With Penn recently considering divestment from fossil fuels, yet another college now questions the propriety of investing its endowments based on ethical inclinations.

It would be pointless for me to write a column arguing that the United States should lower the national minimum drinking age to 18 for two reasons. First, it would be pointless because this is Penn, and the proposal would likely be so uncontroversial among whatever readership I have that it would verge on being a waste of time.

Protests are symbolic at their core. They signal a dissatisfaction with the greater system (whether it be white supremacist, patriarchal, imperialist) manifesting beneath the surface of an otherwise functional society. Nowadays, they signal change, but they don’t necessarily create it.

The contemporary tropes of International Baccalaureate scores and Radian apartments, of Western-tinted accents and Castle rushees, point to some kind of unspoken acceptance of the fact that nowadays, international Penn students just tend to be wealthier.

Currently my body is ink-free, but I soon plan on changing that. I want a tattoo and have promised three different friends that I would get a tattoo with them in the next few months. Statistically, at least one of them won’t chicken out, so it’s very likely that within the next few months my ink virginity will be taken from me.

Would you listen to Albert Einstein’s political counsel? Terence Tao’s opinion on drug policy?

Donald Trump is not stupid. Penn students frequently dismiss him because he says stupid things, but we shouldn’t underestimate the GOP frontrunner. As Trump recently told a raucous crowd in South Carolina, “We have to be smart.

The practice of reflecting upon failings of the prior year at the start of a new one seems to me both honest and educational, particularly as someone whose somewhat inherently deceptive role is to publicly assert each week that I have a good answer to a significant problem or question.

I’m not someone who regularly writes down New Year’s Resolutions, mainly because they often remain consistent across the years: do well in school, go for a decent amount of runs every week, keep in touch with friends and family, journal more.

It’s that time of the semester again. That point when for many students, our questioning of our validity and our futures is probably at its strongest.

The words “billion” and “million” may rhyme, but they’re very different values. Consider the following: if you started out with a billion dollars the day Christ was born, and spent $1,000 every day since, you’d still have $264 million left today.

It’s easy to say that GPA shouldn’t define who we are as individuals and that it doesn’t have the greatest effect on our future, but, to a certain degree, the grades on our transcripts matter, whether we like it or not.

Recently, at the recommendation of a friend, I read author Rebecca Solnit’s essay “Men Explain Things to Me.” In the essay, Solnit tells a series of personal stories wherein various men condescendingly “correct” her about topics in which her expertise far exceeds their own.

Last week, I enjoyed a Thanksgiving meal with my family. Every year, I find myself dissecting what exactly it is I’m supposed to be celebrating on this holiday.

I’ve been telling people that I want to be a writer since I was in elementary school. I always thought of college as the place where I would be able to actualize that dream, and I didn’t waste any time upon arriving at Penn.

Several weeks ago, Aziz Ansari’s new Netflix original series was released and, in typical Aziz fashion, the comedian brilliantly blurred the lines between outrageous humor and social commentary.

“The road to power is paved with hypocrisy and casualties,” Frank Underwood says in season two of House of Cards.