Opinion Columns
Caroline Brand | I’ll find a title, sometime
Instead of telling you that “college flies by” or “it’s the shortest four years of your life,” I have a new tidbit of advice: Stop using the word “sometime.”
Rachel del Valle | Freshman friends are not forever
I have a theory that the student body of Penn is composed of maybe 30 percent introverts, and of that 30 percent, about half of those spend their first few years trying to pretend they’re extroverts like everyone else.
Jeff Nadel | Startups vs. the state
Uber brings a better, more efficient service to consumers — and that threatens the livelihood of entrenched taxi unions and the City Hall politicians and bureaucrats beholden to their interests.
Xavier Flory | Channeling our insecurities
It’s easy to think we need an even higher GPA and more impressive extracurriculars if we are to compete with students from HYP.Arielle Pardes | Digital Get Down
In most cases, sexting holds the same appeal as any other erotic act — the only difference is that it’s digitalized.
Kurt Mitman | Unilaterally ending unilateralism
Amidst all of the noise about Syria coming from the talking heads in Washington, a bigger point has largely been ignored.
Sindhuri Nandhakumar | The other end of the scale
There is a large discrepancy between the medically accepted notions of healthy bodies and the images encouraged by popular culture, and I’m not the only one who’s been affected by it.
Ali Kokot & Hayley Brooks | SWAG, not SWUG
We’re seeing senior women with full courseloads, a work-study or part-time job, relationships and leadership positions who, shockingly, want to take a few hours to themselves sometimes. What’s so wrong with that? Washed up? We think not.
Ryan Daniels | Your world, delivered
According to some analysts, Amazon Prime is part of a huge scheme to alter the way internet consumers consume.
Rachel del Valle | Get Real
Acting like a real person means, essentially, acting like a grown-up, an adult. But it doesn’t have the same, sad, unexciting connotation as those other terms.
Clarissa O'Conor | The Problem with Band-Aids
The discourse of empowerment makes us feel good about putting a Band-Aid on something while avoiding actually questioning our role in systematic racism, oppression and injustice.
Xavier Flory | The Price of Engagement
The ivory tower is often derided for how elitist and out of touch it is, but isolation from the world is a good and necessary thing.
JY Lee | Viva la vida
Every year that I have been at Penn, I have been chilled by the premature deaths in our University community.
Kurt Mitman | In government we trust?
More than an eighth of the undergraduates at Penn are international students and a significant fraction of the faculty is also foreign, meaning that under FISA, the government can track all their communications.
Morgan Jones | I support the troops
It is possible to divorce supporting the troops as a whole political entity from respecting the individuals who serve.Arielle Pardes | Can’t we all just dance?
The twerk used to be just a bouncy dance that came of age in a culture where people just wanted to get down and have a good time. It was good, clean fun.
Ola Osinaike | Pretentious Pennsylvania
Demeaning the Penn State name is just another identity crisis of our University.
Ryan Daniels | Closing the chasm
Many professionals in the corporate world spend plenty of time on public interest projects. Unfortunately, few students — including myself over the past few years — know about these people.
Arjun Gupta | Pilot
Rather than feeling more oriented to Penn, all of this has left me feeling a bit lost and confused.