Opinion

Your Voice | Preserving a dream

I was disheartened to see so many fellow students in the crowd show support to someone who presented a case to ultimately break up a huge part of what contributes to Penn tradition based largely on their admiration of his personal status.

Kurt Mitman | There won't be blood

The lifetime ban on males that have had any sexual contact with another male (MSM) since 1977 seemed a little extreme to me.

Shaun O'Brien | How you can save science

If these automatic budgets cuts occur, expect Penn’s ability as a science innovator to be hampered as the sequester would slash billions from the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and Graduate Medical Education programs — all programs that fund science research at Penn.

Nadine Zylberberg | A movie kind of love

Maybe Valentine’s Day is a little bit like the rom-com itself. It’s trendy to hate, it’s a commercial institution for suckers like you and me and its celebration is slowly fading out.

Erin Power | Opting to make a difference

Recently, I finally made the commitment to give away my heart to that special someone. Being the hopeless romantic that I am, I initiated the act in a dimly lit room with a grand gesture: I checked the “Yes” box for organ donation while renewing my license at the Department of Motor Vehicles.

Maria Freydell | At a cross-roads

The reality is that the division of power at the Vatican is at odds with the distribution of the 1.2 billion-strong Catholic population in the world: Europeans comprise only 25 percent of followers versus Latin America’s 42 percent, but more than half the cardinals who can vote are from Europe.

Your Voice | Diversity matters

While sitting on UC is only one example of the many ways our differences can unite us in the common goal of improving the lives of those around us, it can be an incredible tool in the process.

Valentine's Day Cartoon Caption Contest

Think you got the perfect caption to this cartoon? Email your caption to jaffe@theDP.com. Winner will get their caption published and win a gift card to Capogiro.

Hayley Brooks & Ali Kokot | The debased base system

However it happened, the baseball model has infiltrated both our collective consciousness and our corresponding bedroom behavior.

Your Voice | Divisive diversity?

Haven’t we yet reached a point where people are chosen for their own qualifications and abilities? I believe it is demeaning for a great university such as Penn to be counting people by gender or by skin color or ethnic background.

The 5B | Evening the playing field

This isn’t about “discriminating” against straight white cisgender men. This isn’t even about giving preference to minorities. It’s about giving a fair shot to people who have historically had fewer opportunities due to institutionalized biases.

Rachel del Valle | Impressions of being young

Defining yourself against something — “I don’t like chick flicks” — can be easier than finding something you do like. The only problem is that you often end up living up to those categorizations.

Guest Column | One in four-ward thinking

We are Penn’s all-male peer education and rape prevention group, One in Four. We are men who inform men how to decrease sexual assault and help survivors of it. And we’d not only like to applaud Ali and Hayley for beginning a conversation about rape culture last week, but also take this opportunity to expand the discussion.

Lauren Agresti | Eight dates a week

Roughly 2.7 mojitos into the evening, one member of our little party whipped out her phone with a wry smile and passed it around the table. She was messaging a boy on a dating app, and we were all reviewing their exchange.

Xavier Flory | The forgotten art

Concert violinist and Juilliard and Yale graduate Igor Pikayzen told me in an interview that pop is more about “creating a sort of ambiance” than producing worthwhile art. Indeed, blasting “Ass ass ass” is a crude but clear message to girls at frat parties. However, nothing great was ever conceived as background music.

Divya Ramesh | Experimenting with Experimetrix

I enjoyed participating in Experimetrix speech labs and word rating exercises that introduced to me to fields like psycholinguistics and visual studies. A friend of mine learned a fake language for a linguistics study and came back saying that it was “awesome.”

Jeff Nadel | Gratitude for guns

Due to the presence and prevalence of firearms, reason can now, to a much larger extent, determine our outcomes because generally, brute physical domination is no longer institutionalized as a method of problem-solving.

Kurt Mitman | Guess who should come to dinner

Since high school, college and graduate school graduation rates are lower for minorities than for whites in the United States, by the time you get to the top, there will be a much larger disparity in representation than in the population in general.

Rebecca Dubow | Recreating community

After reading a column by Lauren Agresti that appeared in an edition of The Daily Pennsylvanian last week about why she chose to deactivate, I agreed with her that Greek life is not right for everybody, but for me it was right.

Your Voice | Bring back the American Civilization major

I remember quite well that, as a student with a major in American Civilization, the study of America’s indigenous people was a major part of the curriculum.