Opinion

Opinion Art | Janice Dow

Janice Dow is a College sophomore from Los Angeles, Calif. Her e-mail address is dow@dailypennsylvanian.com.

Christina Domenico | A better BFS program

I often wonder about the point of many things: "recommended" books for class, bug-eye sunglasses, the food court at 34th and Walnut streets. But my recent ponderings have been about the Benjamin Franklin Scholars program. The majority of BFS students are mysteriously selected as incoming freshmen and must take at least one Benjamin Franklin seminar per year to graduate with recognition as a scholar.

Editorial | Greener water

Plastic is on its way out. Recently, White Dog Cafe on 34th and Sansom streets decided to stop selling bottled water because of environmental concerns. While it's not a widespread movement, crusaders against Aquafina have a point - bottled water does carry high transportation and disposal costs.

David Kanter | Offering an online option

As I awkwardly balanced the clipboard on my knee, I scribbled my information onto a voter registration form. While I walked away from the Obama campaign worker who assured me that my registration was now all set, I commented to my friend that the whole voter registration system seemed remarkably inefficient.

Opinion Art | Amira Fawcett

Amira Fawcett is an Engineering senior from Houston, Texas. Her e-mail address is fawcett@dailypennsylvanian.com.

Julie Steinberg | Wikipedia's war

Perhaps the two most important pieces of advice freshmen receive are to avoid dating people in their hall and to avoid citing Wikipedia in a paper for class. While the first is questionable, the second makes sense most of the time. After all, when the Benjamin Franklin statue in front of College Hall was renamed the "Liora Pollick Statue" on Penn's Wikipedia page, no one noticed for two months.

Your Voice | Letters

Library use on the rise To the Editor: Last week in an article and subsequent cartoon, The Daily Pennsylvanian implied that use of Penn Libraries is in decline. To correct the record, I offer a few relevant metrics. In the five years between 2003 and 2007 (our latest complete statistics), circulation of books, videos, audio materials, microforms and laptop computers increased by some 20,000 items.

Meredith Aska McBride | Showing some respect

The other night, as I was walking home from rehearsal, I overheard a conversation that disturbed me more than anything I'd heard in a while (interviews with Sarah Palin notwithstanding). I was walking down 40th Street in front of a couple of guys, clearly Penn students, who were talking about a woman they knew.

Jacob Schutz | There'll always be student debt

In May, I was dumped by e-mail. I received an notice from Student Financial Services telling me I would need to select a new lender for my Federal Stafford Loan. My original lender - along with 136 other institutions - had stopped offering the loans. A couple months later, a friend at another school updated her Facebook status to say she "thinks student loan companies can suck it.

Editorial | Cutting the fat

If Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings has her way, the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) will be a shadow of its former self. Under Spellings's recently proposed plan, FAFSA would cut the number of questions it asks from over 100 to roughly 27.

Opinion Art | Alicia Puglionesi

Alicia Puglionesi is a College senior from Havertown, Pa. Her e-mail address is puglionesi@dailypennsylvanian.com.

Ryan Benjamin | Financially illiterate

Have you noticed the financial crisis developing right before our eyes - this country's worst since the Great Depression? Most of us know it exists but don't understand it to the extent we should. I randomly surveyed over 120 Penn students, and only 31 percent reported that they were "extremely confident" or "pretty confident" in their ability to understand the current financial dilemma.

Opinion Art | Alex Jacobson

Alex Jacobson is a College junior from Los Angeles. His e-mail address is jacobson@dailypennsylvanian.com.

Editorial | Let them wear shirts

Election officials shouldn't be fashion police. Thanks to vaguely defined state laws banning "passive electioneering" in the polling booth, some counties in Pennsylvania plan to prevent voters from wearing campaign buttons or t-shirts when they cast their vote.

Mordechai Treiger | Treading water in The Big Easy

Spring Break 2008 saw 175 Penn students make the pilgrimage that care forgot. Their work was hardly a big easy: Students cleared wreckage, rebuilt houses and even helped out at an animal shelter. But the sad truth is that despite these students' best efforts, New Orleans will still succumb to the next major storm.

Dani Wexler | Paying attention to Iran

We get it. Our economy is collapsing around us. The bailout plan doesn't bail us out. Seniors are having a hard time getting jobs. While we shouldn't ignore the urgency and ripple effects of this economic crisis, we also can't allow it to overshadow preexisting global concerns that threaten our existence, especially ones that we can actually control.

Opinion Art | Jennifer Lesser

Jennifer Lesser is a College junior from Minneapolis, Minn. Her e-mail address is lesser@dailypennsylvanian.com.

Lisa Zhu | Better caring for rape victims

Hypothetical scenario: You wake up after a night of partying, naked in a stranger's bed. You gaze around the room with horror when you're hit with a flash of recollection - vaguely, you remember taking multiple shots, staggering away from the party, making out, struggling to say no, feeling too drunk to fight back.

Your Voice | Letters

Questionable funding To the Editor: The plan to help businesses along Baltimore Avenue improve their facades ("Residents weigh in on Baltimore Ave. makeover," 9/22/08) has a laudable goal but has been poorly executed. It is eye opening that only one-third of the funding is going to the improvements themselves, with two-thirds to the University City District's (UCD) overhead costs.

Harris Sokoloff | Working to build the next great city

The Penn Project for Civic Engagement (PPCE) is built on this premise: "We dream about what we value, then work to turn those dreams into reality." Put another way, the work of citizens in a democracy is to define the public interest and to build common ground for actions that will further the public interest.