Farewell Column by Emerson Brooking | My final paean to Penn
(04/25/11 9:14am)
Farewell columns are invariably self-important and unavoidably pretentious. I’ve been looking forward to writing one for a very long time.
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Emerson Brooking | Remembering the Great War
(03/24/11 9:25am)
Last month, 110-year-old Frank Buckles — our final surviving veteran of World War I — died peacefully in his sleep. His passing marks the end of an era and the fading of a conflict that is increasingly footnoted and ignored in American studies of history.
Southern Comfort | Free-thinking and proud of it
(11/30/10 10:51am)
It seems harder and harder for our generation to think like individuals. We see it in our politics, where recent elections decimated many politicians who had strayed from their party fold. We see it also in our faith, where debate over the proposed “Ground Zero mosque” uncovered wide religious rifts that continue to grow wider. Beliefs are clearly delineated — outliers suffer the consequences.
Southern Comfort | The Watergate that really wasn’t
(11/16/10 10:12am)
For three days last week, the face of Wharton senior and former Interfraternity Council President Christian Lunoe monopolized the front page of The Daily Pennsylvanian. We learned that he’d been arrested, and learned the next day that he was considering resigning from the IFC. We learned again when he did resign, and even — bizarrely — learned how he felt about it on Twitter.
Southern Comfort | Rally to Restore Sanity: the joke’s on us
(11/02/10 8:24am)
“Everything is changing,” comedian Will Rogers once said. “People are taking their comedians seriously and the politicians as a joke.” The quote is old, but after Saturday’s “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear,” never has it been more timely.
Southern Comfort | Facebook and the Philosopher's Stone
(10/26/10 7:25am)
Congratulations. You and I have found a way to live forever.
Southern Comfort | Give me that old time religion
(10/05/10 7:45am)
We at Penn have a special love for the prefixes “inter” and “multi.” Our perspectives are international and our experiences are multicultural. Our curriculum is interdisciplinary and our studies are multiethnic. And our lives — ideally — are the better for it. The watchword is diversity. The goal is tolerance.
Southern Comfort | Narrowing the service gap
(09/21/10 7:46am)
My first run-in with the military didn’t go very well.
Emerson Brooking | All a-Twitter for the wrong reasons
(06/17/10 6:06am)
A year ago this week, two revolutionary movements swept the ultraconservative Muslim nation of Iran. The first, known as “The Persian Awakening,” saw tens of thousands of Iranian reformers rally their country to a virtual stand-still out of anger surrounding the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadjinejad. The second, christened the “Twitter Revolution,” saw the popular web client provide an important means of communication between protestors, showing that Twitter was good for more than celebrity imitators and Sarah Palin.
Southern Comfort | Censorship hits high school
(12/14/09 3:36am)
Censorship is a dirty word.
Southern Comfort | Battling for Ivy League recognition
(12/09/09 10:49am)
Members of Penn’s Navy Reserve Officers’ Training Corps embody the continuation of a Penn military tradition that predates the Revolutionary War. Unfortunately, they also represent a lonely holdout among a collection of elite universities that is hostile to their presence.
Emerson Brooking | Taking the midnight train to Georgia
(11/25/09 11:46am)
My holiday commute takes 12 hours each way among some of the strangest people I’ve ever met. No, I don’t take an international flight — I ride Amtrak.
Emerson Brooking | I came, I saw, I majored
(11/18/09 10:06am)
When I came to Penn, I couldn’t tell you the difference between Plato and Cicero. Moreover, I wasn’t sure why it mattered.
Emerson Brooking | Once was enough
(11/11/09 8:33am)
How offensive is the phrase “The South Will Rise Again,” and what — if anything — should be done to banish it from the public sphere?
Emerson Brooking | Setting aside the differences
(11/04/09 8:44am)
Fox News and I share a very complicated relationship.
Emerson Brooking | A Phever around campus
(10/28/09 8:01am)
The Phillies’ 2008 World Series win was an amazing moment for our adopted city. The streets exploded after a resounding, if anticlimactic, Game-Five finish. Tens of thousands of ecstatic fans streamed from Citizens Bank Park to City Hall, and Broad Street became an ocean of Phillies red and blue. Long-suffering fans overturned dumpsters, lit cars on fire and shimmied up lampposts, giving riot police their busiest night in years. For one evening, the city of Philadelphia enjoyed a feeling of thrilling solidarity. After the championship celebration, even Barack Obama’s victory a week later seemed almost like an afterthought.
Emerson Brooking | Too much of a good thing
(10/21/09 8:22am)
In late fall of 2004, I filed into a tiny classroom with a dozen of my peers for one of the first and largest meetings of the Young Democrats club. We comprised the lone liberal element among a population of nearly 1,600 rural Georgia public-school students. And we were excited; John Kerry and George W. Bush were in a dead heat, and it looked like the White House might have a new occupant come Jan. 20. To us, Kerry’s campaign represented a call to action — and a chance to finally have our voices be heard.
Emerson Brooking | Changing the game
(10/07/09 6:10am)
If you’re like a lot of folks reading this, you’ve probably had enough of student elections. You’re tired of a disfigured Quad and garishly-polluted Walk. You’re sick of shallow platforms, cheesy slogans and overeager candidates. Like most everyone else, you can’t wait for Penn’s semiannual, 50-way popularity contest to end — and for peace to return to campus once more.
Emerson Brooking | Our chance to capture a moment
(09/30/09 7:54am)
For most college kids today, Woodstock evokes images of long-haired hippies frolicking in a haze of marijuana smoke. While this is somewhat accurate, few events have resonated more strongly through American culture. Woodstock’s greater legacy — that of youth briefly finding a collective voice — remains deeply relevant, as it was during the course of President Obama’s historic campaign. Even 40 years later, it’s a legacy that bears examining — and a festival that deserves remembering.
Emerson Brooking | Penn, pandemic and you
(09/23/09 8:30am)
This past April, the arrival of finals brought another unpleasant surprise. Swine flu (H1N1) emerged from the pig farms of Mexico and swept across six continents in a matter of days. As the number of reported cases ballooned from dozens to tens of thousands, China quarantined a hotel and Egypt slaughtered an entire swine population. International panic reached a fever pitch, and — particularly if our own 24-hour news networks were to be believed — Armageddon loomed just around the corner.