Jake Mitchell the vocalist of Little Jake and the Soul Searchers on Wednesday, Feb. 19, 2025. Find this story in The Avenue on pg. 7.
Your favorite foods are more expensive than ever
High demand, low supply trigger price hikes
By Natalie Kaufman
Alligator Staff Writer
The breakfast crowd at the Waffle House on West Newberry Road was in for a rude awakening in early February. All meals with fluffy scrambled eggs and puffy omelets cost them extra.
Waffle House chains nationwide added a 50-cent surcharge to dishes with eggs beginning Feb. 3. Some diners were indifferent, others resentful.
Supply chain issues have recently disrupted the global food system, a similar phenomenon to that seen during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Traditional breakfast fare like eggs, orange juice, coffee — and
even the sweet morsels in chocolate chip pancakes — were not spared.
The curse of ‘eggflation’
Yolks are the new liquid gold, and finding affordable eggs just got harder. Avian Influenza, also known as the bird flu, has ravaged the United States eggs and poultry industry since 2022 and intensified in the past few months, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The H5N1 virus, which causes the disease, spreads through contact with infected birds or their feces.
While cases of bird flu in humans are rare and have been scattered across the U.S., the CDC said it’s actively tracking the disease.
When he’s not teaching, Kevin
Folta helps manage Eggsotics, a family egg farm in Archer. The UF horticultural science professor said his flock has avoided bird flu thus far, but he’s not counting out the possibility of infection.
If one of his birds gets sick, he’ll have to euthanize the rest, which Folta said would be devastating for Eggsotics.
“It would cost thousands of dollars to replace our current flock,” he said. “Plus, we would lose tens of thousands in production from meat birds, eggs and Thanksgiving turkeys in 2025.”
Since its detection in U.S. poultry stock three years ago, bird flu has forced farmers to slaughter millions of infected chickens and ducks.
Alachua County School Board releases ICE memo, sparking community concern
NEW DISTRICT GUIDELINES EXPANDED ICE AUTHORITY IN SCHOOLS
By Sara-James Ranta Alligator Staff Writer
Amid rising fears of federal immigration crackdowns in schools, Alachua County Public Schools issued a memo outlining strict protocols for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, granting it “broad authority” to interview and remove students in schools without a warrant.
The news ignited alarm among teachers, parents and community members about student safety.
ACPS ICE memo
The memo, released Feb. 10, directs school administrators to take several steps if ICE seeks to interview or remove a student. Administrators must ask for identification and request to make copies of any existing warrants, subpoenas or court orders authorizing the action.
However, no documents are required for ICE agents to interview or remove a student, according to the memo.
The memo also requires administrators to retrieve the student, be present during the interview and get permission to notify the student's parents before or after the interview or removal. If the student is taken off campus, administrators must ensure ICE completes the district’s Release of Student to Outside Agency form.
Yet these directives seem at odds with existing district policies, which waive parental or administrator consent to interview or remove students only in “investigations of criminal activity.”
Under current policies, administrators may be present during questioning unless law enforcement cites “compelling reasons” for their exclusion — a term left undefined. If an officer denies parental contact or staff presence during an interview, the policy requires the principal to remove the student from school property for the process.
The memo also states ACPS doesn’t request or keep records of a student’s immigration status. ACPS prohibits the release of student records without written parental consent, a subpoena, warrant or court order, or a health or safety emergency.
According to the memo, district employees must comply with directives from law enforcement officers, and a failure to do so may result in “legal consequences, including arrest for tampering with, interfering with, or obstructing a law enforcement investigation or law enforcement official.”
District’s perspective
School principals would handle law enforcement officers if they were to show up to a school, ACPS spokesperson Jackie Johnson said.
“ICE agents have broad power to interview and detain students, and that’s with or without a warrant,” she said. “Employees should comply with any directives that they receive.”
The memo was released to help principals understand what protocols are “in this period of heightened awareness,” Johnson said. The memo was never meant for the greater ACPS community, as school principals handling law enforcement
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Which foods are moving up in price?
from pg. 1
Fewer birds mean fewer eggs — and higher prices for consumers.
Some grocery store chains have limited the number of eggs customers can buy to prevent running out of cartons. While shoppers pay between $4 and $5 for a dozen white largeshell eggs, grocers are forking over an average wholesale price of $7.34 this month — more than triple what they did 2024 — and sell at a loss, according to USDA data. Eggsotics has not changed its prices, which Folta said would be unethical amid a national shortage.
While experts struggle to contain bird flu, Folta said small farms filling the egg void should take extra precautions. He and his wife plan to move their free-ranging outdoor chickens into mobile coops to isolate them from migratory birds carrying the virus.
“It is likely to be moving and something we need to be on strict surveillance for,” he said.
Citrus farmers, consumers feel squeezed
Along with scrambled eggs, breakfast beverages aren’t getting any cheaper. Florida’s orange juice industry is in peril, said former Gulf Citrus Growers Association president Ron Hamel.
Citrus greening, a bacterial disease, has been tearing through Florida groves since 2005. Greening, transmitted from Asian citrus psyllid insects to orange trees, has shriveled the state’s citrus yields to a fraction of what they were in the 1990s.
“There's very, very few people that think the industry will be what it was in its heyday,” Hamel said.
Citrus growers measure output in “boxes,” which are 90-pound fruit crates. At their peak in 1998, Florida farmers filled nearly 250 million boxes of oranges. This year, they’re likely to fill 13 million, said Raymond Royce, executive director of Highlands County Citrus Growers Association.
Aggressive hurricanes and citrus greening have damaged millions of acres of Florida orange groves in the past few years. UF agricultural researchers previously reported Florida had more than 800,000 acres of citrus-bearing trees in the 1990s. Royce doubts even a quarter of those productive groves remain.
There is no cure for citrus greening, but farmers can manage its spread. UF researchers are developing greening-tolerant citrus varieties and genetically modified trees. They’re also experimenting with bactericide injections, a temporary salve.
“What we’re trying to do out there is maintain some level of productivity so that we can all stay in business and still provide some orange juice as we look for these longer-term solutions,” said Chris Oswalt, a citrus agent with the UF Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences.
Extra production expenses have trickled down to consumers. Since 2019, the price of a 12-ounce can of frozen orange juice concentrate has
climbed more than 80%, from about $2.40 to $4.50.
Even those in the business can’t stomach the cost. Tracey Hobbs, a UF agricultural assistant in citrus production who works with growers in Polk County, said she’s given up orange juice to accommodate her grocery budget.
“I don't buy any now because it’s not a necessity,” she said. “It was a splurge, and I can't afford to buy it.”
Cocoa in the crossfire
HERSHEY’S bars and Almond Joys won’t emerge from the supply chain unscathed, either. The price of chocolate sold in the U.S. increased three times the rate of inflation in 2023. That’s because cacao, the raw form of the cocoa bean and the key ingredient in chocolate, is facing an environmental crisis.
Recent bouts of bad weather in West Africa, where about 70% of the world’s cacao is grown, have substantially curbed yields. Analysts projected cacao-growing regions would be out of the woods after a devastating 2024 season, but this year’s outlook is grim. Farmers are battling droughts and the spread of plant diseases.
UF plant pathologists have partnered with the Mars confectionery company to combat black pod rot, a fungal disease that has plagued cacao trees for almost 50 years. It can destroy up to 30% of global cacao pods annually.
Mariana Herrera Corzo, a UF plant pathology graduate student working on the project, said the hallmarks of black pod rot are dark spots and fluffy white fungal growth.
The research aims to determine which cacao plants can resist the disease and then use the results to help farmers in Africa develop sustainable cultivation strategies.
With funding from Mars, the team receives cacao pods shipped from Costa Rica and injects them with disease-causing pathogens to guard against future infection. They’re also breeding the pods to boost genetic resistance.
“We have some clones that could be less susceptible, and the idea is to provide this information to the breeders,” Herrera Corzo said.
Americans rely on other countries for both the raw materials used in chocolate production and the finished product. The U.S. imports the most chocolate worldwide — more than $4 billion worth in 2023, much of which came from Canada.
Chocolate from Canada may become more expensive in March when the Trump administration’s 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico take hold. Almost immediately upon implementation, tariffs will raise prices on imports like chocolate.
Brace for pricier lattes
Coffee may jolt consumers long before finding its way into cappuccinos. The price of a pound of storebought ground roast soared from less than $5 in 2020 to an all-time high of just over $7 in January, the U.S. Labor Department reported last month.
About 70% of U.S. coffee imports come from Brazil, Colombia and Viet-
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nam, where growing conditions are optimal. But droughts and floods in the major coffee-exporting countries have curtailed production. As global demand surges, wholesale prices have skyrocketed.
That doesn’t mean the cost of a take-out coffee will suddenly jump, as corporations like Keurig and Starbucks order beans at a market price determined years in advance.
“You’re not gonna see a $3 to $5 rise in the price of coffee [in] this higher market, but you are gonna see probably more lower-quality coffee included in blends because it’s cheaper,” said University of South Florida graduate student Victoria Brown, who’s studying ecological issues in coffee production.
The threat of steeper tariffs on imports has also rocked the market. Late last month, President Donald Trump vowed to place a 25% tariff on Colombia amid an immigration dispute, driving up wholesale coffee prices. The measure never took effect, but a pound of coffee beans grown in Latin America now costs a record-breaking $3 to $4.
The U.S. cannot produce enough coffee to support domestic consumption. Very little coffee Americans drink is grown stateside, so if bean prices remain high, small roasters may be in a bind, Brown said.
“I think you’ll both see higher prices and potentially consolidation of roasters because it's just gonna get too expensive to do business,” she said.
The team at Gainesville’s Sweetwater Organic Coffee Co. is concerned about the industry turmoil but prepared to weather it, said Director of Sales, Marketing and Community Matt Earley.
