Will Muschamp said on the first day of spring practice that Florida’s preliminary depth chart was worth as much as the sheet of paper it was printed on. Three weeks later, the value has not gone up — at least not for the quarterbacks.

“If we started the season today, John Brantley would be our starter,” Muschamp said after Saturday’s spring game.

Based on the tiny sliver the team showed, you should be happy the season isn’t starting today. Despite the hype about a new offense being a natural fit for Brantley, the end result looked eerily similar to the team’s 2010 performance.

Muschamp said Brantley completed almost 70 percent of his passes during practices this spring, but in the first half Saturday, the only time we could see him, Brantley completed just 4 of 14 passes for 45 yards.

Several players said after the game the passing attack did not look much different than it had during closed practices, and not everyone is sold on Brantley starting next year.

“Tyler Murphy, I like him the best,” receiver Robert Clark said. “He came a long way. Last year, he was pretty good, but I guess he wasn’t as comfortable. This year, he stepped up a lot.”

Murphy was barely better than Brantley on Saturday, finishing 7 of 11 for 68 yards, a touchdown and an interception.

But he was better, making the quarterback competition more muddled than Muschamp indicated.

Granted, this was not an actual game; it was simply a scrimmage with fans watching. Perhaps we just caught Brantley on a bad day, but based on everything we have seen in the past year, there is no reason for him to have the starting job locked down.

Muschamp and others on the team blamed the struggles on a lack of protection. UF only used seven offensive linemen Saturday because of injuries, throwing the whole offense out of sync. Two of Brantley’s first four passes were batted down by defensive linemen.

But Murphy was working with the same patchwork line, and the passing game looked slightly better with him under center. Receiver Stephen Alli said Murphy has been more accurate this spring than he was last semester — his first on campus. He is also more confident and now takes command in the huddle.

For his part, Murphy talked about the mental errors he needs to clean up. On fourth-and-goal from the 4-yard line, he dumped the ball into the flats. During a two-minute drill, he took a sack. Two plays later, he was intercepted after underthrowing Malcolm Jones on a crossing route.

Murphy did not play well enough to leap to No. 1 on the depth chart, but at the same time, Brantley did nothing to separate himself. And this might not even be a two-horse race.

Jeff Driskel or Jacoby Brissett could step up. Heck, the biggest pass of the day came from the arm of Christian Provancha.

But for now, with everything else seemingly equal, Brantley’s experience has served as the trump card.

“John is the leader of the team,” Murphy said. “He’s been here, and he has experience. We go as he goes, and he has been working really hard this offseason. He’s the guy.”

But if playing time is accompanied with nothing but disappointment, how valuable is that experience?

About as valuable as that depth chart.

As the continued violence in Mexico begins to draw closer to home, students from both sides of the border are also affected.

For some students, the violence has made it difficult to visit family in Mexico and has turned what was once a routine trip into a gamble for their lives.

“It’s keeping us away from our family, our friends and from the lives we used to know,” said Arianna Martinez, a UH alumni who graduated in 2009.

“It’s been a struggle because we want to be with our family, but at the same time you begin to think about all the things that could happen if you go to Mexico.”

For Martinez, the violence in Mexico hit close to home last August when her brother-in-law was kidnapped after a gunfire battle in Monterrey, Mexico.

Martinez’s brother-in-law, a bodyguard for one of the CEO’s of the Cuauhtémoc Moctezuma Brewery, was mistaken for a drug cartel member and was kidnapped along with another bodyguard. Martinez’s brother-in-law was off duty at the time.

Two days later, Martinez’s brother-in-law was found.

“He was in a car stranded in one of the neighborhoods along with the other bodyguards,” Martinez said. “He was pretty beaten up and was in the hospital for five days.”

Martinez’s brother-in-law regained his health and has begun the process of applying for a residency in the US, in part to be away from the violence and to rejoin his wife and baby girl.

Mexicans attempting to leave the violence behind have applied for asylum. According to the US Department of Justice, in 2010 there were 3,231 asylum requests from Mexican nationals, but only 49 percent of them were granted.

