Opinion

Alexandra Friedman | The value of human life

What can be gleaned from this realization? There is a unique worth of human life in Israel unlike that of almost any other nation.

Diane Bayeux | The right to be alone

When I applied for housing last year, I automatically opted for the single option. Like every new freshman, I wondered whether having a roommate would enable me to attain the social scene of Penn more easily but rapidly gave up on that moment of hesitation upon reassessing the fact that I like being on my own.

Arielle Pardes | The freshman porn star

Back in January, a Duke freshman named Thomas Bagley was huddled up in his dorm room, watching porn on his laptop, when he saw something that made him pause the scene.

Letter to the Editor | The lifeblood of Penn

The free exchange of ideas is the lifeblood of an academic institution, and efforts to restrict that are in direct opposition to the values that we at Penn hold most dear.

Roderick Cook | It’s not always about sex

When feminist spaces focus so heavily on intimate discussions of sex, they can very easily do a lot of harm to the same people for which they claim to be advocating.

Guest column by Michale Goldberger | Action for academic freedom

The ASA’s boycott undermines the pursuit of education by limiting academic freedom, and therefore, by continuing to support the ASA, Penn is directly opposing its academic purpose by being part of the ASA.

Sara Schonfeld | Failing the Bechdel Test

For every female character, there are generally two male characters. Is it too much to ask that movies try a little bit harder to reflect reality? There are so many different types of diversity that Hollywood fails at.

Collin Boots | Robots don't kill people

Drones cannot be morally culpable for their actions. Using language attributing the actions of the operator to the machine needlessly distracts from the legitimate moral and legal concerns surrounding drone strikes.

Alexandra Friedman | Making a commitment to civic engagment

The idea of leaving the “ivory tower” of Penn often echoes throughout campus. It seems, however, not to have resonated with far too many students, who, like me as a freshman, rarely venture past 41st Street.

Jonathan Iwry | What is the human condition?

The things that fascinate me about the human condition, its most essential aspects, are so obvious and universal that you don’t need a class to discover them; you observe them just by living and seeing how others live.

Akshat Shekhar | The key to failure

We need to acknowledge that not only are these failures OK, but that they are inescapable for anyone trying to achieve on the daily basis what most students at Penn are.

Guest Column by Chase Harrow | What's obvious in your courses

A lot of the humanities have to do with how important it is to understand and love other people, and while that’s something so obvious that Barney the Dinosaur knows it, that doesn’t make it easy.

Letter to the Editor | Task Force on Student Psychological Health and Welfare

Student input is essential to the work of the Task Force, and we anticipate that it will establish two working groups to carry out its charge, both of which will include students, faculty, and staff.

Editorial | Minding the gap

Despite the abundance of degrees the committee members hold, however, there’s one glaring, crucial, inexcusable hole in this task force: a student voice. Indeed, on a committee responsible for assessing the state of mental health resources for students at Penn, there sit a whopping total of zero students.

Roderick Cook | Beyond "Born This Way"

We sometimes throw around this language with the best of intentions, but what are we really saying here? We are perpetuating the idea that queer and trans identities are things that we need to be OK with, but things that objectively are not good.

Editorial | In Praise of PennApps

It’s not just the organizers [of PennApps] who make the event the success that it is, but also the students who set aside their entire weekend to participate in the event.

Guest column by Rob'n Laurelli | Not a joke

My identity as a person of color - and my experiences as a former member of a low-income neighborhood - is not something that can be easily taken off like a baseball cap and sweatpants and tacky chains worn at a frat party.

William Zhang and Jason Choi | Fitting in, branching out

In reflection, even seemingly inconsequential and superficial differences, such as the fact that the word “football” is somewhat of a misnomer in the United States (it should really be called something along the lines of “hand-egg”), that Americans don’t study “maths” (a red squiggly line just appeared under the word as I write)  or that the only affordable and edible Chinese food on campus  comes from food trucks (try Yue Kee), have a much greater psychological impact.

Frida Garza | Showing and not telling

If John Legend is really the right guy for [Commencement], I challenge the selection committee to share why they have picked him.

Letter to the Editor | A missing pressure point

In “A different perception of pressure,” the authors outline the views of Penn’s faculty and staff on the sources of the recently widely talked about “unique stress” found on campus.