Sweetwater roasters are working through inventory purchased six months ago at a lower rate than the current market price, providing a buffer for customers before inevitable price changes take effect.
Bill Harris, the company’s coowner and chief financial officer, said new beans arriving in late spring and early summer will cost almost double what they did last year, and customers will ultimately bear some of the brunt.
But Harris doesn’t think consumers will likely sacrifice their favorite treats in the face of price hikes.
“Generally speaking, coffee hasn’t been one of the things people give up when times get tough,” he said. “They might give up buying something else or going on a vacation or something, but they still are willing to buy a good chocolate bar and drink good coffee.”
@Nat_Kauf nkaufman@alligator.org
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The Florence Landfill: the ‘most popular dump in the world’
RESIDENTS AND THE OPERATION NAVIGATE COEXISTENCE
By Rylan DiGiacomo-Rapp Alligator Staff Writer
A gaggle of teenage boys stampeded through the woods in 1984. It was just beyond 15-year-old Johnell Gainey’s new home in Southeast Gainesville — a paradise for childhood imagination, for slingshots and BB guns and exploring in the summer heat.
There were plenty of targets, too. The boys shot their toy bullets at abandoned box TVs nestled in the underbrush and danced through a strange museum of decrepit refrigerators, kitchen stoves and “a car or two” laid to rest between the trees.
It was a playground of mystery, but Gainey didn’t mind. It was a while later when he realized his family’s bright blue house on Southeast 25th Avenue was squeezed beside an unforeseen enemy: an illegal dump.
“It got so bad,” Gainey, now 56, said. “We let it go for a long time. We probably should have said something way before.”
Two owners and four decades later, the dump transformed from a hazardous state violation to the Florence Landfill, a permitted construction and demolition, or C&D, site. Owned by Paul Florence, the operation has long been a point of contention in Southeast Gainesville neighborhoods, an area never intended to house a landfill.
As the site grew, residents who lived near Gainey complained of a smell like rotten eggs, dust, truck noise and worries of future health impacts. The weary wanted it gone.
Lawless beginnings
Alachua County didn’t discover the perilous state of Feagle Fill Dirt — the first of two predecessors for the Florence Landfill — until 1983, according to an FDEP historical report. The operation dated back to the late 1960s, a nearly two-decade-old assortment of hazardous waste dumped, buried, burned or left wading in flooded pits, the report said.
There were paint cans, chemical bottles,
garbage from schools, old tires, plants, building materials, white goods — large appliances like those Gainey played among — and more left to rot on an unprotected swath of land.
Feagle Fill Dirt ultimately failed to follow state permits and a closure plan.
The site took on a new owner and name, Renfroe Landfill, by 1985, but its life was also short-lived and plagued by waves of violations. It wasn’t meant to shoulder more than C&D debris — materials considered water-insoluble and non-hazardous, like glass, concrete and untreated wood — but unexpected additions still made it into the mix, including household trash, mattresses, office materials and medical waste, according to a 1996 FDEP report.
The Renfroe Landfill’s special use permit, or SUP, was revoked by 1991, and the site sat static for four years. Alachua County officials approached Florence with a proposition: buy the landfill, turn a short-term profit and clean up Renfroe’s mess.
Though the 1994 SUP allowed Florence to pile on another 2 feet of C&D debris, it also sounded an alarm on the site’s incompatibility with Southeast Gainesville, an area zoned agriculturally and packed with family homes like Gainey’s. Florence was originally supposed to shut its doors by 1999, but that never happened.
Now, the unlined landfill peaks at 35 feet and still rumbles to life with truckloads of fresh debris, which totaled to over 30,000 tons in 2024.
Renewals for a ‘good neighbor’
The county commission has since renewed the Florence SUP six times in fiveyear increments. The last renewal was in 2018 and flashed a green light for the landfill to double its height to 70 feet.
However, Florence was met with opposition from local residents and withdrew the height expansion application. In 2021, the landfill refiled again, and residents returned with a challenge to the state permit.
The future height allowance was knocked down to 65 feet after Florence and the petitioners reached a settlement, which was re-
solved in June.
However, there were multiple other Florence neighbors who publicly encouraged the operation’s height increase in a 2018 county planning commission meeting and continue to do so. Mark Brown, a now 79-year-old retired environmental engineer, defended Florence as exceedingly responsible.
Brown lives in Woodbine, a residential area with tracts of conservation land that shares Florence’s rightmost border. The residents remain in close contact with Paul Florence, who Brown described as a “good neighbor.”
“He had always lived up to any request we had to maintain that landfill in a really good condition,” he said.
Brown said he’s personally reviewed many of the landfill’s required water quality tests since he moved to Woodbine 10 years ago, and his surety in the safety of living next door still holds strong.
In the 2018 meeting, one commissioner recalled the management process of filling Florence dumpsters as “lovely,” and compared to Renfroe, it was. Paul Florence added a transfer station on Hawthorne Road to ensure debris would be properly sorted, had been communicative with the county — sometimes attending county meetings himself — and had built trust with conservationminded neighbors like Brown.
Before the legal challenges, that SUP extension and height expansion was waved through unanimously, the matter closed by one last comment from a chuckling commission: “This must be the most popular dump in the world.”
By early 2024, that extension was set to expire, but a state emergency order for Subtropical System Nicole allowed C&D landfills to remain open for two years after the storm with an additional 24-month period. In short: it offered the promise of more time, a sense of security Florence seized quickly. The order bypassed county power, guaranteeing the site life through at least mid-2026.
National disposal company Waste Pro absorbed Paul Florence’s company, Florence Recycling, last year, including the transfer station on Hawthorne Road. However, Flor-
ence still owns the C&D landfill property. Southeast Gainesville houses the site, which has also been home to much of the city’s Black community for generations. Throughout its historical struggle with food insecurity and underrepresentation, the area has seen multiple dump sites come and go. One even lies beneath an elementary school.
Gainey, who has found success in California with acting, modeling and stunt work, said he’s visited that blue house in Southeast Gainesville much more often than before. He stepped off the driveway and into the woods of his childhood, pressing past wide palm fronds and over a collapsed barbed wire fence. Atop a sandy mound, Gainey was met with a clear view of stagnant marsh and C&D debris in the distance.
A silver skull ring glinted on his right hand as he gestured toward the Florence Landfill, which could soon surpass the treeline at 65 feet. Though Florence has worked toward righting the wrongs of past owners, Gainey still sees the site as another ever-present burden placed on the city’s Black community.
“That’s a powerful stigma,” he said. “That could be a mind crusher.”
Water in the ‘wild west’ Paynes Prairie, a marshland studded with rippling grasses and the grumbles of hidden alligators, is the gatekeeper of an unseen abyss. Tea-colored water is sucked from the prairie into the Alachua Sink, a 227-foot sinkhole touching the underlying Floridan aquifer, which feeds Boulware Springs’ chilled water bubbling back to the surface. Mixing with land runoff, the water follows its natural compass back to Paynes Prairie, and the cycle continues.
The Floridan aquifer is one the deepest, most extensive in the southeastern U.S. and delivers drinking water to much of the state, including Alachua County. It also indirectly touches the Florence Landfill.
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@rylan_digirapp rdigiacomo-rapp@alligator.org
Santa Fe College students experience financial aid delays, again
The college said 58% of spring disbursements were given as of Feb. 18
By Shaine Davison Alligator Staff Writer
Santa Fe College has yet to disburse more than one-third of its financial aid for the Spring semester, leaving some students in economic limbo and others still waiting on their aid from last Fall.
As of Feb. 18, SFC still hasn’t released 42% of its financial aid for the Spring semester and 3% of its financial aid for the Fall semester, according to college spokesperson Lisa Brosky. Brosky wrote in an email that SFC began releasing the Spring semester aid to students in early February, although the college’s website originally slated disbursals to begin during the last week of January.
“We also want to assure them [students] the College is working diligently to ensure aid is disbursed as quickly as possible,”
Brosky wrote.
The delay follows similar issues from the Fall semester, during which the college cited system changes and complications with the Free Application for Federal Aid as reasons for the holdup. While federal and state aid has already been disbursed to the college, it remains SFC’s responsibility to distribute those funds to students. According to an automated email response from the college’s financial aid office, the most recent delay stems from unspecified “government regulatory changes” and new financial aid software.
Lily Fahy, a 20-year-old SFC zoology freshman, said she relies on federal Pell grant disbursements to pay tuition. But after receiving her refund two months late last semester, she struggled paying for gas to commute from home in Ocala.
Now, Fahy said she’s experiencing the same nightmare all over again, this time with her father’s recent cancer diagnosis adding a major financial strain on her family.
With chemotherapy and medical bills mounting, she’d been counting on her $3,000 refund to help cover school expenses. Because Fahy commutes from Ocala, the delay has forced her to miss classes in recent weeks. She can’t afford to fill her gas tank or buy textbooks, and her GPA has suffered because of attendance policies.
“I have 59 cents in my bank account,” she said. “I can’t really do anything.”
After reaching out to the cashier office, Fahy was told she’d receive her aid last week, but she has yet to see the funds. The office said a technology issue caused the delay — the same ex-
planation it gave her last semester.
She also knows students who have either dropped out of Sante Fe, or are planning to transfer because of financial aid issues.
Matthew Meyer, a 19-yearold SFC digital media technology freshman, said he didn’t receive last semester’s round of Florida Prepaid and Bright Futures disbursals until November, even though he was scheduled to receive it in August. He hasn’t received his aid for this semester yet either, but said he was fortunate enough to pay tuition out of pocket.
When he visited the cashier office on Feb. 3 to pay, he said he didn’t get a word out before the person at the window said disbursements would be made soon, assuming he was there to inquire about his aid. Over a month later, Meyer’s still waiting on his aid.