The violence in Mexico has no restrictions or boundaries and has found itself on the doorsteps of the Monterrey Institute of Technology, a prestigious private university in Monterrey.

Last March two students from the university, Javier Arredondo and Jorge Antonio Mercado, were killed when they were caught between the crossfire of Mexican drug cartel hitmen and the Mexican army, the Monterrey Institute of Technology said in a statement last year.

“The violence has changed me in that now I am more careful,” said Jacobo Gómez, a mechanical engineer sophomore at the Monterrey Institute of Technology. “I avoid going to known dangerous areas and luckily I have yet to come face-to-face with any violence.”

Gómez can also count on the increased security measures the institute has implemented.

“The university has made several safety tips programs,” Gómez said. “It has also increased security personnel, and put a new system at the entrance where you can only enter by scanning your university credentials.”

The violence in Mexico has been ongoing for a couple of years now and has left some residents jaded.

“There are so many reports on shootings, deaths and road blockages that I’ve noticed people see it as a common thing now,” Gómez said. “That’s not to say that we get accustomed to living with violence, but we hear it so often that the news begins to all sound the same after a while.”

Clare Morgana Gillis, an Atlantic reporter in Libya who completed her Ph.D. in medieval history this spring at Harvard, was captured by forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi last Tuesday outside Brega, a city currently controlled by the Libyan government and plagued by intense fighting.

The Harvard History Department issued a news brief on the incident last Friday. Gillis, who has extensively covered the ongoing Libyan civil war, was detained with three other journalists— James Foley, an American freelance contributor to GlobalPost.com, Manu Brabo, a Spanish photographer, and Anton Hammerl, a South African photographer. Libyan rebels who witnessed the scene reported that the car carrying the journalists was stopped by fire exchange at an intersection, where the loyalists arrived in two pickup trucks and took the journalists into custody. The car was destroyed with a rocket-propelled grenade, but the driver was released.

The State Department, Human Rights Watch, the Committee to Protect Journalists, and the GlobalPost have been working together to secure the journalists’ release. Human Rights Watch also claimed to have notified NATO of the potential location of the journalists. However, as of last Friday, GlobalPost said it had been unable to confirm reports coming from Libya that the journalists would be taken to Tripoli and released.

Gillis, who also received a masters from Harvard’s Germanic Languages and Literatures Department in 2003, was a history advisor in Adams House during the 2008-2009 academic year. She was a teaching fellow for nine undergraduate courses, including the sophomore history tutorial, Government 1082: “What is Property?” and History 1101: “Medieval Europe”—now known as Societies of the World 41.

“Clare Morgana Gillis was reporting on the situation in Libya on behalf of The Atlantic and other American publications,” said Atlantic editor James Bennet in an article published on the Atlantic website on April 7. “We appeal to the Libyan authorities for her immediate and safe release, and for that of the three other journalists detained with her.”

This incident came after the release three weeks ago of four New York Times journalists, who were detained by pro-Gaddafi forces for six days and received brutal treatment. Lynsey Addario, the only female journalist among the four, claimed that she suffered from beating, death threats, and sexual assault.

New York City may not seem to be an ideal location to harvest organic crops, but a new initiative from Seeds of Change is trying to change that common perception.

Seeds of Change’s “Sowing Millions” project distributed 100 million seeds within 48 hours last week to large-scale farmers and community gardeners across the United States. With help from the New York Restoration Project, 2.5 million of those seeds went to gardeners in the city.

But it’s not all just about seeds — “Sowing Millions” is a project that is part of a much larger wave of promoting environmentalism in an urban setting. It’s about beekeeping and honey, too; about building “loop houses,” or simplified versions of greenhouses; and about finding as many ways as possible to push a grassroots environmental movement in an industrial city and nation. The project is made up of groups of young people as well as volunteers who jump-start the urban farms that are gaining popularity across the city.

Jimmy Owens, the corporate development manager of the New York Restoration Project, worked closely with Seeds of Change on the project and said the 2.5 million seeds reached 700 gardens and 10,000 community gardeners in the five boroughs.

