My countless run-ins with verbal harassment in the Philadelphia area has varied between mildly annoying and frightening to the point where I have had police officers file into my apartment after a 911 call made on my way home from Center City.

One depressing fact about this is that history is repeating itself — and we have clearly not learned our lesson from it.

At the root of this anguish is Penn’s system for course registration. 

What I realized was that given the choice to decide to follow God or not, choosing it myself makes it so much more powerful.

Whether or not we believe or act on allegations — in politics or on our campus — often depends strongly on how we feel about the accused. 

Inclusion is not just about the amount of female engineers entering Penn, but also about making them feel that they belong here.

All of these alumni are not remembered for what they studied or even what clubs they were involved on campus, but rather they are known for what they chose to do with their skills.

We Penn students are entering that dangerous arena of adult love, and sometimes need to be reminded that with adult love there is the possibility of adult heartbreak.

At Penn, a version of love, far from my own, seems to be the center of attention.

With a Penn education comes a very real responsibility to make sure every child in this country is receiving an adequate education, regardless of their economic circumstances. 

The second best time to hold people like Northam accountable is right now, while we have the chance.

The very fact that we are students at Penn speaks to our intelligence. Some of us have never really felt overwhelming rejection or underachievement.

Whether you are Asian, Hispanic, African American, or any other race, make Penn a new site for sharing stories about your culture and celebrating your family’s heritage.

But when I peeled back the layers of historical extravagance, I realized that while the Ivy League evokes less Harry Potter imagery than Cambridge or Oxford, the actual learning experience may be more worth the prestige than the English schools.

If we fall into cycles of pushing yourself too far, burning out, and then treating yourself to copious amounts of whatever it is that makes you feel temporarily better about yourself, the cycle will never end. Temporary relief is all you’ll ever feel. 

At Penn, blocking out Jewish life altogether is nearly impossible, especially since about 17% of undergrads identify as Jewish, but I still managed to do it first semester. 

The habits we form here at Penn — the things we chose to expect of our friends, the organizations we decided to be a part of, the behavior we tolerate on our campus — will shape the moral compasses that guide us through our infinitely more complicated post-graduate lives.