“They don’t want to deal with you,” he said. “The staff is just rude.”
He described the college’s communication as “robotic” and inconsistent, with some staffers blaming technology glitches and others insisting aid will appear in the portal shortly.
On campus, he’s observed escalating tensions and frustrations among students who haven’t received their financial aid or clear communication from college officials.
“Santa Fe is just dragging everybody else down,” Meyer said. “There’s just a lot of anger building.”
Brosky, the SFC spokesperson, wrote the college is aware of students’ concerns and is working to disburse aid as soon as possible. She said she anticipates giving an update the week of Feb. 24.
@shainedavison sdavison@alligator.org
Alachua County community concerned over ICE authority
is “not a new thing,” she said.
The district doesn’t currently plan on releasing any information or announcement to parents.
However, the memo is on the ACPS website’s Safety and Security page, under “Law Enforcement Interaction.”
It also doesn’t anticipate making any adjustments based on feedback, but only based on changing laws, she said.
If parents have questions or concerns about ICE, Johnson said she encourages them to seek out legal advice, because “that’s not anything that we as a district can provide to families.”
Broader legislation
President Donald Trump signed 10 executive orders related to immigration during his first week in office, including an executive order titled “Protecting the American People Against Invasion” signed on Jan. 20.
The order directed federal agencies to focus on removing undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. and created Homeland Security Task Forces. The groups will collaborate with federal, state and local law enforcement in all states.
On the same day, the Department of Homeland Security issued a directive removing guidelines for law enforcement to avoid “sensi-
tive” areas, including schools, hospitals and churches, an action created by the Biden administration.
Following the directive, Gov. Ron DeSantis announced several state agencies entered agreements with ICE in a press release Feb. 19.
Under these agreements, state law enforcement officers will receive training to carry out functions such as questioning individuals about their immigration status, arresting those attempting illegal entry and executing warrants for immigration violations.
Union’s perspective
In addition to ACPS’ memo, Alachua County Education Association
President Carmen Ward passed on guidance to union members from the Florida Education Association.
FEA’s memo states ICE officers must have a warrant to interview or remove a student. Since this is contradictory to ACPS, which said a warrant wasn’t required, Ward said she found it misleading.
“It seems like an attempt to create misinformation so that people over-comply with ICE,” she said. “We don’t know how it will be implemented. That could lead to students not being adequately protected.”
Ward also worries about ACPS’ lack of policy on educating or raising awareness to “age-appropriate” students about ICE, she said.
Because ACEA legally protects
members under general union policy, Ward said she assumes a teacher would have legal protection if he or she is on duty when an ICE situation occurs. However, she still needs to get a “clear answer in writing” due to the newness of the issue, she said.
Community perspectives
Over 20 Alachua County residents voiced their concerns to the school board about the ICE memo at a meeting Feb. 18.
Michelle Nall, a Gainesville resident and parent, told the board how her 10-year-old daughter cried for her friend, worried ICE would show up to her school, she said.
“The trauma and fear of police taking children from school affects all students, regardless of immigration status,” she said. “There is no such thing as other people’s children.”
Alejandra Contreras, a Gainesville attorney, also spoke at the meeting. She shared her concerns about the need for judicial warrants when ICE enters a school, citing there’s no law allowing “warrantless arrests of citizens,” she said.
It’s not the responsibility of school employees to determine “reasonable suspicion” or even know what it is, she said.
Danielle Engelhorn, a third grade teacher at Carolyn Beatrice Parker Elementary, said she feels “anxietyridden” and “uneasy” about the ICE memo.
When she took on the role of a teacher, Engelhorn knew she’d not only be educating students, but making sure they were protected and “free from trauma,” she said.
“I do not like that the same governing body that entrusted me with this very important role is now interfering with my ability to carry out the role of protector,” she said.
Despite having no power against ICE actions, Engelhorn said her greatest concern and disagreement with the memo is how there is no clear and detailed explanation for how students would be reunited
with their parents if the district releases them to ICE.
Engelhorn doesn’t blame anyone locally, she said, and feels ACPS is “hopefully” doing the best it can with a difficult situation.
“The federal government is not doing enough at this moment to protect undocumented students and their families,” she said. “None of us can really do very much at the moment, except to express our dissent.”
@sarajamesranta sranta@alligator.org
UF pauses non-academic Living Learning Communities in campus housing
THE DECISION AFFECTS LLCS CENTERED ON UNDERREPRESENTED STUDENT BACKGROUNDS
By Pristine Thai Alligator Staff Writer
UF indefinitely paused all activities in six non-academic Living Learning Communities Feb. 17, just days after the Trump administration’s Office for Civil Rights banned the consideration of race in any decisions made by academic institutions nationwide.
Living Learning Communities, or LLCs, were previously described as “interest-based communities of students that live together within residence halls,” but the language on UF Housing’s website has changed to “academic-based.”
Four of the six paused communities were centered around underrepresented populations, including Black, first-generation, international and LGBTQ+ students. The remainder catered to students interested in the arts and out-of-state students.
The change comes on the heels of the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights’ order on Feb. 14 expanding the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling against affirmative action in college admissions. Under the order, the ban now encompasses “all other aspects of student, academic, and campus life,” including in scholarships, administrative support, graduation ceremonies and housing.
Universities that don’t comply with the order run the risk of losing federal funding.
The Trump administration’s recent flurry of orders compounds with laws from Gov.
Ron DeSantis and the GOP-dominated state legislature to do away with DEI programs on college campuses. DeSantis signed a bill defunding DEI initiatives and restricting courses that teach about identity politics or systemic injustices.
To fall in line with the new state legislation, UF slashed $5 million in spending toward diversity efforts last year and shut down its Center for Inclusion and Multicultural Engagement, a hub for UF students including dedicated offices for minority groups.
UF spokesperson Cynthia Roldan wrote in an email that the pause on non-academic LLCs supported the ongoing implementation of UF’s 10-year plan for on-campus housing. She didn’t directly answer questions about why the pause only included interest- and identitybased LLCs, whether the Trump administration’s directive factored into the decision or how much funding the LLCs receive, if any.
Among the paused communities is the Lavender LLC, which was organized around themes of gender and sexuality. Established at the Springs Residential Complex in 2021, the community provided the first gender-inclusive housing arrangements at UF.
Mixed-gender suites will still be available at Springs regardless of the LLC’s fate, according to a student assistant at UF Housing, but it was unclear which floors and buildings would retain those accommodations. Roldan wrote in an email that UF Housing would work with students who have “specific requests” on a case-by-case basis.
Robin Anstett, a 20-year-old computer science junior who lived at Lavender in their freshman year, said the community gave them the peace of mind that their peers would accept their gender identity when they first came
out.
“Being in a space with other queer people, seeing other queer people… things like that were really meaningful to me,” Anstett said.
As part of its programming as an LLC, Lavender hosted community events including socials, sex education and courses on LGBTQ+ and women’s history.
Kendal Broad, a UF sociology professor who taught one of Lavender’s first courses on social justice, said UF’s “diverse and resilient queer and trans student community will not just disappear” with the recent changes.
“An important question is what UF plans to do now to make sure all students are able to thrive academically and contribute in all their uniqueness to our university community,” Broad said.
The UF Pride Student Union issued a statement on Feb. 21, saying its members were “deeply disturbed” by the pause on non-academic LLCs and is prepared to “apply pressure” on administrative officials with its partners. The organization will hold a press briefing and town hall Feb. 27 on how it plans to address university actions affecting LGBTQ+ students.
Another identity-based LLC being put on hold is the Black Cultural LLC at Graham Hall.
Jerry Jerome, a 23-year-old UF sustainability alum, spent his freshman year living in the Black Cultural LLC. Despite the community’s limited capacity, Jerome said making memories with other residents made his residency “a very rewarding experience.”
“Those are still relationships and friends and buddies that I’ve made that I’ll carry with me for a long time,” he said.
According to Jerome, however, the LLC was facing problems even before UF paused it last week. He said he felt there was a lack of
support for the LLC from resident assistants, which mounted on disparities Black students face at UF, which has a predominantly white student population.
UF’s shutdown order also includes the FirstGeneration LCC at Thomas Hall. Daniel Badell, a 24-year-old UF political science and international studies alum, spearheaded the LLC’s creation in 2021 to build the support system he wished he had as a first-generation student.
Although he worried federal- and statelevel orders targeting diversity programs could hurt students of color and LGBTQ+ students, Badell was “shocked” that first-generation students were also impacted. He saw the LLC as academic in nature because it supported students who were the first in their families to go to college.
“I never, ever, ever considered that firstgen would be a political football to be thrown around,” he said.
While UF could jeopardize its public funding by pushing back against state and federal orders, Badell said, continuing to wave through changes will negatively impact its student and faculty constituencies.
“This is them shooting into their own feet,” Badell said. “DeSantis and Trump and all of them — they're on a little high horse right now, but reality catches up at some point.”
The Office for Civil Rights’ letter banning race-conscious decisions states that “additional legal guidance will follow in due course,” and the Department of Education will begin assessing compliance from educational institutions by Feb. 28.
@pristinethai pthai@alligator.org
Jea Nace // Alligator Staff
Teachers and community members raise the alarm as ACPS opens school doors for ICE. A policy shift sparks privacy and safety concerns.
Binoculars, brotherhood and biodiversity: Alachua County’s birding community
CONSERVED LAND, GEOGRAPHY MAKE ALACHUA COUNTY A HOTSPOT FOR BIRD SPECIES
By Bailey Diem Alligator Staff Writer
For most of the year, the Forster’s tern lives on the coast. But on an afternoon in the middle of February, the sleek, black-capped bird could be seen at Depot Park’s pond in downtown Gainesville.