If you think that it’s impossible to find gardens, just look up: Communities are using rooftops to sow these seeds. Fahima Islam, a CAS environmental studies major, said the initiative to encourage local farming is both healthy and efficient for New Yorkers.

“Rooftops, empty lots and abandoned warehouses all go to waste otherwise,” she said.
The Eagle Street Rooftop Farm, for example, is a 6,000-square-foot vegetable garden in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, with a beautiful view of the Manhattan skyline. Brooklyn Grange, another rooftop garden in Long Island City, sells vegetables to local businesses to provide jobs and improve the overall quality of life in the city.

“It is easier than you would think to grow your own food in New York,” Owens said. He added that even in the low-income neighborhoods that NYRP serves, “the people would gladly spend the extra money for these gardens.”

According to their website, Seeds of Change was founded in 1989 to make organic seeds available to farmers and gardeners. Today, the company supplies a large number of certified organic foods in order to merge the values of taste and sustainability.

Alli Shepherd, an RA in NYU’s Green House, said day-to-day behaviors, like recycling and participating in community gardening, can make a difference.

“If I had space here, I would definitely grow my own food,” she said.

Many people in the greater New York community have also embraced organic farming and community gardening.

“Space is maxed out,” Owens said, noting that some of NYRP’s most popular gardens host communities of 60 to 70 people while some even have waiting lists. “People are excited about growing their own food. They want to do it themselves.”

Most students on this campus are shocked to learn that one in four of their female peers are the victims of rape or attempted rape. But this is the reality that exists at Washington University and on college campuses across the nation. This week is Sexual Assault Awareness Week, and Student Life is taking a deeper look into sexual assault on campus and why so many rapes and rapists go undetected. In the hopes of debunking the myth that rape can only be defined as a violent crime between strangers, one student has shared her story of rape. Please note that the names of the rape survivor and her roommate have been changed to protect their anonymity.

Rachel was not brutally attacked, gagged or assaulted by a stranger. She did not go out alone, walk home late at night, or get lost in an unfamiliar part of town. But Rachel is a rape survivor.

The staggering yet silent reality is that Rachel is just one of an estimated 750 undergraduate female students currently at Washington University that have been the victims of rape or attempted rate.

These are not the violent rapes that are plastered on newspaper headlines, but the unspoken acquaintance rapes that pervade this campus. These rapes have gone largely unnoticed with the rapists rarely being confronted or facing consequence for their crimes.

According to Kim Webb, assistant director for community health and sexual assault services, nearly all sexual assaults on campus are assaults that occur between students, with the victim typically knowing the perpetrator.

A national survey conducted by the U.S. Department of Justice concluded that one in four college-aged women encounter an experience that meets the legal definition of rape or attempted rape during their college years. A survey conducted at the University in 2004 confirms that the occurrence of rape at Washington University is consistent with the national rate.

The issue of sexual assault on campus catapulted to the forefront of the Washington University community nearly four years ago in the aftermath of the violent rape of a female student in Myers House on the South 40.

The case—which came to be known as “the Myers incident”—is the only case of stranger rape on campus grounds in recent memory. It occurred when a man tailgated into Myers House, forced his way into the room of a female student and raped her.

In April 2010, a female student was raped and robbed in the DeMun neighborhood as she walked home from campus in the early hours of the morning.

Despite the high-profile nature of these two rapes, these cases stand apart from almost every other sexual assault on campus in terms of their brutality, publicity and the involvement of non-student perpetrators.

“Before it happened to me, I thought it was something that happened to other people,” said Rachel, a senior. “It’s happening here. Not with some lacrosse team at some other school, but here.”

One student’s story

During the fall semester of her sophomore year, Rachel went out with some friends to Morgan Street Brewery, a bar in downtown St. Louis that is popular among Washington University students on Thursday nights.

She doesn’t remember consuming enough alcohol to blackout, but she has few memories of the night and and doesn’t know how she became seperated from her friends.

