and problematic

Aug. 27, 2015

College can be a pretty weird place. Jam any number of young adults with raging libidos into a high-stress environment, and all kinds of crazy stuff will go down. But hand those same high-strung and impassioned people a whopping sense of entitlement and unshakable certainty in their own morals? Things will get surreal.

OPINION | COLUMNS

College: Time to discover your sexual identity

Aug. 27, 2015

Welcome back for the Fall semester, Gators! I hope that everyone had a good first week back and is re-acclimating to the humidity, the homework and The Gator Nation.

OPINION | COLUMNS

How to fall off the face of the Earth and like it

Aug. 25, 2015

I can recall my social media ‘firsts’ as easily as I could my major life events: first cryptically spelled Facebook status, first grotesquely filtered Instagram, first angsty song lyric quoted on Twitter. It becomes almost nostalgic, recalling a time when social media was new and each post brought me one step closer to perfecting my skillfully crafted online persona. Yet my most profound ‘first’ was when I gave it all up.

OPINION | COLUMNS

Start of school year means new resolutions, new introductions

Aug. 25, 2015

Happy Hump Day fellow Gators!

OPINION | COLUMNS

Mediocre Advice: Finding love in college

Aug. 24, 2015

Happy Tuesday to all my Random Randys and Anonymous Amys, and welcome to Mediocre Advice. This article is a reboot of Ariel Barnes’ own Mediocre Advice column, which was last published during my freshman year back in the salad days of 2012. Like the triumphant phoenix rising from its own ashes, your weekly inquiries will once again be answered with extremely average and somewhat distorted advice; you might even say the advice offered here could be considered prosaic, middling or any other acceptable synonym for mediocre.

OPINION | COLUMNS

The media’s coverage of Trump is detrimental

Aug. 23, 2015

Thus far, the 2016 presidential election has been the most opulent and luxurious race for the White House in recent memory. The primary reason for this has been the candidacy of Donald J. Trump. The billionaire’s no-holds-barred sound bites and — oddly enough — every-man attitude have rallied many in both the middle and the right to his cause.

OPINION | COLUMNS

A Farewell to Summer and Some Last Pieces of Advice

Aug. 5, 2015

So we’ve hit a lot of topics here. This was a new endeavor for me and I am glad to have had some of you along for the ride. Since this is my last column I thought I would do a little recap of some of the highlights from this summer. It was my intention with this column to provide automotive advice for college students. I may have missed the mark at some points, but I would like to leave you with a few nuggets that may at least get you through the rest of your college career.