Opinions - The Independent Florida Alligator

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 | EDITORIALS

No winners in the aftermath of Ashley Madison leaks

Aug. 30, 2015

Last Friday, Noel Biderman, CEO of Avid Life Media Inc. — the parent company of Ashley Madison — stepped down from his position. Biderman’s resignation arrived in the wake of the third wave of leaks from the extramarital-affairs website.

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 | EDITORIALS

Yet another shooting leaves more questions than answers

Aug. 26, 2015

When we began brainstorming today’s editorial, there was every intention of writing a pleasant little column on the inability of Florida lawmakers to rectify the blatant gerrymandering that plagues Florida. But, as with so many American mornings, tragedy made it all but impossible to write anything that even remotely resembled a "pleasant" demeanor.

OPINION | EDITORIALS

Editorial: Get a good night’s sleep and put your phones down

Aug. 25, 2015

A professor once told me that young men and women are biologically inclined to stay awake late into the night because we’re young, fertile and it’s our biological imperative to attempt to reproduce. It only makes sense that we would stay awake into the wee hours for reasons we can’t fully comprehend.

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 | EDITORIALS

Despite controversy, Bernie Sanders is the best candidate for racial justice

Aug. 24, 2015

In recent weeks, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders’, I-Vt., relationship with black voters has been subject to tremendous scrutiny. Thus far, two of Sanders’ appearances on the campaign trail have been hijacked by activists who self-identify as part of Black Lives Matter, a movement dedicated to raising awareness and effecting substantial change to institutional racism and the subpar treatment of black citizens in the U.S.

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 | EDITORIALS

Take a chance and make the most of your college experience

Aug. 16, 2015

If you’re new to college, chances are you’re missing home.

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.

OPINION | COLUMNS

A final goodbye, thank you to my Alligator family

By Melissa Mihm | Aug. 5, 2015

When I first got to UF, I struggled to find a group of friends. I had friends speckled throughout Gainesville, but I always felt like I was lacking that family away from family. I guess you could say, I eventually gave up.

OPINION | DARTS LAURELS

Darts and Laurels: Summer Finale Extravaganza

Aug. 5, 2015

Greetings and salutations, Gainesville! We welcome you to this most August occasion by which we end our Summer circulation of the Alligator and prepare our inkstained (not really because everything’s digital nowadays) hands for the coming of our Fall semester. But before we go, we must leave our valued audience for our even more valued swimsuits and margaritas and leave you with this final summer edition of…Darts and Laurels.

OPINION | COLUMNS

Paynes Prairie: A breathtaking site that should remain state property

Aug. 5, 2015

In storytelling, it is a common occurrence for the protagonist to gain insight or make a personal breakthrough by retreating to nature.