Gabe Oppenheim | Penn will always be the same, but different

By writing this column for the past year and a half, I've gleaned six specific rules about higher education and Penn.

No. 1: Security companies will always exploit their guards because guards are replaceable entities, a dime a dozen. And so a company like Allied can afford to pay about a dime per dozen workers because, hell, if they don't like it, the company will find desperate souls who do.

The second lesson: The older generation of academics will always believe the younger generation to be inferior. Just this past week, The Chronicle of Higher Education hosted a forum on its Web site in which academics railed against students' lack of knowledge.

"The ignorance of the present generation of college students is saddening," wrote one self-proclaimed historian. "Our culture values a college degree but not a college education."

Of course, the third rule (a corollary of the second) is that the older generation was invariably once deemed inferior itself. In fact, in 1981, an Education Department study of 3,000 randomly selected students (at 185 public and private colleges) gauged their familiarity with the modern world. The result? As many as 85 to 90 percent of students had inadequate knowledge (a score of 66 or lower out of 100) of contemporary issues. Freshmen scored as poorly as seniors. And in a sad twist, education majors - today's teachers - scored lowest.

Then there's the fourth rule, which is entirely unrelated to the third but perhaps the most obvious: Once every few years, without fail, some student or teacher will come out of the woodwork with a "brilliant new idea" to rename Penn.

"I blame Ben Franklin - if he had only named the school 'Franklin University,'" said Jean-Marie Kneeley, the School of Arts and Sciences' vice dean of external affairs, in a 2005 article.

Only three months ago, a 1992 graduate of the College wrote a piece in this paper suggesting Penn become Franklin U. A year earlier, columnist Cezary Podkul did the same. And in 1922, the paper ran a staff editorial headlined - you guessed it - "Franklin University."

"Precedent favors a change when viewed in comparison with other institutions which have been unfortunate at one time or another in creating wrongful impressions by corporate titles," the DP said. "Yale was once the 'Collegiate School of Connecticut,' Columbia was 'King's College,' Brown was 'Rhode Island College,' Princeton was the 'College of New Jersey' and so on."

Ironically, all these editorialists overlooked the mistake inherent in their suggestion - that "'Franklin University' might cause just as much confusion in the public mind between the University of Pennsylvania and Franklin and Marshall College," as then-Provost Hartley Merrick put it 84 years ago.

Ah, but what is 84 years in the life of a supposedly 266-year-old University? In many ways, the passage of such time is nothing for a college - the fifth lesson.

Peruse old yearbooks and you'll see that while fraternities look different now, while curricula have morphed, while Penn has grown physically, the core features of this university's life have remained.

A youthful joie de vivre has always permeated this school and driven it forward. It's what propelled students 94 years ago to create a junior 'Snowfall' dance replete with fake snowflakes dropping and drooping from the starred ceiling of Weightman Hall; it's what enamors students now to the gorgeous lighted snowflakes strung from the trees of Locust Walk. Hell, it's even what spurs students to sign onto BoredatVanPelt.com and write what they do - though an undercurrent of loneliness seems to run through that as well. Not that loneliness is new, either.

No, if this column has taught me anything, it's that much of academia does not change. Students' and teachers' attitudes, the spirit of the place - they have persisted, and will continue to as long as kids are kids and adults are not. Old-timers will always suspect younglings' learning. It's less a tradition than a law of nature.

But then, there's the sixth and final rule: while Penn students and staff don't inherently change, their circumstances constantly do - and mostly for the better. Every year, Penn attracts more brilliant students who want to attend; local crime abates (this might not seem evident, but students were fatally shot on a bi-yearly basis in the '90s); and Penn inches closer to connecting its campus to Center City.

As this is my last column for a while, I wish Penn the best as it both stays the same and transforms. My only request: that I should never have to toast dear ol' 'Franklin.' Though, to be honest, I'm not worried I ever will.

Gabe Oppenheim is a College sophomore from Scarsdale, N.Y. His e-mail address is oppenheim@dailypennsylvanian.com. Opp-Ed appears on Wednesdays.

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