Harry Lee | One big dysfunctional family

Thanksgiving is family time - maybe that's why it's a brief holiday. I like my family, but since we're divided by the Atlantic, I'm stuck with a surrogate family for most of the year - the Penn family.

No, I haven't been hired by the administration to whip you into a frenzy of love for your peers. But I'm concerned. I think we're atomized, bumping into one another on Locust walk like the molecules in a cup of hot coffee, so agitated and stressed that we don't form solid bonds of community.

Admittedly, I might just be a socially challenged geek - why else hide from the real world by going to graduate school? But I'm not. I reach out my hand to you but in vain. Alack!

Melodrama aside, I just wonder: Is the Penn family nuclear, extended ... or even dysfunctional?

I think we're more like the Simpsons than the Waltons, and Penn could do a little more to knit us together.

Sure, Amy - or is it Homer? - Gutmann stokes our sense of kinship at moments of strategic importance for Penn's financial plans, but at most other times, Penn does too little to rally us. Somehow, exhortations like "Let's do it together!" - which rounded off Gutmann's capital campaign e-mail - fail to resonate.

Apparently, "Penn's moment is coming!" But is that our moment too? It's a question of identification and sometimes Penn's institutional character strikes me as too insipid to induce any firm affinity from students at all.

Maybe I've got it all wrong. At Homecoming, alumni reach deep into their pockets, suggesting some bond to Penn.

Inevitably, time spent at university is formative. Even if you feel stuck on the Penn Corporation assembly line, you'll soon be thankful for the brand equity that 'Made in Penn' possesses. Such gratitude might explain donations (along with philanthropy, nostalgia and megalomania).

Few people would contest Penn's academic caliber. I certainly don't. But it's not an image that's easy to warm to.

One of Penn's unwritten rules is: Aim high (like that Goldman Sachs end-of-the-year bonus). Penn isn't motherly; it's a drill sergeant and we're almost never off the parade ground.

I think Penn could do with a lot more fun traditions. While it's a little paradoxical to go around inventing traditions, it actually happens all the time. Card companies are constantly making up holidays. We fell for that and next year Wal-Mart will convince us that Black Friday actually starts on Monday.

As for our current fun "traditions," being smeared with condiments isn't my idea of a good time. And, personally I'd feel better throwing toast at starving children in Botswana than at meaty football players. Finally, forcing incoming freshmen to read a book over the summer isn't fun at all. I defy anyone to give me a good reason to read The Omnivore's Dilemma - it's 464 pages long. Just think of the opportunity cost.

I was an undergraduate at Oxford University, which has lots of quirky traditions all of its own. For example, I attended a matriculation ceremony - much like convocation - in a rotunda called the Gulbenkian, dressed in a black commoners' gown and dark grey suit. An old professor with hairy ears and nostrils muttered something in Latin. I grunted in assent, not knowing what to, but with a hunch that staying silent probably wasn't the accepted response.

The very peculiarity of the ceremony acted as a strong glue on students at Oxford. Love it or hate it - and I'm far from being a Oxford-ophile - the place has character. Even now, when I meet someone else from Oxford I can tap shared memories by mentioning madrigals on Magdalen bridge, Summer Eights rowing regatta, formal hall and May Balls.

What would you say to foster some camaraderie with someone you met randomly who had gone to Penn?

All-night study sessions in the library, of course.

I know that you have Econ Scream and other stuff, but it's not enough. It's hard to relax when a sizeable minority are working non-stop and that's why the administration could do us a favor by coordinating a little downtime for us all.

Gutmann mentioned Google in a speech. Now there's an exemplar - outrageously successful and nobody wears a tie. It's a model that might make Penn a happier family.

Harry Lee is a second-year Economics Ph.D. candidate from Portsmouth, England. His e-mail address is lee@dailypennsylvanian.com. The Pondskater appears on alternating Wednesdays.

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