The next day, she woke up naked in a man’s bed—a man whose advances she had rejected the weekend prior.

She has a hazy recollection of being on her back in his bed and feeling pain in her vaginal region.

The male student—who was a senior at the University at the time—acted as if everything was normal. He was polite and drove her back to her dorm on the South 40.

Two days later, Rachel was diagnosed with a urinary tract infection (UTI), which erased any of her doubts of whether she had had sex.

“I blamed myself for getting too drunk,” Rachel said. “I told myself that my UTI was my punishment.”

Coming to terms with the rape

Like most rape survivors, Rachel didn’t think to classify her assault until a month later when she told her best friend from home what had happened. Her friend responded by saying that her encounter was an instance of rape.

“I said ‘no, I had drunk sex,’” Rachel said.

Rachel subsequently researched date rape and discovered that her story was more than just a case of regretful, drunk sex.

Still, Rachel did not label her experience as rape and struggled to reconcile the violent images she typically associated with rape with her own assault.

“I didn’t feel like I had a right to be upset,” she said. “I didn’t remember it—why should I be mad at something I don’t remember?”

According to Webb, this reaction is common. She says that rape on this campus is so underreported because students often don’t label their assaults as rape.

“People don’t label it for what it is. People oftentimes don’t label acquaintance rape as rape,” Webb said. “Their vision rape is somebody jumping out of the bushes—it’s always violent, and it’s always a stranger. But that’s not what we see on this campus.”

Rachel said the nonviolent nature of her assault coupled with the fact that her rapist was a Washington University student further complicated her ability to grapple with her assault.

“He was one of us. How could he be this bad person?” Rachel said. “If he was a big scary rapist, then I’d be the victim of a big scary rape.”

She tried to repress her tangled emotions about the rape she couldn’t remember, but seemingly innocuous signs triggered thoughts of the night and consistently left her in tears.

There were days when she struggled to go to class and wished she could tell her professors what happened so that they would understand why she wasn’t fully invested in school.

The stress of school, personal issues and the assault eventually took their toll, and Rachel was forced to confront the rape.

A year after the rape, she confided about her experience to her roommate, her best friend from home and her boyfriend at the time.

But still, Rachel didn’t fully understand her emotions, and while she was relieved that they knew of her assault, she tried to hide her pain and was frustrated when they didn’t recognize the extent of what she was going through.

“I was finally in a bad enough place where I couldn’t deal with it emotionally anymore,” she said. “I was hiding it, but angry that people didn’t see how hurt I was.”

Her roommate Katie said she initially did not know how to help her. She eventually found that the most effective way to help was to listen, to always watch out for her and to make sure she felt safe when she went out.

“She didn’t know it was okay to be upset,” Katie said. “All I can do is be there. There are times that she has to cry for seemingly no reason, and I am there.”

When Rachel came to Katie about possibly going to therapy at Student Health Services, Katie said she actively encouraged her to do so.

Therapy helped Rachel to realize that her emotions were justified, and that the fact that she wasn’t violently raped by a stranger didn’t mean that she wasn’t raped.

“My reaction wasn’t as extreme as some reactions you read about, but it didn’t mean I wasn’t going through the same emotions,” she said.

Reporting rape on campus

Like most rape victims on Washington University’s campus, Rachel opted not to report her rape to the police or the campus’ judicial system.

She said that by the time she contemplated reporting her rape, it was a year after the fact, and her assailant had already graduated.

Had she woken up naked in a stranger’s bed that morning, she said her immediate reaction would have been to call the police.

Although national and Washington University-wide surveys indicate that one in four undergraduate female students will experience rape or attempted rape during their college years, only a minute fraction of these rapes are actually reported to the authorities.

According to the latest statistics compiled by the U.S. Department of Education, of all the rapes thought to occur on Washington University’s campus in housing facilities in 2009, only five were reported to campus authorities.

The five incidents of reported forcible rape in 2009 represent a decrease from the six reported offenses in 2008.