Tim Hardin lifted his binoculars to follow the crow-sized bird’s swerving movements. He watched as it danced through the air, occasionally diving down to the water in hopes of snatching fish from just beneath the surface.
“They’re so buoyant,” he said. “They’re like butterflies.”
The 40-year-old vice president of the Alachua Audubon Society didn’t start seriously birding until he moved to the county in March 2019. He was quickly enraptured by the diversity of birds and welcoming community of birdwatchers that make the county a unique birding environment.
A geographical ‘venn diagram’ Alachua County’s geographical location is partly to blame for its luck in drawing in a multitude of birds, Hardin said. At its position in North Central Florida, the county is “in that venn diagram” encompassing the ranges of both northern and southern birds, he said. It’s also central enough to avoid extreme weather from hurricanes or tropical storms brewing in the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic
Ocean, the winds of which blow uncommon species into the county, Hardin said.
During Hurricane Idalia in August 2023, Hardin said he spotted a flamingo, a species not usually seen north of the Caribbean.
“The craziest stuff shows up in Alachua,” he said.
Most of the rare bird observations are due to “a lot of people detecting things,” Hardin said. If Alachua County didn’t have such a rich community of birders to spot rare species as they appear, he said, many of the birds the area draws in might never be noticed or shared.
Over 7,000 eBirders are registered in the Alachua County region. EBird is a website where birders report their findings to observe trends, track personal goals or compete for a rank in the site’s Top 100 for most species spotted, in which Hardin is currently fifth in the county.
Hardin considers himself a competitive birder, he said, and has broken Alachua County’s Big Year record for most bird species seen in a year five times in a row. Last year, he observed 286 species.
The birding community
If it weren’t for the birding community’s welcoming attitude, Hardin said he might not have gotten involved. He’s been low-income for the majority of his time in Gainesville, he said, but noticed birding “has a fairly low barrier of entry,” and the birders he’s interacted with are generous.
Hardin’s binoculars and scope, a telescopelike magnifying device often set up on a tripod for prolonged viewing, were donated to him by other birders in the county.
“Everyone just is very supportive in material and immaterial ways,” he said.
It’s a source of pride for Hardin to share the experience with new birders by offering scope views or teaching others how to identify species, he said. The county’s rich community also draws in birdwatchers from neighboring counties in an “extended family” of birders, he said.
Rex Rowan has been one of Hardin’s mentors since he started birding, having been involved in the hobby for 50 years — nearly 40 of which were spent in Alachua County.
The 68-year-old works with Hardin as one of the county’s resident eBird reviewers. It’s their responsibility to confirm observations on the website when they’re flagged by the site’s filters.
“If somebody reports, for instance, a dodo, an extinct bird in Alachua County,” Rowan said, “Well, that’s something that the filter will catch, because it’s been programmed to know that there are no dodos anymore.”
When an observation is flagged, Rowan said he or Hardin will ask the user to describe what they saw to determine if it’s an accurate identification.
A familiar face
One of the county’s most iconic species, Rowan said, is the sandhill crane. It serves as the mascot of the Alachua Audubon Society, with one dancing in the organization’s logo. A wall of the Alachua County Commission room is also decorated with artwork of the flying birds.
It’s recognizable because of its tall stature and trumpeting call, Rowan said, making it
hard to miss.
“It is such an appealing bird,” he said. “We could try to make the sedge wren the most popular bird in Alachua County, and it wouldn’t work very well, simply because most people don’t know what it is.”
The sandhill crane’s northern population spends the winter in South Florida, he said. Alachua County usually sees a mass exodus of the birds in mid-to-late February as they fly north again.
The week of Feb. 8 has been the birds’ most common departure time over the past five years. An average of 262 birds per hour were reported on eBird during the week this year. 2021 saw a slightly later peak week and the highest number in the last five years; the week of Feb. 15, 2021, reported an average of just over 333 birds per hour.
Approximately 25,000 sandhill cranes winter in Florida, Rowan said, anywhere from 6,000 to 10,000 of which spend the winter on Paynes Prairie. The prairie is a popular “staging area” for the birds, providing enough resources for them to rest and feed between legs of their flight — a layover before they continue their journey north.
The prairie’s shallow, flat expanse of water also allows the cranes to remain safe from bobcats and coyotes, which are common predators, Rowan said.
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@BaileyDiem diem@alligator.org
UF grad wins Southern Book Prize for debut memoir
ANNABELLE TOMETICH’S “THE MANGO TREE” EXPLORES FAMILY, IDENTITY AND
A VIRAL FLORIDA MOMENT
By Grace McClung Alligator Staff Writer
On a summer day in 2015, 64-year-old Josefina Tometich grabbed her trusty BB gun and shot out the back window of a man’s car.
The man, she told police, was stealing mangoes from her Fort Myers yard. He wound up mango-less while Josefina Tometich ended up in handcuffs, and the incident went viral.
A decade later, that story earned Josefina’s daughter, Annabelle Tometich, the Southern Book Prize — a prestigious literary award given to works that capture the spirit of the American South. Previous winners include Coretta Scott King, Ann Patchett and Carl Hiaasen, a fellow UF graduate.
The 44-year-old UF psychology
graduate won the award’s nonfiction category for her debut book “The Mango Tree: A Memoir of Fruit, Florida, and Felony” Feb. 14, 10 months after it was published in April.
Tometich said the story, which follows her tumultuous childhood in a mixed Filipino-American household in Fort Myers, explores why her mother would so fiercely protect a few mangoes.
Her answer: “It’s complicated.”
The memoir delves into Tometich’s familial background, including her mother’s journey from one of the poorest neighborhoods in Metro Manila, Philippines, to Florida, her father’s death and her own path from being a pre-med student to a restaurant critic to a journalist. It weaves food, family and the fallout of one fateful felony into a Florida suburban backdrop and Tometich’s quest for identity.
Initially, Tometich wanted her mother’s story to go away. But when she began writing a cookbook in 2019, it morphed into a collection of personal stories. She said she realized the book offered her the chance to rewrite the narrative that defined
her mother in national headlines. After being charged with a felony, Josefina Tometich served five years of probation.
“I get to reclaim this and make it my own,” she said. “[I get to] connect with other multiracial Filipino Americans, Asian Americans or just anyone who’s felt other in their life.”
At UF in the early 2000s, Tometich had her eyes set on medical school with plans to eventually become a doctor. She said she never considered writing as a career option but fell in love with it when she landed a job at The News-Press in Fort Myers. She spent 18 years writing food reviews — sometimes under the pseudonym of a Frenchman named Jean Le Boeuf.
By age 39, however, she said she faced a “bit of a midlife crisis.”
Searching for a new direction for her writing, she revisited the 2015 mango tree incident.
“I didn’t know that this was a story that needed to be told, because it’s these memories that I had blocked out for a long time,” she said. “That incident proved in a lot of ways all of these burdens that [my mother had]
been carrying for so long.”
Tometich said she hopes her memoir pulls readers “out of the otherness” and “help[s] them see themselves for who they are.”
Readers resonated with Tometich’s message — enough to win her the Southern Book Prize, which is a readers’ choice award chosen through popular vote. Booksellers who are part of the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance nominate award finalists, and sellers and their customers vote on the books.
Winning the award was “beyond the scope of dreams” of Tometich’s college self, she said.
“I think [my college self and I would] be high-fiving and jumping up and down and screaming,” she said.
Tometich’s husband, Buddy Martin, said he isn’t surprised by his wife’s success. Even with their two children, he said, Tometich “poured herself into the project.”
Martin, a 45-year-old UF secondary education and history alum, knew of Tometich before college but reconnected with her at UF a
few days before her freshman year in 1998. They’ve been together ever since.
Martin described Tometich as a “fun, cynical and honest” author and said her writing process, which often kept her up late into the night, was “cool to watch.”
“[There’s] this flow and this snappiness to her writing that I think just draws people in and keeps them connected,” he said. “She really bared her soul in this project.”
Natasha Powell, a UF public relations alum who lived with Tometich at Beaty Towers, said “The Mango Tree” resonated with her because it helped her understand how Tometich grew up and “how complicated it is to be different in South Florida.”
“I’m incredibly proud to be her friend,” 44-year-old Powell said. “I think she just really is a stellar example of the incredible people that come out of that college.”
As for what’s next, Tometich is already working on a follow-up memoir about her years as a food critic. She’s also writing a children’s book — it’s about mangoes.
@gracenmclung gmcclung@alligator.org
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2025
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AGRICULTURE
Strawberry farmers face challenges, but The Bryer Patch perseveres amid setbacks
FROM WEATHER TO FUNGUS, THE FARM’S OWNERS NAVIGATE THE CHALLENGES OF RUNNING A U-PICK FARM
By Corey Fiske Avenue Staff Writer
Going to a U-Pick strawberry farm can be a wholesome experience, but it takes a lot of work to get the berries ready for picking.
Heather and Travis Boyd own The Bryer Patch, a U-Pick farm located at 5700 SW 250th St., Newberry, Florida, spanning 30 acres with 2 acres dedicated to planting strawberries. Wind rushes through the open strawberry fields, with countless rows of plants growing the precious berries.
Travis Boyd, 45, is a fourth-generation farmer, and Heather Boyd, 39, grew up on a farm. But it’s only their third year growing strawberries for U-Pick. The Bryer Patch gets its name from their 12-year-old daughter.
Florida summers are too hot to propagate strawberry plants, Heather Boyd said, so she and her husband ship in new plugs — small plants ready to be transplanted — from Canada each year. Getting these plants to produce ripe, red strawberries week after week for picking doesn’t happen without some challenges, Heather Boyd said.
