COLUMN: The missing element of a No. 7 ranking

Troy Madres, Guest Columnist Troy Madres, Guest ColumnistSo, it's happened. The proverbial wet dream for University President Judith Rodin has finally arrived. She now wakes up every morning with a brighter smile on her face. The limousine ride to College Hall seems easier now, weaving through traffic. Why, might you ask, is she brighter than Supernova 1987A? A new hair style? Nope. Logan Hall finished? Yeah right. So she's done it. What can we expect now? More applicants next year? Almost definitely! Increased pride at school? Oh yeah! Higher alumni donations? Probably! Positive news coverage? Thank God, yes! So what's wrong? A lot. Why am I not part of this elated group and not assuming most of the campus could care less about the standings? When I heard the news, my first reaction was positive. That's great that we are part of an incredible Ivy League school and thanks for the pat on the back, U.S. News and World Report, but this means nothing. Perhaps the most important aspect of college missing from the standings is the social atmosphere of Penn. Woah, curve ball! This school lacks heart and compassion. It leaves students with very few accepted social options and stigmatizes the people left in the cracks. There are huge divisions between races, classes and attitudes here. We find it so easy to rest in our own cliques and not stray out into an exciting and enriching experience that Penn offers. These may be broad generalizations about Penn. Yes, there are many exceptions, and no, we are not in the pits of some stratified system. But at times, Penn can be very confining and just not fun. When I was a freshman, I loved the friendliness of the Quadrangle, the security you felt in your new group of friends and the social excitement that marked the first few months of college. But as year went on, people became less friendly and I found myself building walls of comfort -- pigeonholing myself into cliques that the Penn social order imposed. However, there is a solution. Much can be done by the school and its established bastions of the social order. Students at Penn have the potential for immense personal growth. They can learn much about each other and themselves in the process. This school has power in the way it shapes its students into well-informed and socially functioning beings. And by using it wisely, it can increase an amorphous rating that has little to do with numbers and more with the minds of 20,000 young adults. Truth is, I loved my first year at Penn. I am a very open person and I think I met hundreds of people with potential to be interesting and life-long friends. But, in many respects, I am very close minded. Unconsciously, I have directed myself towards certain individuals and I am judgmental of those I don't know. It is that aspect where the student body and myself need to change. Primarily, Penn needs to develop a coherent and tight sense of community. Groups and individual people need to branch out and discover the diversity of our great school. Sigma Delta Tau girls should mix with Alpha Phi Alpha boys. Ultra-Christian groups should debate with Gay/Lesbian/Questioning groups. Greeks should have a close interaction with College Houses. This may sound foreign to some but steps like these are necessary in bringing our community together. I envision my schooling as a time of much growth. I don't want to do it by getting drunk at some fraternity house and have my big complaint with the school be that the police are always shutting my good time down. Disguising my urge to get hammered by a shell of social freedom is not the way I want to work the political process in school. I want my voice to be heard about earnest issues that can make our lives as students positive and beneficial. Penn needs to seriously consider this since while we might be the seventh-best college in the country to mold minds academically, we are ranked fairly low in molding those minds positively. Benjamin Franklin set up our school to be an experiment in practical learning. He felt we would be better equipped for life if we were taught to have an open, rather than closed, mind. Yet, he now just sits at the center of College Green, pleasantly observing students pass by him, not taking their time to look around and observe the opportunities that exist in the faces and minds of their peers. He just sits and waits for the two random people absorbed in their own worlds, bump heads, and start talking.