34th Street Magazine's "Toast" is a semi-weekly newsletter with the latest on Penn's campus culture and arts scene. Delivered Monday-Wednesday-Friday.
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For most Penn students, the homeless are accepted as a fact of life in West Philadelphia, one of the things seen but not quite registered on a daily basis.
That's why it's gratifying to hear about Penn students' recent outreach efforts to homeless Philadelphia residents.
Yesterday, 2,700 Africans died of malaria, 144 South African women were raped and 14,500 children under 15 were infected with AIDS. International development efforts need both more time and more money to help eliminate these tragedies.
Thus the College Dean's Advisory Board announcement that it will be developing an international-development minor must be met with praise.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, then this year's Penn Reading Project is certainly the shortest work to date.
Rather than reading (or, in most cases, not) a book, as entering freshman have done for the past 10 years, the class of 2013 will be asked to "read" The Gross Clinic - a painting by Philadelphia artist Thomas Eakins.
Say you're a DJ for Penn's student-run radio station, WQHS. Your show airs at 8:00 p.m. every Wednesday, which is a great time - most of your friends can listen as they do homework. But right now you're not worrying about listenership, it's getting to the Hollenbeck Center, a good 30-minute walk to the no man's land of Penn's campus.
This month marked the bicentennial of Charles Darwin's birth, and he has been getting considerable attention. My subject here is not his work on evolution. No, as director of Career Services, I am interested in the beginnings of his career. How does one become a Charles Darwin?
A doctor's son, Darwin was sent to the University of Edinburgh, where he studied medicine, but it did not sufficiently interest him.
Two days ago, Philadelphia Newspapers LLC - publisher of Philadelphia's two dailies, The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Philadelphia Daily News, as well as the printer of The Daily Pennsylvanian - filed for bankruptcy protection preventatively.
The announcement, unfortunately, was not unexpected.
This year marks the 20th anniversary of a famously controversial free speech incident involving Penn. No, I'm not speaking of how FBI agents observed club meetings during the 1970s or the theft of an entire run of The Daily Pennsylvanian in the early 1990s - it might be hard to imagine, but Penn was once a recurring backdrop for national debates about free speech.
For many freshmen, finishing (or starting) the Penn Reading Project's selected book is one of the least-enjoyable activities of New Student Orientation Week.
But the Reading Project, for better or for worse, is a valuable way to connect on an intellectual level with the rest of the floor or parts of the House community, and it is frequently touted as an introduction to college-level reading and analysis.
I love Pink Floyd. I'll shamelessly spend hours in my car on summer days listening to the British rock band. Give me a surround-sound system and the album Dark Side of the Moon, and I'll never complain about anything ever again. It's very easy for me to make connections between their lyrics and a number of situations, including the one between the district attorney's race in Philadelphia and the song Welcome to the Machine.
Questions about 'Don't ask, don't tell'
To the Editor:
Clearly the matter of the continued military presence at Penn is an unsettling situation for nearly everyone, one which would be easily resolved if the federal government discontinues preventing LGBT people from serving openly in the military, something President Obama has pledged will happen.
As I walked to Fisher-Bennett last October, armed and ready to declare my major, I quickly mapped out my life. A B.A. from Penn, a semester abroad and a few extracurriculars should be enough for a decent start in life. But I slowed and thought to myself, "I can't just be an English major.
Forget the fine print. Anyone who's been paying attention to the latest Facebook "crisis" - in which the site's terms of service removed the users' right to their own content after deleting their accounts, and then reneged - must realize that no matter what the words say, Facebook will always have access to our content.
Last Thursday, when the University received confirmation of the first student case of meningitis, officials had several tough decisions to make, and they knew that they had to be made as quickly as possible.
Penn, as all students know by now, made many of the right decisions.
With meningitis, and now measles, on everyone's mind, many students are wondering: "How could this have been prevented? How can I keep myself safe?"
If you don't believe me, just look at the 3,000-plus who went to Student Health to get prophylactic treatment last week.
A week after Penn's outbreak of meningitis, things seem to have finally calmed down. Social gatherings have resumed as usual, the collective paranoia over sharing drinks and food has diminished and the three patients are well on their road to recovery. With the incident almost behind us, now may be a good time to review some of the major takeaways from this latest health scare.