This small number of reported rapes suggest that a larger problem exists within the campus culture, compounded by a lack of open discussion about assaults between students.

Both Webb and Washington University Chief of Police Don Strom said that many factors contribute to a person’s decision not to report a rape. These can include victims blaming themselves, a fear of not being taken seriously by authorities, and a lack of awareness of what constitutes as rape.

“[The numbers] misrepresent the problems and unfortunately that results in an ambivalence about the issue and the seriousness of it,” Strom said. “Sometimes people have this sense that we don’t really have a problem because the numbers are so small or even nonexistent.”

Strom added that sexual assaults reported on campus are rarely reported to law enforcement but rather to administrators or other programs on campus.

The often-ambiguous nature of acquaintance rape makes the cases difficult to process in court, according to senior Laura Jensen, president of the student group S.A.R.A.H. (Sexual Assault and Rape Anonymous Hotline). Jensen said S.A.R.A.H. has never heard of an acquaintance rape case in St. Louis County that has gone through the courts.

Rape is not only limited to females. According to Webb, one in six males experience some form of sexual assault by the time they are 16. Many of these males come to terms with, and address these assaults, in college.

As discussion and education on sexual assault increases, Webb said that she hopes there will be an increase in the number of reported assaults as students learn what constitutes rape and feel more comfortable reporting their experiences.

“We need to work hard not to perpetuate the image of violent rape because that’s not what our students are experiencing,” Webb said. “I really think this campus is ready to address this issue.”

Defining rape

The University Student Judicial Code defines unacceptable sexual behavior as “sexual contact with any member of the University community or visitor to the University without that person’s consent, including but not limited to rape and other forms of sexual assault.”

Both the University judicial code and Missouri law clearly stipulate that a person under the influence of drugs or alcohol cannot give consent. Given the nature of alcohol on college campuses, this provision complicates many on-campus sexual encounters.

“My steadfast rule is that if you are drinking or having any drugs, you should not take or give consent because it is a hard line to define,” Webb said. “If alcohol is involved, typically consent is not, so it is rape.

While the relationship between alcohol and sex is not likely to fade away from college campuses in the near future, Jensen said the campus needs to focus on discussing what consent actually entails.

“I think we have got to be willing to talk about healthy sexual relationships on campus, and we have to be willing to talk about asking for consent and what consent means,” Jensen said.

In an effort to reduce sexual assault on campus, University administrators and students are currently finalizing the plans for the Green Dot Initiative—a strategy already implemented on many college campuses that is designed to promote social change by recognizing all members of the community as bystanders to violence and sexual assault. The program will train these bystanders how they can intervene during a potentially dangerous situation.

After years of controversy surrounding the hiring of a sexual assault prevention coordinator, this year marks the first academic year that Webb’s post as the sexual assault prevention coordinator has been filled.

Strom said that Webb’s position coupled with the Green Dot Initiative is a major step in confronting the misconceptions and myths surrounding sexual assault on campus.

“I think we are on the right track with having [Webb],” Strom said. “The Green Dot program reinforces what we are trying to do. Our community has to understand that it is a shared responsibility.”

Lessons for the future

Rachel and Katie’s experiences with rape changed the way they view sexual assault and how they make decisions when drinking and going out—they keep track of their friends in an effort to ensure that no one leaves alone.

“I never thought I would be so close to rape in this sense,” Katie said. “It’s shocking to realize that it’s not just happening in your community, but to someone that is close to you.”

Although Rachel is still coping with the rape, she is hoping to spread awareness of the prevalence and often nuanced nature of sexual assault.

“People don’t associate rape with a successful Wash. U. student. I feel like everyone is aware [of rape], but they don’t think it can happen,” Rachel said. “Getting through this and Wash. U. is something that I’m proud of.”

Before sitting down to write this column, I went online to check the latest news from Africa. I was going to write a column arguing passionately, and, I hope, convincingly, about the need for Western intervention in the African country of Cote d’Ivoire.

So, you can rightly assume that I was both surprised and delighted to read on the New York Times website that the United Nations and France have begun military strikes against the forces of former president Laurent Gbagbo.

