WUFT · Bicentennial Tree service Twenty years ago, Jack Davis started teaching environmental history at the University of Florida. On most work days outside his classroom, he would greet one of the university’s oldest residents: the tall, longleaf pine tree nicknamed the Bicentennial Tree. Davis became aware of the tree’s …
Read More »Fahrenheit 352? What Alachua County educators are saying about book removals
Even as national attention focuses on Florida and other states controlling what books students can read, some Alachua County teachers haven’t faced any issues with certain books being removed from public schools. Jay Winter Collins, a part-time teacher at W.A. Metcalfe Elementary School and children’s book illustrator, said if her …
Read More »Five years and 17 lost lives: South Florida still mourns the MSD shooting
Gina Montalto lost her life five years ago during the Majory Stoneman Douglas school shooting. Her father, Tony, said on Tuesday during the five-year memorial of the event that she was loving, caring, kind and compassionate. She was a straight-A student, a girl scout, and a member of the color …
Read More »Trump’s claims in helping DeSantis’s 2018 win raises political figures’ eyebrows
Florida’s outgoing Democratic agricultural commissioner, Nikki Fried, is asking the Justice Department to knock down former President Donald Trump’s claims that he used the FBI to help Gov. Ron DeSantis win the gubernatorial race in 2018. Last week, Trump said in an online post without citing any evidence that he …
Read More »Football hooligans told him holocaust never happened; his relatives died in Nazi death camps
Mark Bleiweis, his wife, Jennifer, and his sister-in-law left their seats early during Saturday night’s football game between Florida and Georgia. As they exited the TIAA Bank Field in Jacksonville, they heard shouting from a sea of people – but it wasn’t about touchdowns. It took a few seconds for Bleiweis, a University of Florida professor and heart surgeon, to track the shouting. He said he saw a group of men, young and middle-aged, yelling antisemitic remarks. The sheriff’s office said no crimes were committed because the comments were protected as free speech.
Read More »Tongue in cheek, UF wrestles with mystery thefts of ‘Top 5’ banners on campus
After a second consecutive year of mysterious thefts of “Top 5” banners hung across campus to commemorate its national ranking among public universities, the University of Florida appears to be throwing up its hands and making a gag out of the pilfering. A new TikTok the university posted this week …
Read More »Audio postcard: What some UF students think of the debt relief plan
The White House has released data that shows more than 2 million Florida borrowers could benefit from the Biden Administration's plan for student debt relief.
Read More »Police: Car on fire, with only 3 tires driving through darkness near UF campus
Imagine this: A witness called police to report a silver station wagon on fire with only three tires being driven along one of the city’s roads that border the University of Florida campus. When police tried to pull the car over, the driver didn’t immediately stop. Authorities accuse 23-year-old Adrian Vincent Hernandez of Gainesville of fleeing police, resisting an officer and driving with a suspended license. It wasn’t clear whether the driver was missing a spare tire or didn’t know how to change one. Police said Hernandez told them he didn’t stop because he just wanted to get home in the hours after midnight Sunday.
Read More »Students at UF secretly recorded nude in dorm bathrooms, showers angry over sentence for man linked to cases at four universities
Alachua County Circuit Judge James M. Colaw last week sentenced Deontre Donnell Mason, 25, of Carterville, Illinois, to one year of house arrest followed by four years of probation with electronic monitoring. Mason pleaded no contest to nine felony charges of video voyeurism.
Read More »Alachua County School Board elections: District 5 features pair of competing educators
With District 5 board member Rob Hyatt announcing that he won’t run for the seat he's held since 2014, that district is guaranteed to have a new member elected later this month in either Kay Abbitt or Prescott Cowles.
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