Opinion Columns

Yessenia Gutierrez | The 'easy' way at Penn

I’ve been told by too many people to remember that it must have been easy for me to get into Penn. That I have it so easy because I am on full financial aid and don’t have to take out loans. That I was the perfect diversity candidate. And I am sick of it.

Dani Blum | Confessions of a student shopaholic

Furthermore, as college students, we’re consumers of a product. Penn’s tuition is $47,668 a year. If the average student takes five courses a semester, that’s $4,766.80 per class. We wouldn’t buy a $4,000 dress without trying it on, and we shouldn’t have to register for courses without testing them out.

Maya Rawal | Mirror, mirror

While none of us really need to learn how to build a fire or hut anymore, mirror neurons are still important in the modern world. As college students in an environment that will shape our lifelong opinions and beliefs, we should use these neurons to expand our knowledge of other people, times and places.

Katiera Sordjan | The new Stockholm syndrome

Fraternity pledges are stripped of their belongings and clothing and forced to parade around. New student leaders are verbally belittled before assuming their positions.  Members of a club are dragged out of bed in the middle of the night, doused with alcohol  comma and pressured to drink.

Jeremiah Keenan | Public practice of private faith

Across the country, similarly misguided school authorities have ordered the removal of nominally religious images and quotations (such as an educational poster featuring the five pillars of Islam or a Ronald Reagan quote that mentioned God) and banned or bullied religious clubs.

The Vision | Stop asking for permission

There are plenty of people walking around with fancy positions who haven’t accomplished much. And then there are those without any formal recognitions who will always be remembered for the impact that they have had.

Dani Blum | Sit down or stand out

I understand where my friend is coming from. Part of my selfish, pre-frosh fantasies about Penn was making something more of myself, of standing out somehow in the massive crowd. I didn’t know how that would manifest or what I would do to achieve that, but I wanted to be different. I think we all did.

Shawn Kelley | Get up, stand up

A feeling of too many problems to be able to affect change has begun to permeate the activism community. Too many problems and too little time. How is a student supposed to spend time contending for a cause, while also keeping up with school work?

Jonathan Iwry | Reclaiming Zionism

I should be able to identify as a Zionist without being called a fascist. I should also be able to criticize particular policies by the Israeli government without being anti-Zionism. As the debate stands, it’s all or nothing. It’s inaccurate and unfair to those of us who are looking for a middle ground. To put it simply, it’s unreasonable.

The Vision | Nappy hair and blue eyes

This pervasive notion that black people have to change their bodies is ingrained in our society and makes it difficult to recognize how external forces have been internalized. Whether this self-loathing comes in the form of using makeup or chemicals to brighten skin tones or using heat or treatments to straighten hair, the goal has been to meet a standard of beauty that elevates one group of people and simultaneously demeans another.

Katiera Sordjan | Don't be colorblind

People who say they are colorblind miss the point of cultural acceptance. Yes, you should not make assumptions about me or treat me unkindly because of the color of my skin. But you should also not strip me of the rich backgrounds that have shaped my life and made me who I am today.

Dani Blum | Unsmooth SAILing

For me, that’s the most troubling part of flipped classrooms — the idea that, with all the great faculty Penn has, they don’t spend time teaching. A freshman in an active learning Math 103 course told me that she is required to watch online lectures. Once she is actually in class, her professor puts her into groups and gives them worksheets.

Yessenia Gutierrez | Adopting a new point of view

I hope that I will love my child the instant I know they are mine — as my parents felt with me. I will love an adopted child with the same deep, irrational and unconditional love my parents have given me. Just like my parents, I will then begin the lifelong process of getting to know who they really are, and loving them not just as my child, but as their own person.

Guest column by Elizabeth Oppong and Mikie Sakanaka | It's your student government

When it comes to student government, Penn does not have a participation problem. Participation with Penn Student Government has undoubtedly improved over the past few years, from higher voter turnout to increased student participation in various appointed committees. Penn does, however, have an ownership problem.

Shawn Kelley | From service member to student

Normandy, Iwo Jima, Pusan, Khe Sanh, Fallujah, Kamdesh. For some, these names might not mean much. Maybe they have seen them in history books or have heard the names before. Yet for those who fought, those names and many others are forever branded in their memories. They recall the desperation and the sounds of battle, and most of all, those they fought beside. It is a brotherhood that runs deeper than any fraternity, one that traverses time and location. It is a bond forged in blood and fire.

Guest column by Nick Buchta | The forgotten battlefield

We’ve lost 22 soldiers today, but not on a conventional battlefield. Instead, that is the number of US military veterans that the Veterans Administration estimates die by suicide every day.

Sophia Wushanley | The culture cop-out

Luckily enough, after three years of immersion in “Penn culture,” I have good news to share with any worried underclassmen or compassionate, concerned outsiders who’d like to hear it. I am, in fact, capable of occupying myself with activities that will never make it onto my resume, I have never justified the time I’ve spent eating a meal with a friend by calling it networking and Fear Of Missing Sleep consistently trumps Fear Of Missing Out on my list of concerns.

Jonathan Iwry | ISIS! Ebola! Obama!

Conservative behavior might have yielded an advantage in more primitive times, but today, it lends itself too easily to xenophobia, negotiation through brute force and the persecution of religious minorities.

Guest column by Adam Hersh | New Republic, old news

Of course, then she would have also seen that students here spend their time on all sorts of projects and groups that have very little to do with employment prospects and that lots of people don’t think of their fraternities and sororities solely as “a gateway to the gilded Goldman life,” and that for every hard-partying social climber is some schlub in a library — and that sometimes those are even the same person. In other words, she would have found out that Penn is filled with human beings.

Guest column by Blake Mergler and Carla Hernandez | Response from Penn Speaks for Autism

On behalf of the dedicated general body members and executive board of PSFA, we would like to clarify our club’s overall mission to the community at Penn and in greater Philadelphia.