Former president Gbagbo lost his campaign to remain president of Cote d’Ivoire, a former French colony, last November. The election, certified by several international agencies as fair and honest, awarded the presidency of this cocoa-rich nation to Alassane Ouattara. Unfortunately, Gbagbo refused to accept his loss, and held on to power. Since then, the situation in Cote d’Ivoire has only deteriorated.

Negotiations floundered, Ouattara set up his own government in his U.N.-protected hotel room, and, eventually, armed fighting began between forces loyal to each side.

Cote d’Ivoire descended into violence between pro-Ouattara supporters in the largely Muslim north and pro-Gbagbo supporters in the largely Christian south.

This violence culminated recently in the massacre of 1000 civilians in the town of Duekoue, a dangerous step towards genocide.

(Both sides deny responsibility for this massacre, though it does look like the blame falls on Ouattara’s forces.)

So I am pleased that France and the United Nations have stepped in to do something about it. France and the United Nations have commenced air strikes against military and political targets in Cote d’Ivoire. I am glad that someone in the Western world realized they had a duty to do so.

Yes, I said a duty.

You see, I advocate Western intervention to prevent genocides not just because I believe those who can prevent genocide have a responsibility to do so, and not because I am some naive bleeding heart who does not understand the so-called “real world.”

My insistence on aid and intervention for Cote d’Ivoire comes from my belief that the United States and Western Europe have a duty to help places like South America and Africa because our ability to do so, our wealth and all it buys for us, has been made at the expense of these places.

As a society, we often try to forget about the misdeeds of our past, to pretend things were not as bad as they truly were or to try to distance ourselves from what we claim to be the mistakes of our ancestors and therefore not our responsibility.

This is a fallacious argument.

Much of the wealth and power on which this country sits and uses to mold so much of the world into the shapes we find most pleasing has come to us because of what we and European imperial powers were able to take from places like Africa.

The Western world robbed Africa of its people and its resources, yet we assume that having given African countries their independence — a gift that we did not give but which we gave back — somehow absolves us of responsibility for the repercussions that African nations continue to suffer through.

By initiating military strikes against the despotic and violent forces of Laurent Gbagbo, France has made a bold step toward repaying the debt it owes its former colony and might just save a lot of lives in the process.

I hope, but do not expect, that we might see a greater response from the Western world toward the prevention of genocide and violence around the world, especially toward countries to which we owe so very much.

ST. PAUL, Minn. — Led by a 40-save performance by senior goaltender Shawn Hunwick, the Michigan hockey team beat top-ranked North Dakota 2-0 in its first Frozen Four appearance since 2008.

With just over six minutes left in the first period, freshman Jon Merrill slapped a laser from the blue line. Winnett picked the puck up his own rebound to the right of North Dakota goalie Aaron Dell and buried it for his fourth goal of the season and Michigan’s first goal of the game.

North Dakota came out flying in the second period, but Hunwick remained up to the task for Michigan after a stellar first period. The Fighting Sioux outshot the Wolverines in the first period, 14-10 and continued to hold and increase their shot-advantage throughout the second period.

Just over five minutes into the third period, the Fighting Sioux held a 29-15 shot advantage on the Wolverines, but because of strong defensive play down low by the Wolverines and some crucial saves by Hunwick, the Wolverines held onto their one-goal lead.

For a defense that was missing a presence in junior Brandon Burlon, who was a scratch for tonight’s Frozen Four contest, the rest of the Wolverine defenders made smart plays with and without the puck and were able to keep the potent North Dakota offense at bay, even as the Fighting Sioux continued to pressure Michigan in its own zone.

The Wolverines best scoring chance of the third period came at the 10-minute mark when Vaughan had a breakaway shot that rebounded to wide open junior defensemen Greg Pateryn, but Dell got a stick on Pateryn’s shot to keep it a one-goal game.

Merrill took a holding call with 8:50 left in the third period to give North Dakota its fourth power play opportunity of the game, but the Wolverine penalty killers again came up strong, with nice clears by Winnett and junior forward Luke Glendening.

