“No other group in America has so had their identity socialized out of existence as have black women... When black people are talked about the focus tends to be on black men; and when women are talked about the focus tends to be on white women.” ? bell hooks Quiet as it’s kept, the denial to protect the black woman in this country belongs to a long American tradition from which this University is not exempt.

The cost of any potentially offensive joke can be redeemed if they’re clever enough — so much so that the audience recognizes the intention and structure is to be funny, and not that its choice of topic matter is inherently funny. In the case of Trevor Noah, he comes off as reckless.

Over the past few days, I’ve tried to explain Fling to my friends back home. “It’s a carnival,” I tried to tell them. “It’s a few days to just relax.” In our work-hard, play-hard environment, Fling means the chance to take a break from Penn, but also to epitomize our dear University.

Thinking about cultural appropriation as it affects my life brings up more questions than I expected. It is a complex topic because of the way it has been handled and regarded over time, and how it has impacted the lives of marginalized minority communities.

I can’t help but think that the language of safety and unsafety just isn’t the right terminology for this conversation.

Those who are quick to declare that “all lives matter” cannot deny the verity of the fact that our nation consistently dehumanizes our lives.

In a piece in The New Republic, Bryce Covert anticipates that interim CEO of Reddit Ellen Pao’s judicially unsuccessful gender discrimination lawsuit — waged against her former employer Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers — may still constitute an opportunity to take a step forward in mitigating gender discrimination in the United States.

Travel doesn’t necessarily broaden the mind. It’s possible to live in another country for a few months without learning much of anything. A group of American friends and a Eurotrip mentality is all it takes to extend the “Penn bubble” to a different continent.

The high price of college sucks the meaning out of college itself. When we choose our fields of study based on the potential outcomes, we lose the central purpose of selecting a major at all: to narrow down a field we’re truly interested in, and then to push for excellence in that area.

What those who decry —(with religious zeal, I might add —) Indiana’s RFRA seem to ignore is that these issues involve a balancing of rights.

When the federal government passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in 1993, the LGBT rights movement had hardly begun.

In the age of instant mass media and ever-expanding tort liability, for Penn to adopt a “live and let live” approach to students’ risky behavior just isn’t a rational choice. To avoid the monetary losses which might result from parental lawsuits or bad press born of Greek antics, it is simply in Penn’s best interests as an institution not to be tolerant of violations of policies it couldn’t really change if it wanted to.

Just as we have gendered expectations for ourselves, we also have gendered expectations for others. If we as women think we should be focusing on cardio, we expect men to focus on muscle training.

A college education has become more attainable for those who seek it, but comparatively little has been done to make this education relevant to the newer, wider clientele.

I’m the first to prattle about my love for Penn, but there’s a glorification of wealth that permeates this campus.

In the context of psychological research on identity development, the concept of gendered race is relatively new. Gender and race are also not the only aspects of identity that overlap. Issues of ethnicity, class and sexuality among others all significantly affect the way one acts and is perceived.

My understanding of events in Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere may determine who I vote for in the next presidential election. And yet, though I understand that the politics of that region are often defined by conflict between groups with deep-seated theological disagreements, I find myself unable to summarize what the nature of those disagreements are in any but the most simplistic terms.