Opinion-Columns

Zachary Bell | Notes from Montreal

According to the Associated Press, 53.6 percent of Americans under 26 with a bachelors degree — 1.5 million — are jobless or underemployed. That could fill a lot of streets. So why are they empty?

Nina Wolpow | Saving summer

Summer in adult land is a season not unlike the other three. Sure, there are beaches and frozen cocktails in this universe. But gone are the unnumbered days: the Saturdays that feel like Wednesdays and the weekends you never knew had arrived.

Hayley Brooks & Ali Kokot | Girls, on GIRLS

Last Sunday night, we watched the first season of Dunham’s HBO darling come to a circuitous end: we started with Hannah eating, and we finish with Hannah eating.

Ernest Owens | Never O’Clock: using the N-word

Our societal mindset has shifted to thinking that racial slurs do not have the same impact as they did in the past. Many scholars and critics, arguing for the idea of a “post-racial society,” claim people see beyond race and more into individuality.

Arielle Pardes | A week you won't forget

I realize this might be awkward, but we can make it easy for you. In fact, you won’t even have to do the talking. Let’s just bring in a few sex educators, maybe a porn star or two and spend a week celebrating and learning about sex. We’ll call it Sex Week.

Kyle Henson | Change even Matisse could believe in

This failure seems to hint at a pervasive resistance to change that plagues our society. This problem proves most dangerous when our stubbornness to adapt allows obvious, and sometimes even easily solved, inefficiencies to persist.

Robert Hsu | Mice, pipettes and the unknown

I’ve realized so much of life is plain trial and error. As all of our moms used to tell us when we refused to try new food: if you never try it, how will you know that you don’t like it? The same applies to life.

Zachary Bell | Preoccupied in protest

That weekend, I tried to pair my observations of the mass actions with personal conversations — on both sides. I spoke to police and protesters, removing the blue helmets and black masks, asking whether the police are part of the 99 percent or part of a police state in which violence is the closest one can get to “dialogue.”

Josh Bolton | Will you accept the JRP Summertime Challenge?

But to be honest, “summer break” has never made much sense to me. Yeah, it’s a break from all the work and stress of the academic year — but sometimes all the work of the school year feels like a break from the “real work” we accomplish during the warm months.

Arielle Pardes | Sex and the summertime

While there isn’t a scientific consensus on why people tend to find romance during the summer, lovers in pop culture (think: Danny and Sandy in “Grease,” Noah and Allie in “The Notebook,” Johnny and Baby in “Dirty Dancing”) combined with our own experiences confirm that summer is the season for getting frisky.

Sara Brenes-Akerman | Four good years

I am four years older than the kid that cried at the airport, four years more certain of who I am and four years more confident. But I’m not quite sure of all that much, except that the past four years have been good.

Brian Goldman | Gradually warming to graduation

Graduation is the nudge that gets us out of college and into the real world.

Charles Gray | How I see the color gray

Words in a column, book or a speech, for that matter, mean nothing without action to supplement them.

Samantha Sharf | Stories a nutgraf can't tell

At 15 years old, I already harbored fantasies of bylines containing my name. If that were the whole story it would, of course, be a very boring one. My path up till now must look nauseatingly straightforward from the outside. But like most students, my years at Penn have been anything but simple and very different from what I expected.

Zachary Bell | Will Occupy Spring create another world or another left?

I began May Day eager to see a space that embodied the movement’s values. However, after 12 hours of activism, this other world that Occupy was trying to create seemed messy and racked by many of the contradictions that haunted the New Left in the 1960s.

Sally Engelhart | The fastest and best four years

We all know from experience that the perception of time passing is not constant. Just think about how quickly the hour of an exam can fly by or how slowly an hour lecture can.

Rachel del Valle | Picking up London's call

I’ll be leaving on a jet plane. Soon — I mean, relatively soon. I’m studying abroad in London next semester. Now that classes are over, that statement actually feels like it means something.

Zachary Bell | Grateful to graduate

Ironically, the knowledge I have gained from my liberal arts education is exactly what has made the reward for its completion confounding.

Hayley Brooks & Ali Kokot | Declaring 'Game Over'

Open dialogue between the sexes at Penn is just not happening because the “game” we subscribe to requires crafty disingenuity.

Brian Goldman | Mingling with Millennials

Young people are often lamented for their lack of organization and mobilization around youth causes. But I’m not sure if this will ever shift, because young people hold such varied political viewpoints.