Opinion
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.Alexandra Friedman | Redefining success
As long as our cultural definition of success requires that we identify “losers” among us, the ingredients for tragedy will be ever-present. When will we accept that we have already achieved success, just by being part of the Penn experience?Jonathan Iwry | Reflections on the mortal coil
Michel de Montaigne once wrote that to philosophize is to learn how to die. That’s easy enough to say - as a philosophy major, I have spent many a term paper trying to solve some of the most intransigent questions ever asked.Guest column by Kelly Diamond and Madison Hunt | Internet-shaming at Penn
We are two members of the Class of 2013. As proud Penn alums, we have been distant witnesses to recent events at our beloved University that have made us uneasy.Guest column by Denzel Cummings, Abrina Hyatt, Abel McDaniels, Diana Cabrera, Katherine Mateo and Dawn Androphy | More than a theme, not just a costume
As six concerned members of the Penn community who strive to foster multicultural dialogue, we find the general trend of parties that serve to culturally objectify and vilify certain groups on campus deeply concerning.Frida Garza | Good grief
Talking to someone inside four walls for an hour once a week should not be our only option. What we need right now is space to be together. And if we can’t do that outside College Hall, we will take to the internet.
Collin Boots | We're all blasphemous
Every single one of you reading this post is a blasphemer or a heretic to someone’s religion. The freedom of religion depends on the freedom to disagree with other religions. Blasphemy laws disallow that freedom in countless cases around the globeArielle Pardes | The little pink pill
But some women simply have lower libidos, and that’s completely normal. The growing interest in forms of “female Viagra” like Lady Prelox can make it seem like not feeling readily available for sex is an abnormality.Akshat Shekhar | Getting to blah
We are to believe that a league in which three teams have signed Tim Tebow to a contract now considers media circuses anathema.Sara Schonfeld | Be mine?
Valentine’s Day shouldn’t be about validation. As nice as it was to have a guy confirming that my butt is not strangely misshapen, whether or not someone says it, it’s still true. There’s no reason to spend a holiday trying to parade around relationship labels.