Not including labor and upkeep, the Boyds spent roughly $7,000 on strawberry plants this season, which equals about 20,000 plants.
The morning of Feb. 21, Heather and Travis Boyd, dressed in winter jackets, dis-
SOCIAL
cussed whether they’d open their fields to visitors for the upcoming weekend after pouring rain bruised and blemished many of the ripe strawberries.
Strawberries can still be eaten with blemishes, but they’re not as attractive for pickers and will rot faster than unblemished berries, Heather Boyd said. Their two blue heeler cattle dogs, Teeter and Sugar, followed them through the field, playing.
“It’s a tough business,” Travis Boyd said. “Every one of these strawberries would have been perfect for picking.”
The other main challenge is dealing with freezing temperatures. Strawberries thrive in cold weather, but freezing conditions can be detrimental. The Boyds use overhead irrigation to create a protective barrier around the plants, but this requires a diesel engine to pump the water and constant surveillance to ensure the irrigation system doesn’t malfunction.
Strawberries at the Bryer Patch are primarily sold through U-Pick, with a small portion sometimes offered pre-picked. They also use strawberries at the farm’s concession stand at the front of the farm for items such as strawberry lemonade and strawberry milkshakes.
The farm sells roughly 300 to 400 pounds of strawberries each week, Heather Boyd said. Visitors pay $4.50 for a pound of strawberries, but after recent rain damage, the Boyds said they’re considering adjusting the price.
Earlier in the season, a fungus spread among the strawberry crops and had to be fought off by fungicide and pruning. At this
holds special events. For Valentine’s Day, the farm hosted a date night, which cost $150 per couple and included a steak dinner, live music and each couple getting to pick their own strawberries. The day after Valentine’s Day, all of the ripe berries were picked.
Despite challenges, Heather Boyd said, she believes The Bryer Patch is not too different from other strawberry farms.
“Everybody has really good strawberries in this area, and we’re all family-owned and operated, so we all know what it takes to make it work,” she said.
Katelynn Turney-Rudisill, a 21-year-old UF music education senior, grew up going to a U-Pick farm near Panama City, Florida, on school field trips.
Turney-Rudisill said she remembers the tour guide who showed her how the farm worked and how strawberries grow. His stories made her laugh, and she said the strawberries she picked herself tasted better than ones from the grocery store.
point in the season, Travis Boyd said, the plants should be larger and almost touching each other. Instead, they appear small and separated, and many plants have dark brown patches on the leaves.
Another obstacle the Boyds have to look out for is deer, which like to feast on the fruit and its leaves. A fence wraps around the strawberry field to keep out the animal, but if they manage to get through, deer can spread diseases from one plant to another as they work their way around the rows of plants.
Amid obstacles, The Bryer Patch still
“Young me really didn’t like fruits or vegetables at all, but then, knowing where they came from and how much effort and time it took for these farmers to grow them — it was like, ‘Woah, OK, so there’s a lot of time and effort and care put into how farmers do things,’” Turney-Rudisill said.
The Bryer Patch is typically open on Saturdays and Sundays, but the weather and the number of strawberries picked leaves opening times subject to change. Strawberry season lasts from January through April.
cfiske@alligator.org
UF students ditch screens for board games and ‘IRL’ conversations at Reconnect events
THE RECONNECT MOVEMENT OFFERS STUDENTS A RARE CHANCE TO UNPLUG AND SOCIALIZE
By Sabrina Castro Avenue Staff Writer
Over 20 students gathered at the Plaza of the Americas Feb. 18 on an array of bright, multi-colored quilts. Students of different majors and backgrounds flicked cards onto the UNO pile, twisted their bodies into seemingly impossible knots on a Twister mat and sketched out absurd prompts in a game of Scrawl, a quirky take on Pictionary.
Cracking vinyl records spun from a record player connected to a mobile power source. The albums
of choice included soft-rock “Rumours” by Fleetwood Mac and lo-fi hip-hop “Operation: Doomsday” by MF Doom. In the uniquely analog setting, something was noticeably absent: phones.
This was no accident. The students belong to The Reconnect Movement, a group dedicated to reclaiming face-to-face interaction in the age of endless scrolling. Its rule is simple — no screens and no distractions. Just pure, uninterrupted connection.
According to the group’s website, the goal is to “host phone-free events every other week to create a fully engaged, uninterrupted social environment that Gen Z rarely experiences.” Meetings range from painting socials to group hikes and on-campus gatherings, where the only notifications come from the Century Tower bell.
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At each event, participants are met with a warm smile from Ryan Barker, the UF Reconnect chapter president, before they surrender their phones in exchange for a Reconnect-branded claim ticket — one of the few moments on campus where a phone doesn’t hold the price of admission, but the cost of presence.
Bianca Roberts, a 19-year-old UF psychology sophomore, said she heard about Reconnect through an email to psychology majors last year and has been coming to the bi-weekly meetings ever since. Approaching people offline can be daunting, Roberts said, especially if the person is scrolling on their phone, but at Reconnect, the pressure subsides.
“Here, you have people in the same mindset who want to do the same thing — that want to connect, that want to talk,” Roberts said. “It’s
just more casual. It’s just the values are aligned, and it’s nice to have a space for that.”
At Reconnect events, the usual barriers of digital distraction disappear. There’s no need to compete with notifications or wait for someone to look up from their feed. Whether debating the best strategy in a board game or reminiscing about childhood favorites, attendees engaged in conversations more easily with new faces.
For Roberts, the shift is refreshing. She said she’s keenly aware of how often her generation turns to their phones, sometimes without even thinking.
“It’s good to be conscious of when you’re using your phone and how you’re using it,” Roberts said. “I know some people just use it as an escape.”
For a generation deemed as
“chronically online” and a campus where phones are rarely out of students’ hands in settings like classes, libraries, dining halls and social events, it’s rare to see so many students willingly without phones for 90 minutes. Both the interest in the movement and the influence of the flyers in the bathrooms on campus is undeniable, with over 500 members in the organization’s GroupMe. Research from Kent State University indicates high-frequency student cell phone users tend to have higher anxiety levels and lower satisfaction with life compared to their peers who use phones less often.
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Courtesy to The Alligator
Heather and Travis Boyd stand amongst the bright red strawberries growing from the many rows of plants at The Bryer Patch on Feb. 21, 2025.
Gainesville’s Black community, soul music and how it made history
R&B AND SOUL BAND LITTLE JAKE AND THE SOUL SEARCHERS CONTINUE AFTER 50 YEARS OF COLLECTIVE EXPERIENCE
By Autumn Johnstone Avenue Staff Writer
Singing soul music was never about profit for singer Little Jake Mitchell — it’s about seeing people happy. Even now, at 80 years old and 50 years into his career, his band, Little Jake and the Soul Searchers, continue to use Gainesville’s historic R&B music scene as inspiration for innovation in their music.
Growing up in Tampa, Mitchell won talent shows left and right, but in 1957, he recorded his first record on the same original tape as rock ‘n’ roll legend Chuck Berry. It was shortly after in 1961 when he led his then-band the Fabulous Blenders to be the first Black performers at UF’s Gator Growl in front of 60,000 people.
Over the years, he performed alongside soul and blues artists James Brown and Marvin Gaye.
Mitchell formed the Fabulous Blenders with Earnest Long, Harold Lewis, Elijah “Buzzy” Walker and Henry Lewis while he attended Lincoln High School, a former public school for Black people during the segregation era.
The role of soul music in uniting communities
In the 20th century, The Chitlin’ Circuit, a network of venues for Black performers in the South, served as a creative outlet in response to the ever-changing social landscape. For just $1.50, one could experience passionate, authentic soul performances with over 500 hundred other fans in a single juke joint.
The Fabulous Blenders weren’t able to play in white establishments, Mitchell said, so their jobs mostly came from juke joints.
“Even if the white man owned a juke joint, he had the front part for the whites and he had a back for the Blacks,” he said. “That’s where we played at. It was something that we had to just get used to for a period of time.”
For years, social gatherings in Black communities lacked enjoyment because of segregation, Mitchell said. It was a struggle between Black and white people. But his music intrigued everyone.
Eventually, people began to question why they were separated in the first place, he said, and white and Black people came together to enjoy themselves.
Music broke that barrier, he said. Among all the other cities of the South, Gainesville was different.
For almost the entire time he’d perform, Mitchell felt his love for music shine through to his audience. He knew if he felt something, his fans would feel it, too.
For Mitchell, sometimes the music was fulfilling enough that his band, the Fabulous Blenders, could have performed all night. Mitchell and his band at the time believed in putting everything they had into their shows — “200% all of it,” he said.
In the audience of a typical 1960s Fabulous Blenders concert, Black and white people shared a love for music’s power to cross boundaries.
“Music was a thing of freedom for people, because it brought us together,” Mitchell said. “Music stops violence; music doesn’t start violence. People are the ones that start violence. If the world would listen to music, there would be no violence, because music is something that grows on you. It’s love.”
Little Jake and the Soul Searchers
Years later, in 2009, after most of the original members of the Fabulous Blenders passed away, Little Jake and the Soul Searchers were formed by Charles “Charlie Blade” Steadham. Steadham, the band’s saxophone player, introduced Mitchell to the rest of his current bandmates. Steadham played alongside the Soul Searchers’ trumpet player Lanard Perry in the early 1970s funk ensemble, Weston Prim and Blacklash.
Playing in Weston Prim and Blacklash as part of the horns section, now 70-year-old Perry saw how music challenged racism and encouraged social integration even within his own band. Many of its members came from various backgrounds, he said, anywhere from hippies to Black power advocates.
Since soul music gave the Gainesville community freedom, Perry knew he had to give back to the Black community through his music. Even early on in his career while he played with his first band, The Uptights, he felt the Black
community in Gainesville raised him like a family member would, he said.