North Dakota boasted the No. 2 team offense in the nation heading into Thursday’s Frozen Four game, but Vaughan scored an empty-net goal to put the Wolverines 2-0 with just under 35 seconds in the game and the Wolverine bench erupted.

Michigan takes on Minnesota-Duluth in the National Championship Game on Saturday at the Xcel Center in St. Paul.

A political stalemate in Congress over the federal budget may force the federal government to come to a halt if Democrats and Republicans fail to strike a deal.

If they can’t reach a compromise by the end of today, the federal government will partially cease operations.

With the political atmosphere on Capitol Hill growing more testy, Democrats and Republicans are playing a game of “chicken,” said Albert Matheny, associate dean for the UF College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and a political science professor.

“The sad thing is that it symbolizes the confrontational approach of a Congress willing to play games when we really need reasonable discussion of important fiscal issues, with suggestions for reasonable alternatives instead of grandstanding,” he said in an email interview.

The last time a partial government shutdown occurred was in 1995 when President Bill Clinton rejected two proposed budgets put forth by the Republican-controlled Congress. Some see the shutdown as the moment when Republicans, who were enjoying their greatest grip on the legislative branch  since the 1950s,  lost the political momentum they had been riding since the 1994 midterm elections.

Michael Bowen, a visiting lecturer in the history department at UF whose research focuses on American conservatism, pointed to then-Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich’s unwillingness to compromise as a key reason behind the GOP’s  sluggish showing in the last shutdown.

“He thought if he held to the principles of the Contract with America people would back him,” said Bowen in reference to the series of proposals brought forth by Republicans in the mid-1990s. “But that was not the case.”

That does not necessarily mean, Bowen said, Democrats will come out on top this time around. Unlike in 1995, when Clinton rejected two Republican budgets, Democrats  failed to pass a budget in 2010, which means they will be more open to culpability this time around, Bowen said.

In addition, Republicans, he said, have a Speaker of the House, John Boehner, who is more humble and willing to compromise than Gingrich was during his tenure as Speaker.

In a interview last month, Congressman Cliff Stearns, who represents Florida’s 6th Congressional District, expressed similar sentiments, noting how Boehner is viewed in more favorable terms by the American public than Gingrich was.

Stearns also said if a shutdown does take place, Republicans would not suffer the political setbacks they did in the mid-1990s as America’s financial situation is now in a much graver state.

If the shutdown does happen, Matheny expects it to be short-lived.

“Sooner or later, the temporizing will cease,” he said.

Who’s more to blame in this episode is up for interpretation.

Damien Filer, a political consultant and UF adjunct lecturer, said Republicans are using the budgetary process to “ram through a social agenda,” which includes hot-button topics such as climate change and abortion.

He believes Republicans should save the political stunting for issues much less vital than the federal budget.

“Republican leadership in the House is playing politics with people’s lives,” he said.

Ryan Garcia, the newly appointed chairman of UF College Republicans, said the group supports the GOP’s unflinching stance on the issue.

In an email interview, he specifically praised Boehner, Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor and Congressman Paul Ryan “for sticking to their guns and not caving in to more government spending,”

Stacy Eichner, president of UF College Democrats, said Tea Party members appear to be hoping for a shutdown, and Republicans are unwilling to compromise and focus on creating legislation addressing jobs and the economy.

She said representatives from both parties must work to prevent a shutdown, which would hurt the already struggling U.S. economy.

Regardless of who emerges victorious from the political deadlock, bitter partisanship, experts say, will continue to plague the American political system.

“I think both sides will continue to blame each other,” Bowen said.

Kyrie Irving has declared for the NBA Draft and will hire an agent, head coach Mike Krzyzewski said in a statement Wednesday.

“Our whole program is overjoyed with having Kyrie here for one year and that he has the chance now to pursue a dream of being a high draft pick and a great player in the NBA,” Krzyzewski said. “We are totally supportive of Kyrie, his family and his decision. We look forward to continuing to work with him during the upcoming months leading to his entry into the NBA and afterwards while he is an NBA player.”

