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(04/29/15 2:57am)
I think it’s safe to assume that most Penn students, in the past few weeks, have seen or heard of at least one of the demonstrations staged by a student activist group which calls itself SOUL, short for Students Organizing for Unity and Liberation. The group, which seems to focus primarily on social issues related to race, has staged a number of high-visibility demonstrations, including placing a member dressed in Ku Klux Klan robes along Locust Walk and, last week, staging a mock slave auction outside the Phi Delta Theta fraternity house.
(04/22/15 3:55am)
On Monday of last week, conservative writer David Horowitz gave a speech on Israel at the University of North Carolina during which he claimed that two U.S.-based pro-Palestinian campus groups, the Muslim Students Association and Students for Justice in Palestine, had connections to the Muslim Brotherhood.
(04/15/15 1:52am)
Unsurprisingly, there’s been a lot of campus buzz over the past week or so about Penn’s Alpha Chi Omega chapter’s decision to disaffiliate with the University and their national organization rather than sign a lengthy and, by all accounts, severe sanctions agreement. While the sisters have vigorously defended their decision on what I think are largely fair grounds, my sense is that many other Greeks lament the move off campus as a blow to the Penn system’s long-term health.
(04/07/15 2:03am)
Last week, I went to see a lecture hosted by the Middle East Center by a professor from Princeton who specialized in the historical study of the Quran. He was discussing the various men that Islamic texts say Muhammad deputized to oversee the oasis city of Medina on the various occasions upon which he made expeditions to nearby towns and settlements.
(04/01/15 3:22am)
I was never going to be happy about the Fling headliner. Come spring and the inevitable campus buzz that accompanies SPEC’s announcement of the concert lineup, I find myself perennially annoyed at the University’s decision to use tuition money to subsidize a pop concert. Why, I reason, should Penn spend even a penny of the money students pay for, in essence, an education, on something so egregiously non-academic?
(03/18/15 1:00am)
As a sometime student of American politics, I experienced a certain bewilderment when I read the Justice Department’s report on the Ferguson Police Department. The report read like a laundry list of municipal malfeasance, but that in itself wasn’t surprising. What caught my attention most was the systematic nature of Fergusonian exploitation; it was precisely the minoritarian tyranny which, theoretically, should be impossible in a democratic system.
(03/04/15 3:00am)
For the past two weeks, I’ve been criticizing Penn’s new sexual assault adjudication policy and the institution of on-campus sexual assault handling in general. As I’ve said before, when colleges take the place of police and courts, by investigating and trying to decide the truth of claims of violent criminal behavior, everyone seems to lose. Sometimes complaints get hushed up to protect athletes or reputations, sometimes accused students are subjected to absurd kangaroo-court hearings with almost predetermined findings of guilt. Either way, justice goes unserved.
(02/24/15 5:55am)
Last Wednesday, a group of faculty at Penn Law School published an open letter criticizing the University’s new procedures for investigating and adjudicating allegations of sexual violence on campus. The letter claims that the new policies infringe upon the due process and fundamental fairness rights of students facing accusations of sexual misconduct in the system which the new policy creates.
(02/18/15 3:32am)
I’ve been looking into issues surrounding how colleges and universities address accusations of sexual assault for some time now. It is a much larger issue than I could ever hope to tackle in a responsible, comprehensive manner in one column. Therefore, I intend to spend at least one more week exploring what I’ve become convinced are the deeply flawed methods which academia and government have come up with to handle allegations of sexual violence.
(02/11/15 4:38am)
A new idea is evidently circulating among the leaders of the School of Arts and Sciences. Buried in the pages of the recently released SAS Strategic Plan were the following three sentences: “Additionally, we will work to create a structure for recognizing students’ efforts to put theory into practice through a new kind of credit on the transcript, distinct from academic credit. These efforts include research, work/internship experience, or community engagement. The College will explore instituting a requirement that students amass several such credits for graduation.”
(02/04/15 3:47am)
Last week, a black Yale undergraduate was held at gunpoint by a campus police officer outside the school’s main library after being mistaken for a burglary suspect. Once the mistake was realized, the student was released.
(01/28/15 5:17am)
In 1961, William Golding, perhaps best known as the author of the novel “Lord of the Flies” published a short essay entitled “Thinking as a Hobby.” It’s a wonderful piece of writing which I’d recommend to anyone who hasn’t read it. I first encountered it in middle school — assigned, incidentally, by the same teacher whose frustrated interrogatory: “Must you always talk back, Ward?” inspired the name of this column — and it has had perhaps the greatest influence on my thinking of anything I’ve ever read.
(01/21/15 3:31am)
Participating in the annual gossip that spreads in my hometown with news of college admissions decisions has had me thinking a lot about admissions lately. In doing so, I’ve been surprised to find that, having seen its outcomes, I’m less a fan of the process now than I was as a high school senior facing the uncertainty that it brings.
(01/14/15 5:34am)
As reported in The Daily Pennsylvanian on Jan. 9, the Phi Delta Theta fraternity placed its Pennsylvania Zeta chapter on probation and prescribed mandatory sensitivity training for its members following a controversy which arose around a Christmas photo released by the chapter that included members posing with an inflatable sex doll meant to resemble a black woman.
(11/21/13 12:59am)
“It would be as if one of the Kardashian sisters picked up stakes, moved to the Middle East and joined Hamas,” bestselling author and journalist Malcolm Gladwell said early in his speech yesterday at Irvine Auditorium.
(11/14/13 1:47am)
Yesterday, J Street U Penn, the campus branch of J Street — a nationwide effort to promote a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict — hosted its annual Political Action Week panel, co-sponsored by the International Affairs Association and Dorm Room Diplomacy.
(09/15/13 10:20pm)
Yesterday, between the hours of 10 a.m. and 6 p.m., SEPTA partnered with Miller Brewing Company to offer unlimited free subway rides on its Broad Street Line — which services Lincoln Financial Field — for the Philadelphia Eagles’ first home game of the season.