Perry recalled one day when he sat at the counter of a local Gainesville restaurant, waiting to rehearse.
“The proprietor, Denise Henry, said … ‘Are you hungry?’ and I said, ‘Yes ma’am, but I don’t have any money,’” he said. “And she said, ‘I didn’t ask you if you had any money. Are you hungry?’ [and I said] ‘Yes ma’am, I am hungry.’ And she fed me.”
Even though soul music is marked by history, the community associated with it shows Perry that it’s not a dying genre, he said.
Communities can easily limit a person’s perspective when they lose sight of how vast the world is, he said. Part of the reason Perry plays the trumpet is because of music’s educational value that pushes him to improve his skills. Just because Perry wasn’t “gifted enough to be a heavy hitter” like many recording
artists, didn’t mean he couldn’t play and have fun, he said.
“When you stop learning, you start dying,” Perry said.
Another member of Little Jake and the Soul Searchers is 41-year-old trombonist Brian Stevens, who joined the band after playing at local jam sessions in Gainesville. While performing at venues with the Soul Searchers, Stevens learned musical skills from his well-experienced bandmates and saw the way in which music crosses all generations, boundaries and walks of life, he said.
“It’s important that people get exposed to [soul and R&B music],” Stevens said. “I think that’s how I can keep on continuing to have an audience — that people see it live … That’s when, for a lot of people, it clicks.”
Morgan Waters // Alligator Staff
Lanard Perry, Little Jake and the Soul Searchers trumpet player on Wednesday, Feb. 19, 2025.
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Sports and politics are two sides of the same coin
On Feb. 9 around 8:30 p.m., millions of fans sat in their living rooms, eyes glued to their screens as rapper Kendrick Lamar took the Super Bowl halftime stage. For 13 minutes, fans watched as Lamar commanded the space, delivering a performance that was as visually striking as it was thought-provoking.
For some viewers, it was a powerful, unexpected moment — a reminder of the deeper social issues that often lurk beneath the surface of sports. For others, it was just a performance, another spectacle on a night meant for football.
As the cameras cut away from Lamar and the football game resumed, the focus quickly returned to touchdowns, penalties and commercials. But for some, the halftime performance still lingered in their minds.
Lamar’s performance stirred emotions, sparked debates and drew the attention of millions. It was a perfect example of the dual role sports play in society — both as a platform for political statements and as a massive, unifying distraction from them.
Despite how any viewer may feel about this year’s halftime performance and the messaging it included — like the divided American flag and Samuel L. Jackson playing Uncle Sam — political statements in sports are nothing new. Sports have always been an epicenter for social and political causes, with players and entertainers leveraging their positions to make their voices heard.
One of the most famous protests in sports history occurred in 1968 when track and field athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their fists in a Black Power salute on the Olympic podium. Decades later, Colin Kaepernick protested police brutality by kneeling during the playing of the national anthem, which sparked a heated controversy that
Column
went well beyond the football field.
Despite being presented as apolitical, sports are frequently at the forefront of cultural and political conversation, as seen by these acts of rebellion.
This intersection of culture and athletics has allowed figures like Lamar to inject political discourse into spaces that often strive to remain neutral, forcing conversations that some might prefer to ignore. Whether met with praise or controversy, these moments reveal a fundamental truth: sports are never just about the game.
Yes, it’s easy to get lost in the game, focusing solely on the excitement of player performance and the final outcome. In those moments, the game feels like an isolated world where nothing else matters. But beneath the surface, sports are connected to larger cultural and political conversations that can’t be ignored, no matter how much we try to focus on just the play itself.
“When you’re watching a game, that game takes over everything and everything else falls away. That becomes your whole world,” UF psychology professor Erin Westgate said. “At that moment, the next play is the most important thing.”
The tension between using sports as an escape from the outside world while simultaneously allowing moments of controversy to seep in is at the heart of the sports experience. Regardless, people gather to watch and play the sport that they love and for those few moments forget about the troubles of life.
“There are moments in time where you can focus on the performance of a team or your own performance and socializing with others. And in that moment we forget a lot of our everyday challenges,” UF sports management professor Kyriaki Kaplanidou said.
While on her recent tour, Icelandic singer-songwriter Björk expressed her distaste for the current state of the music industry in an interview with Variety, claiming streaming culture has ruined the music industry, specifically citing Spotify. But, how could something that revolutionized the music industry also plague it?
Music streaming has been around for years before the creation of streaming services. In 1999, Napster was created, a website that allowed users to download and share music files for free. Despite the site being shut down in 2001 due to legal disputes, it laid the groundwork for a dramatic change in the relationship between music consumers, producers and the artists themselves.
However, what initially appears to be a conduit for an easier connection between listeners and creators has actually come to harm the way the music industry operates. Before online streaming, music was accessible one way: physically. Whether this was attending a live concert or buying CDs, the act of going out of your way to enjoy music was more involved than a
subscription to a service, and it was possible to earn a living off that.
How does something like Spotify compare to that?
Well, according to Variety, Spotify pays about $0.005 per stream of a song — money that must go through production companies first before the artist can get paid. On the higher end of this, according to Statista, Amazon Music pays about $0.008 per stream.
The unfortunate reality of this is that unless an artist is constantly topping the charts in streams, they aren’t making that much money.
As a result of this, the best way for an artist to make a living in their profession reverts to the physical medium, but in a world that has become so reliant on technology and placing the power in the individual consumer, this is no longer feasible. For example, according to NBC News, there has been a sharp decrease in ticket sales for artists who aren’t as big as someone like Taylor Swift, accompanied by rising ticket prices, which has forced many artists to cancel shows altogether.
If the solution of returning to physical
Yet, while sports offer a temporary escape from reality, it also serves as a powerful stage for activism and social change. There are differing opinions: sports should remain free of controversy, or sporting events should serve as a platform for political messaging. Sports leagues and sponsors frequently have to choose between avoiding controversy and endorsing activism when it comes to their response to political assertions.
For instance, the NBA supported the Black Lives Matter movement and permitted players to wear jerseys with social justice slogans. However, as Kaepernick became a divisive figure, the NFL originally disassociated itself from his protest and refused to sign him to any team.
These instances demonstrate the difficulties of combining politics and sports — where financial gains, public sentiment and individual beliefs all clash.
Despite the ongoing debate, one truth remains: sports have an unparalleled ability to capture the world’s attention. Whether it’s an Olympic protest, a halftime performance or a post-game interview, these moments force conversations that might not otherwise take place. Even as fans seek an escape in the thrill of competition, the reality is that sports have always been intertwined with politics.
The question is not whether sports and politics should mix, but rather how we choose to engage with the messages that mixture brings to the forefront.
Isis Snow is a UF journalism and sports media junior.
Why music can’t thrive in a streaming world
media and attempting to make money normally through streaming services isn’t feasible, then where does that leave artists to make their money?
The answer, of course, is social media. Have you ever scrolled through Instagram and been annoyed by a song that just won’t go away? Do you feel like you can’t scroll without hearing the same hook from a song? That’s probably because the song is trending; it captivated general audiences and increased the popularity of the artist, even if for just a little bit.
It feels like artists have begun to craft their songs to trend on purpose, writing less for the sake of expressing their passions and more to make sure that TikTok audiences will use the same 15 seconds over and over and hopefully push their song to the top charts on streaming services.
We’ve arrived at a crossroad — one where musicians have to choose between making music for the sake of passion, understanding that they will not be able to support themselves on their music alone, or engineering songs to become trendy.
Art loses its soul when pressed into a
here are not necessarily those of
corner like this and loses its diversity in the process. If the only songs that make money are the ones that sound like the top five artists at any given time, the possibility of exploring new genres greatly diminishes.
Andres Arguello opinions@alligator.org
The most disappointing aspect of this is that in theory, streaming services should have been an easy gateway to new music, genres and artists, and to a degree it still is. Many smaller artists consistently upload new music, but the possibility of their success ultimately depends on the random chance that their music makes it to the mainstream social media audience.
The more we limit artistic independence, the more we limit our voices. Expression through music is important, and it shouldn’t be reserved for just the most popular voices.
Andres Arguello is a UF English and psychology junior.
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1. TELEVISION: The show "Happy Days" is a spinoff of which older sitcom?
2. LITERATURE: Which author created the character Hercule Poirot?
1. MEASUREMENTS: How many inches are in a mile?
2. ASTRONOMY: What does the acronym SETI mean to the scientific community?
3. U.S. PRESIDENTS: Where is Barack Obama's presidential library located?
4. GEOGRAPHY: What river forms part of the border between the United States and Mexico?
3. LANGUAGE: What does the Latin prefix “sub-” mean in English?
5. ASTRONOMY: Which planet in our solar system has the strongest gravitational field?
6. U.S. STATES: Which four states intersect at the Four Corners monument?
7. SCIENCE: What is anemophily?
4. U.S. PRESIDENTS: Who was the only president to serve two nonconsecutive terms?
8. MOVIES: How much does an Oscar award trophy weigh?
9. WEATHER: What is a haboob?
10. MEASUREMENTS: How many millimeters are in a meter?
5. LITERATURE: Which 20th-century movie star penned the autobiography “Me: Stories of My Life”?
6. HISTORY: What was the first National Monument proclaimed in the United States?
7. GEOGRAPHY: Where is the island of Luzon located?
8. MOVIES: Which sci-fi movie has the tagline, “Reality is a thing of the past”?
1. Tommie
1. The Varsity Match, first played in 1872, is an annual rugby union fixture played between what two English universities?
2. What Hockey Hall of Fame defenseman won Stanley Cups with the New Jersey Devils (1995, 2000, 2003) and Anaheim Ducks (2007)?
