Opinion
Roderick Cook | Rethinking the 'true academic experience'
Still, some who recognize this fact think that prefacing something with a trigger warning somehow disrupts the intellectual experience of reading or viewing it. As the DP editorial put it, “It is sometimes deemed necessary for students to experience visceral reactions to the material with which they come into contact. The purpose of such material is to be taken by surprise, offended and even, at times, disturbed.”This statement shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the difference between being surprised or offended and being traumatized. Furthermore, it exposes the unsettling fact that many people out there genuinely care more about some assumed abstract “true academic experience” than the safety of students.
Katiera Sordjan | A mutual effort
A year sounds like a long time, but it took me most of that time to find a working medical treatment. Then, I had to address my classes or risk not being able to declare my major. In order to receive medical clearance, I had to mediate between my clinician and the Counseling and Psychological Services staff, who evaluated my current health status. I spent a lot of time making repeated calls, emails and campus visits to ensure the various conditions set by Penn for my return were met, and frequently worried about my ability to come back.
Shawn Kelley | In defense of the president
What’s really telling is when you look at the compensation per $1 million in total expenditures for each institution. Gee was paid $1,332, Zimmer received $1,113 and Gutmann $376.
The Vision | A weight we all must carry
We have the tendency to believe that sexual assault doesn’t affect us, that it happens to other people but certainly not to our friends, not at our parties, not by our people. This is a dirty lie. The longer we buy into it and coddle our ignorance, the longer we smother each other.
Jeremiah Keenan | ?Nap more, sleep less
But for some reason most Penn students don’t take a regular nap. Why? Because much as we’d all love to nap, we just don’t have the time. Of course, we’d feel better if we slept more. We’d also feel better if we spent four hours a day in the gym! But you just can’t do that if you’re taking six credits and working weekends in a lab. Napping isn’t an Ivy League thing.Guest column by the Government and Politics Association | Beyond partisan
The question here is not “Democrat or Non-Democrat.” The question here is not even “Democrat or Republican.” The real question is “liberal, conservative, independent, libertarian, socialist, progressive or none of the above.”
Sam Sherman | A presidential performance
Sam Sherman is a College junior from Marblehead, Mass. His email address is samsherman6@gmail.com.
Guest column by Penn Democrats | A crisis on campus and beyond
We must realize that the institutional popularity of colleges and sports programs is nowhere near as important as the lives and livelihoods of the innocent women, and men, they so readily sweep under the rug. Until then, an insidious culture that protects the image of influential organizations at whatever cost will continue to prevail.
Sophia Wushanley | What’s so special about leadership?
Our fixation on leadership worries me because it implies that the be all end all of a successful life is to have the greatest possible influence over the greatest number of people. “Leadership” has become one of those words that our brains automatically categorize as a Good Thing, and our conflation of the terms “leadership” and “good leadership” makes us believe that influence itself is the goal, rather than just a good first step to effecting positive change in the world.
Dani Blum | Give up the numbers game
We remind ourselves we go to a fantastic school, but we put ourselves down for being one of “the lower Ivies,” as I overheard someone refer to Brown and Penn. We use Penn as an ego boost, but we’re not satisfied.
Jonathan Iwry | Save America from itself
To ignore such issues and debate how safe we are is like crossing the street without looking both ways while pondering the danger of shark attacks. It’s tempting to assess our condition solely in terms of radical threats — terror has a way of stealing our attention — but whoever does so is looking through a faulty lens. National security and national integrity must go hand in hand.
Guest column by College Republicans | The right time to get involved
All in all, our political stance is complex, compelling and, most importantly, critical to the continued success of this phenomenal country.
Yessi Gutierrez | Driven to action
Undocumented immigrants deserve the same access to practical necessities as documented immigrants and native-born residents. They should not have to fear incarceration and deportation for deciding to run to the store for cereal, for dropping their kids off at school or carpooling to work.
Hannah Rosenfeld | Media bias
Hannah Rosenfeld is a College sophomore from Tokyo. Her email address is hannahro@sas.upenn.edu.
Guest column by Rebecca Heilweil | Seldom making history: Penn's women need to speak up
There is a problem when men dominate both the attendance and the questions of political on-campus events. There is a problem when women who hold leadership positions stick out because of their gender. There is a problem when girls like me, who rarely pay attention to these things, start to worry.
Editorial | Shooting down trigger warnings
While personally traumatic experiences are important to address and treat on college campuses, trigger warnings are neither a fair nor sufficient solution to such issues and would ultimately serve to undermine the fundamental values of academia.
Katiera Sordjan | A year on leave
The hardest part of being on leave was dealing with the shame of what felt like such a heavy failure. To me, every day I wasn’t in class was another day that I was being idle. It didn’t matter how much I helped my family out around the house, how much I volunteered or how many doctor’s appointments I went to. If I wasn’t a student, if I wasn’t employed, I wasn’t a productive member of society — end of story.
Maya Rawal | Informed in isolation
I found myself relying on my friends majoring in international relations and political science — and various friends’ Facebook statuses — to learn about major world news. I was unaware of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 and the unfolding events of the Israel-Palestine conflict for hours or sometimes days after the fact.
Guest column by Allie Cohen | How social media shaped my 9/11 story
Last semester I took “Communication and the Presidency," taught by David Eisenhower in the Annenberg School. A hidden gem of Penn, the course provided a stipend to fly to any Presidential Library to do research for the course’s assignment of a 30-page paper. I flew to Dallas, Texas, where I studied George W. Bush’s epideictic rhetoric in his three major post-9/11 speeches.