Opinion Columns

Lucy Hu | When the liberal bubble is justified

The lives of racial minorities should not be used as horseplay for political banter. This is a realm where viewpoints from the right seek to silence those who have already been traditionally suppressed.

Dylan Reim | Disagreeing on politics is one thing. Demonizing your opponent is another.

One of the deepest benefits of my education has been teaching myself to unlearn. Unlearning that our natural outlook is the objectively best one.

Carlos Arias Vivas | Navigating Penn with your best friend

Imagine another four years with the same people you’ve come to know and love.

Rebecca Alifimoff | From cornfields to Connecticut: missing my hometown

In high school, I wanted more than anything to move away from Indiana and never return. Now that I’ve gotten my wish, I miss it with a longing ache.   

Amy Chan | Honoring those we have lost means keeping their individuality alive

To live the way someone would have wanted us to live is a grand, beautiful task, because it requires intimate knowledge of the person we lost and it acknowledges that they were more than some casualty in the circle of life.

Jay Shah | We all have a role to play in the Campaign for Wellness

We should not view the process of changing campus culture as an interview where one individual asks questions and the other has answers.

Jessica Li | Combating 'toxic' masculinity

While women have often taken the initiative to discuss matters of sexual assault and violence, the absence of men in these spaces speaks louder than words. 

Sara Merican | Reflecting on my first Super Bowl

We soaked in Philadelphia in all its brilliant, flashy, beeping, honking, waving, screaming, shouting splendor

Spencer Swanson | Gone with the Wynn: Why Penn must tread lightly with the legacies of controversial alumni

We must guard diligently against rewriting the past just to please the popular opinion of the day and to make people comfortable in contemporary society.

Isabella Simonetti | How hookup culture has stolen our manners

Making out, sex, and everything in between — all with no strings attached. Sounds perfect, right?     

Lucy Hu | Fraternity pledging needs to end

Despite many fraternities’ cult-like efforts to keep pledging under wraps to avoid prosecution, most Penn students have heard accounts from pledges about sleepless nights, humiliating activities, and servant-type orders from pledge masters.

Jennifer Lee | To experience Philadelphia, Penn students need to ride SEPTA more

Throughout the entire journey, from hopping onto a packed trolley car to emerging aboveground through the beautiful glass head house of Dilworth Park, I feel completely immersed in the Philadelphia community. 

Christine Olagun-Samuel | While you’re glued to your smartphone, Penn is passing you by

The moment our phones are held up in our hands and our headphones in, walls are put up and barriers are created.

Rebecca Alifimoff | For me, the CAPS referral process was barely better than Google

I went through an administrative process only to end with links to readily available databases. My CAPS experience wasn’t a referral as much as it was a brush-off.

Isabella Simonetti | Battling mental illness in my first year at Penn has made me stronger

No matter how much it’s stigmatized, how unusual it might be to be open to talking about it, my anxiety and depression have taught me to care for myself.

Dylan Reim | You don't need Penn's permission to go the Super Bowl victory parade

I’m glad my decision to attend the parade won’t be hampered by a class absence, but if the parade were as important to me as it seems to be to some people, I’d happily chug a couple green beers, rub some dirt on that shiny attendance record, and go make memories. 

Calvary Rogers | Avoiding the bird’s eye view: integrating ourselves in Philadelphia

I had the most fun I’ve ever had in this city. For the first time in my academic career here at Penn, I felt like a Philadelphian.

Alex Kuang | Penn students often ‘pull trig,’ but does this actually prevent nausea and hangovers?

Pulling trig has become the holy cure for a wild night of debauchery, but no one seems to know exactly what it does.

Dylan Reim | The classroom shouldn't be a passive environment

The awkwardness of meandering through a question you don’t quite know how to ask shouldn’t stop us.

Amy Chan | Wading through a dry spell in my writing

What do we do when something we love becomes something we hate?