9. GENERAL KNOWLEDGE: What was the name of the United States’ first nuclear-powered submarine?
3. Whose permanent residence was a three-room suite at Salt Lake City's University Park Hotel during his tenure as head coach of the Utah Utes men's basketball team from 1989 to 2004?
10. GAMES: What are the four railroad properties in Monopoly?
4. Who had more NFL regular-season head-to-head victories between the Green Bay Packers' Curly Lambeau and the Chicago Bears' George Halas?
Answers
5. Pitcher Gus "Cannonball" Weyhing, who played from 1887-1901, holds what dubious Major League Baseball career record?
1. 63,360 inches
6. The mashie-niblick, cleek, jigger and baffing spoon are obsolete types of what sports equipment?
2. Search for extraterrestrial intelligence
3. Below or insufficient
7. First overall NBA Draft picks Victor Wembanyama (2023) and Zaccharie Risacher (2024) both hail from what country?
4. Grover Cleveland
5. Katharine Hepburn 6. Devils Tower, 1906
7. The Philippines
8.
Oxford and Cambridge.
Scott Niedermayer.
Rick Majerus.
Halas went 32-18-4 vs. Lambeau.
Most batters hit, with
France.
"Love, American Style."
Agatha Christie.
Chicago, Illinois.
The Rio Grande.
Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Colorado.
Pollination by the wind.
Sudoku solution
El Caimán
LA DECISIÓN AFECTA A LAS LLCS CENTRADAS EN GRUPOS ESTUDIANTILES SUBREPRESENTADOS
Por Pristine Thai
Escritora de El Caimán
Traducido por Gabriella Chavez
Escritora de El Caimán
La UF suspendió indefinidamente todas las actividades en seis Comunidades de Aprendizaje Vivenciales sin enfoques académicos el 17 de febrero, justo días después de que la Oficina de Derechos Civiles de la administración de Trump prohibiera la consideración de la raza en cualquier decisión tomada por las instituciones académicas a nivel nacional.
Las Comunidades de Aprendizaje Vivenciales, conocidas como LLCs, fueron descritas anteriormente como “comunidades de estudiantes basadas en intereses que viven juntos dentro de los dormitorios universitarios”, pero el lenguaje en el sitio web de Viviendas en la UF ha cambiado a “basadas en lo académico.”
Cuatro de las seis comunidades suspendidas estaban centradas en poblaciones subrepresentadas, incluidos los estudiantes afroamericanos, estudiantes de primera generación, internacionales y LGBTQ+. El resto era dirigido a estudiantes interesados en
las artes y estudiantes de fuera del estado.
Este cambio se produce después de la orden de la Oficina de Derechos Civiles del Departamento de Educación de EE. UU. el 14 de febrero, que amplió la sentencia de la Corte Suprema de 2023 contra la acción afirmativa en las admisiones universitarias. Bajo la orden, la prohibición ahora cubre “todos los demás aspectos de la vida estudiantil, académica y en el campus”, incluyendo las becas, el apoyo administrativo, las ceremonias de graduación y la vivienda.
Las universidades que no cumplan con la orden corren el riesgo de perder fondos federales.
La reciente oleada de órdenes de la administración Trump se suma a las leyes del gobernador Ron DeSantis y la legislatura estatal dominada por el Partido Republicano para eliminar los programas de DEI (Diversidad, Equidad e Inclusión) en los campus universitarios. DeSantis firmó un proyecto de ley que recorta los fondos para las iniciativas de DEI y restringe los cursos que enseñan sobre la política de identidad o las injusticias sistémicas.
Para alinearse con la nueva legislación estatal, UF recortó 5 millones de dólares en gastos hacia esfuerzos de diversidad el año pasado y cerró su Centro de Inclusión y Compromiso Multicultural, un centro para estudiantes de UF que incluía oficinas dedicadas a grupos minoritarios.
La portavoz de la UF, Cynthia Roldan,
escribió en un correo electrónico que la pausa en las LLCs no académicas apoya la implementación continua del plan de 10 años para la vivienda en el campus de la UF. Ella no respondió directamente a preguntas sobre por qué la pausa solo incluye las LLCs basadas en intereses e identidad, si la directiva de la administración Trump influyó en la decisión o cuánto financiamiento reciben las LLCs, si es que alguna.
Entre las comunidades suspendidas está la Lavender LLC, que se organizó en torno a temas de género y sexualidad. Establecida en el Complejo Residencial Springs en 2021, la comunidad proporcionó las primeras viviendas inclusivas de género en la UF.
A pesar de la pausa, las suites de género mixto seguirán estando disponibles en Springs, independientemente del destino de la LLC, según un asistente estudiantil de Vivienda UF, pero no estaba claro en qué pisos y edificios se mantendrían esas instalaciones. Roldan escribió en un correo electrónico que Vivienda UF trabajaría con los estudiantes que tengan “solicitudes específicas” caso por caso.
Robin Anstett, un estudiante de tercer año de informática de 20 años que vivió en Lavender LLC durante su primer año, dijo que la comunidad le dio la tranquilidad de saber que sus compañeros aceptarían su identidad de género cuando primeramente se identificó de esta manera.
“Estar en un espacio con otras personas queer, ver a otras personas queer... cosas como
LUNES, 24 DE FEBRERO DE 2025
www.alligator.org/section/elcaiman
esas fueron realmente significativas para mí”, dijo Anstett.
Como parte de su programación como LLC, Lavender organizó eventos comunitarios que incluían sociales, educación sexual y cursos sobre historia LGBTQ+ y de mujeres.
Kendal Broad, profesora de sociología de la UF que impartió uno de los primeros cursos de Lavender sobre justicia social, dijo que la “diversa y resiliente comunidad de estudiantes queer y trans no desaparecerá simplemente” con los recientes cambios.
“Una pregunta importante es qué planes tiene la UF ahora para asegurarse de que todos los estudiantes puedan prosperar académicamente y contribuir con toda su singularidad a nuestra comunidad universitaria”, dijo Broad.
La Unión Estudiantil Orgullo de la UF emitió una declaración el 21 de febrero, diciendo que sus miembros estaban “profundamente perturbados” por la pausa en las LLCs no académicas y está preparada para “aplicar presión” a los funcionarios administrativos con sus socios. La organización celebrará una rueda de prensa y una reunión pública el 27 de febrero sobre cómo planean abordar las acciones de la universidad que afectan a los estudiantes LGBTQ+.
Lea el resto en línea en alligator.org/section/elcaiman. @pristinethai pthai@alligator.org
La comunidad morena de Gainesville, la música ‘soul’ y su impacto en la historia
LA BANDA DE R&B Y ‘SOUL’ ‘LITTLE JAKE AND THE SOUL SEARCHERS’ SIGUE EN PIE TRAS 50 AÑOS DE TRAYECTORIA
Por Autumn Johnstone
Escritor de El Caimán
Traducido por Vera Lucia Pappaterra
Escritora de El Caimán
Cantar música soul nunca ha sido negocio para el cantante Little Jake Mitchell; para él, se trata de hacer a la gente feliz. Incluso ahora, a sus 80 años y con medio siglo de carrera, su banda, “Little Jake and the Soul Searchers”, sigue encontrando inspiración en la histórica escena de "R&B" de Gainesville para innovar su música.
Mitchell creció en Tampa y desde joven ganó concursos de talentos por doquier. Pero en 1957, grabó su primer disco en la misma cinta original que usó la leyenda del rock ‘n’ roll Chuck Berry. Poco después, en 1961, lideró a su banda de aquel entonces, “The Fabulous Blenders”, para convertirse en los primeros artistas morenos en presentarse en el “Gator Growl” de la Universidad de la Florida ante 60,000 personas.
A lo largo de los años, compartió escenario con íconos del “soul” y el “blues” tales como James Brown y Marvin Gaye. Mitchell formó “The Fabulous Blenders” junto con Earnest Long, Harold Lewis, Elijah "Buzzy" Walker y Henry Lewis mientras estudiaba en la secundaria Lincoln, una escuela pública para afroamericanos en la época de la segregación. El papel de la música “soul” en la unión de comunidades Durante el siglo veinte, el “Chitlin’ Circuit", una red de locales para artistas morenos en el sur de Estados Unidos, sir-
Mantente al día con El Caimán en Twitter. Envíanos un tweet @ElCaimanGNV.
vió como un espacio creativo en medio de un paisaje social en cambio constante. Por solo $1.50, cientos de personas podían disfrutar de presentaciones apasionadas y auténticas en un solo “juke joint”, establecimientos sociales orientados hacia morenos en EE.UU..
Mitchell recordó que “The Fabulous Blenders” no podían tocar en establecimientos para personas blancas, por lo que la mayoría de sus actuaciones se realizaban en “juke joints".
“Incluso si un hombre blanco era dueño del lugar, tenía la parte delantera para los blancos y la parte trasera para los morenos”, dijo. “Ahí es donde tocábamos. Era algo a lo que tuvimos que acostumbrarnos por un tiempo”.
Durante años, las reuniones sociales en las comunidades morenas carecían de alegría debido a la segregación, comentó Mitchell. Había una lucha constante entre morenos y blancos, pero su música despertaba la curiosidad de todos.
Eventualmente, la gente empezó a cuestionarse por qué estaban separados, explicó, y tanto blancos como morenos comenzaron a reunirse para disfrutar de la música.
“La música rompió esa barrera”, afirmó Mitchell. Entre todas las ciudades del sur, Gainesville era diferente.
Cada vez que se presentaba, Mitchell sentía cómo su amor por la música llegaba al público. Sabía que si él sentía algo, sus seguidores también lo sentirían.
Para Mitchell, la música era tan gratificante que, en ocasiones, “The Fabulous Blenders” podían tocar toda la noche. Él y su banda creían en entregarse completamente en cada show, “con el doscientos por ciento de esfuerzo”, dijo.