Irving gave an interview to GoDuke.com after the announcement, and when he was asked what he would miss most about leaving Duke, he said it “gave him butterflies just to think about it.”

“First, I’m going to miss the entire student body. They’ve offered me so much support,” Irving said. “Secondly, I’m going to miss the coaching staff and the players because I’ve never felt such a special bond with anybody or any group of people that I felt here.”

Irving entered Duke as a highly-touted freshman and made his mark early on the college basketball landscape. He scored 17 points and dished out nine assists against Princeton in his first game. He dropped 17 again versus Kansas State in the CBE Classic a week later. And, on Dec. 1, he delivered one of the finest performances of any Blue Devil this season—31 points against a then-top-five Michigan State team.

It would all come crashing down on Dec. 4, though, against Butler. The freshman suffered what appeared to be a relatively innocuous toe injury, only to discover later it was much more serious than anyone had originally thought.

Irving didn’t suit up again until the ACC Tournament, when he participated in pre-game drills with the team. He played for the first time in three months in the NCAA Tournament’s first round, then, a week later, he capped off his Duke career with a 28-point performance in the loss against Arizona.

Last weekend, the freshman visited his family for five days in New Jersey, coming to his decision while there.

“I want to thank the entire staff at Duke, especially the coaches,” Irving said in the statement. “It was a great experience playing for Coach K. He taught me a lot about the game. Even when I was hurt, I learned a lot. Also a special thanks goes to the medical staff for getting me back on the court for the NCAA Tournament and my teammates for sticking with me throughout the entire year. Duke offered me an experience I could never have imagined.”

Now that his secretary of state days are over, retired Gen. Colin Powell lives just like any other American.

He drives to work everyday — in his silver Corvette.

He eats New York hot dogs — given to him for free by thankful food cart vendors.

He even gets TSA pat-downs, too — and very thorough ones at that, he said.

Powell said of all the things he misses most about his former position as Secretary of State is the private airplane, red carpet included.

“It was so cool,” Powell said to a packed audience in Bender Arena Wednesday night.

Sponsored by the Kennedy Political Union, Powell’s speech — one part comedy act, one part leadership advice — ran the gamut from the social media to nuclear weapons to his military career.

Powell said his grandchildren are trying to push him toward social media, but Twitter jargon confuses him.

“I don’t want to be a tweet!” Powell lamented to his grandson. He also discovered to his surprise that someone’s already created a Facebook profile with his name.

“It’s OK, Pop, you already have friends,” his grandkids reassured him.

Powell said new social media has reshaped the globe, but added that the ability to choose from such a wide range of sources can actually lead to narrower viewpoints.

“With so much information available to us all, there is a tendency to focus only on that slice of the information system that reaffirms your own views,” Powell said.

Powell said he watches international media like Al-Jazeera and the BBC to get more in-depth reporting than what the U.S. news offers.

“I need that kind of information,” Powell said. “Unfortunately you turn on these so-called ‘news shows’ and they’re nothing but commentators commenting on commentators.”

He also said PBS should not be cut and that he’s a fan of WAMU, which the audience responded to in hearty applause.

Students later asked Powell in how many countries overseas we should invest our money and troops, including Libya and Côte d’Ivoire.

He said before the U.S. enters a country, it should examine whether our national interests are at risk.

“I don’t think the American people would support a president who managed to get into each and every one of these situations,” Powell said. “Nor do we have the capacity to do so.”

Powell said he believes a diplomatic solution will be found to the Iranian nuclear problem, adding that the country using such weapons would be like committing suicide.

“I know nuclear weapons and what I know is that they can’t be used,” Powell said.

He added it would also be foolish for North Korea to use their nuclear weapons.

The U.S. is still No. 1 in the world, Powell said, but other countries are starting to rise as well.

“We cannot be terrified by some clown hiding in a cave in Pakistan,” he said. “We’re Americans, we’re not afraid.”