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The Daily Pennsylvanian
The Daily Pennsylvanian

Ben Facey | Ink’d

By Ben Facey · Jan. 17, 2016

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.


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.

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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.


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.



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.



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.



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.






In the wake of protests against racism on campuses around the country last week, many of my acquaintances took to social media to declare their status as “allies” of the protestors, and to affirm their solidarity with the various movements participating. It was far from first time I’d seen the term “ally” used in conjunction with social justice movements, but it raised the concept afresh in my mind.


Injustice and violence are rampant, equality is still a dream, the civil rights movement is in Act 2 of a seemingly never-ending play and innocent lives are taken on a daily basis for reasons that are both illogical and unsubstantiated.


It’s one of the most-heard phrases on any college campus, rotely recited to hopeful applicants when they ask what the college environment is really like.


On Friday, Nov. 13 the world witnessed in disgrace the bombings and shootings in Paris for which the Islamic State claimed responsibility. Realizing that to write about this event can promote it, and hence accomplish its purpose of spreading terror, I am morally obligated to dedicate this week’s column to the memory of those who have fallen in the name of democracy and freedom.




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