En los conciertos de “The Fabulous Blenders” en los años 60, blancos y morenos compartían una misma pasión: el poder de la música para romper barreras.
“La música era sinónimo de libertad para la gente, porque nos unía”, dijo Mitchell. “La música detiene la violencia; la música no la inicia. Son las personas las que comienzan la
violencia. Si el mundo escuchara música, no habría violencia, porque la música crece dentro de uno. Es amor”. “Little Jake and the Soul Searchers” Años más tarde, en el 2009, después del fallecimiento de la mayoría de los miembros originales de “The Fabulous Blenders", nació “Little Jake and the Soul Searchers”, gracias a Charles “Charlie Blade” Steadham. Steadham, saxofonista de la banda, presentó a Mitchell a sus actuales compañeros. Junto con el trompetista Lanard Perry, Steadham había tocado en la banda de funk Weston Prim and Blacklash en la década de 1970.
Perry, de 70 años, recordó cómo la música desafió el racismo e impulsó la integración social, incluso dentro de su propia banda. Sus integrantes provenían de distintos orígenes, desde hippies hasta activistas del movimiento “Black Power".
Como la música “soul” representaba libertad para la comunidad de Gainesville, Perry sintió la responsabilidad de devolverle algo a la comunidad morena a través de su arte. Desde el inicio de su carrera, mientras tocaba con su primera banda, The Uptights, sintió que la comunidad morena de Gainesville lo crió como a un miembro más de la familia.
Perry recordó un día en que estaba en el mostrador de un restaurante local, esperando para ensayar.
“La dueña, Denise, me preguntó: ‘¿Tienes hambre?’ y le respondí: ‘Sí, señora, pero no tengo dinero’”, contó. “Ella me dijo: ‘No te pregunté si tenías dinero. ¿Tienes hambre?’ y le dije: ‘Sí, señora, tengo hambre’. Y me dio de comer”.
Lea el resto en línea en alligator.org/section/elcaiman.
@AutumnJ922 ajohnstone@alligator.org
Síganos para actualizaciones Para obtener actualizaciones de El Caimán, síganos en línea en www.alligator.org/section/elcaiman.
Dreaming
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2025
www.alligator.org/section/sports
Luke Heyman and Colby Shelton hope to spark Florida title run after bypassing professional offers
THE PAIR OF JUNIORS LOOK TO LEAD THE GATORS BACK TO OMAHA FOR THE THIRD YEAR IN A ROW
By Hugh Green Sports Writer
For every kid that grows up playing baseball, the ultimate dream is to make it to the big leagues. This dream could have been a reality for a pair of Gators during the offseason. Instead, both decided to come back to Gainesville in hopes of returning to Omaha to win the most prestigious prize in college baseball: an NCAA title.
Shortstop Colby Shelton and catcher Luke Heyman, both juniors, tested the waters of the 2024 MLB Draft before determining it would be best to give college ball one more shot. Shelton was selected in the 20th round by the Washington Nationals, while Heyman went undrafted but had the opportunity to sign as a free agent.
“No matter where you get picked, it’s cool to hear your name called or see it on the screen,” Shelton said. “Most kids growing up, their dream is to play professional baseball, so just to see your name called at some point is a really cool experience.”
The road to UF
Shelton began his collegiate career with the Alabama Crimson Tide. He started 59 games as a true freshman, hitting .300 with 25 home runs and 51 RBIs. This production at the plate earned him a first-team freshman All-American selection, per D1Baseball.
After Crimson Tide head coach Brad Bohannon was fired near the end of Shelton’s freshman year, the star left-handed hitter entered the transfer portal as D1 Baseball’s No. 6 transfer in college baseball. The high-profile pickup was poised for a great sophomore season with the Gators, but Shelton’s numbers
WOMEN'S TENNIS
Florida infielder Colby Shelton (10) celebrates with infielder Cade Kurland (4) and infielder/outfielder Bobby Boser (6) after a home run as the Florida Gators face the Dayton Flyers on Saturday, Feb. 22, 2025, at Condron Family Ballpark in Gainesville, Fla.
dropped in Gainesville.
He hit .254 and slugged significantly less in 2024 than the year prior. Shelton did still hit for power, as he knocked out 20 long balls and brought in 56 RBIs. However, the production he wanted for his stock to rise in a draft-eligible year was not there.
“Obviously last year, I didn’t have the best year to put me in a place to get picked super, super high,” he said. “I just thought I was going to go a little higher than I did and ultimately just didn’t get picked where I wanted to.”
As for Heyman, he was tabbed as the No. 128 overall pros-
pect going into 2024’s draft, according to Perfect Game. He was another draft-eligible sophomore for the Gators who shined during his first year in Gainesville, earning All-SEC Freshman Team honors, and had big expectations going into his sophomore campaign.
However, like Shelton, his numbers took a turn for the worse in 2024. Heyman’s average dropped 68 points to .246 last season, and his strikeout rate went up, fanning 74 times in 66 games.
“Performance-wise, not what I wanted,” Heyman said. “Team-wise, we did everything we wanted. We wanted to go to Omaha, we came short of a championship.”
Heyman said he didn’t have high expectations going into the draft following his relatively disappointing offensive numbers in 2024. Through the three days and 20 rounds, Heyman did not hear his name called, sparking his willingness to come back to UF.
His agent spoke with multiple teams after the draft concluded, but the organizations knew there was almost no chance of Heyman signing, he said.
“I pretty much knew I was coming back,” Heyman said. “This is home to me. It’s the best program in the country, and it was pretty easy for me to come back, spend another year here, have a great season with our team and have another chance of winning a national championship.”
Junior leaders
Heyman and Shelton share a similar sentiment and the same ultimate goal: win a title before beginning their professional careers.
Read the rest online at alligator.org/ section/sports. @HGreen_15 hgreen@alligator.org
From Saint-Étienne to Gainesville: How Noémie Oliveras achieved her goal of playing collegiate tennis
NOÉMIE OLIVERAS’ CONNECTIONS FROM FRANCE ALLOWED FOR AN EASIER ADJUSTMENT TO LIFE AT UF
By Jeffrey Serber Sports Writer
Assistant head coach Jeremy Bayon played a pivotal role in bringing freshman Noémie Oliveras to Florida’s tennis court. From flying to France to recruit her to sharing meals together, Bayon helped Oliveras adjust to the Gator lifestyle.
International students at UF made up roughly 11% of the 62,000-person student body as of Fall 2023, but for the Florida women's tennis team, five of its eight athletes moved across the pond, including all three freshmen. While they all face the challenge of adapting to a new lifestyle in the United States, Oliveras’ journey has been unique in its own way.
Bayon hails from the same city
in France as Oliveras, Saint-Étienne, which allowed the two to create a tight bond as Oliveras hurdles the challenges of adjusting to life in Gainesville.
Before college
Oliveras was introduced to tennis at a young age. Her mom was a big fan of the sport, and by the age of five, Oliveras picked up a racquet of her own for the first time.
Oliveras spent much of her youth career participating in the French circuit, including famous tournaments like the “Open Super 12 Auray” and “Les Petits As,” which hosted some of tennis’ brightest names, like Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic. Throughout that time, Oliveras consistently ranked in France’s top 10 for all age groups.
During these tournaments, Oliveras played a handful of American opponents who traveled during winter break to compete. Because of this exposure during her high school career, Oliveras felt prepared to go to the U.S. for collegiate tennis, making it her goal.
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However, the chances of her accomplishing her goal of playing college tennis in the U.S. started to fade.
“I wanted to do that after high school, and then I realized that I wasn’t really good enough to do that,” Oliveras said.
In her last year before college, things started to pick up for Oliveras, attracting the attention of Bayon as a result.
Recruiting Oliveras to UF
The assistant head coach moved from France in 1997 when he joined the Mississippi State men’s tennis team. Since then, he has spent his fair share of time around tennis in the U.S., which includes stints as UF men's assistant coach from 2003 to 2012 and Gainesville’s JETA Tennis Academy Head Coach from 2012 to 2015.
Bayon said he first learned about Oliveras through people who trained with her. He always had an eye on Oliveras because of her consistently high ranking in the youth age groups in France.
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“That’s how my interest was piqued a little bit, because usually, in my region, it’s not a very hot bed for tennis players,” Bayon said.
Seeing Oliveras’ potential, Bayon scheduled a meeting with the player to see if she was still interested in traveling to the U.S. to play tennis for Florida. Oliveras previously mentioned spending a month in the U.S. to play tennis and told Bayon she enjoyed it, he said.
Seeing the opportunity at hand, Bayon decided to pursue recruiting Oliveras and help her become a Gator.
“So I decided, instead of watching film, just to get on a plane and just go visit her,” Bayon said.
He watched Oliveras practice and met with her parents to explain what UF had to offer their daughter.
With Oliveras’ goal of playing in the U.S. becoming more of a reality, her parents had mixed emotions. Oliveras said her dad was supportive of the idea of her going to Gainesville, as he was a fan of Florida basketball, but the senti-
ment wasn’t quite the same for her mother.
She was scared of her daughter being alone.
“I kind of lost my biggest supporter,” Oliveras said. “So that was kind of like, ‘We have to cut the link that we have.’”
Despite her mother’s concerns, Bayon said his talk with the parents, and speaking the same language as them, allowed them to understand how beneficial going to Florida would be for Oliveras. He emphasized to them that not only would her tennis career benefit, but she would also receive a high-quality education.
Bayon’s visit to Saint-Étienne paid dividends, as Oliveras eventually received the support of both of her parents, and she signed with Florida on July 12.
Read the rest online at alligator.org/section/sports.
@JeffreySerber jserber@alligator.org
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