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Friday, April 10, 2026
The Daily Pennsylvanian
The Daily Pennsylvanian

I've always been told you can't fix stupid. Philadelphia, though, is trying to ban it. Last week, the City Council passed a bill that would allow police to ticket motorists, bicyclists, skateboarders, rollerbladers and scooter riders who are caught talking or texting on handheld cell phones.


According to University Archives, in 1916 Hey Day was established as a "moving up" celebration to mark the advancement of each class. As Penn's Class of 2010 steps into senior status tomorrow during Hey Day, their Class of 2009 counterparts will be moving up as well with The Final Toast.

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Tomorrow - for the few students who don't know - is Hey Day, the traditional "moving up" day for juniors. And, in the past, it's also been the traditional "get stuff thrown at you" day for juniors. While this year's crop of juniors weren't even at Penn in 2006, when a then-junior was sent to the hospital after being hit in the eye with an egg, the Ghost of Hey Days Past should still be present tomorrow.

I'm no Fresh Prince, but come May 18, I too will be saying goodbye to the city in whose shadow I've been living for the past 20 years. Since my parents to Philadelphia in the late 1980s, parts of the city have changed a great deal: The Comcast Center tower has nestled itself next to the Mellon Bank building and the Liberty Place skyscrapers.




The Daily Pennsylvanian

According to University Archives, in 1916 Hey Day was established as a "moving up" celebration to mark the advancement of each class. As Penn's Class of 2010 steps into senior status tomorrow during Hey Day, their Class of 2009 counterparts will be moving up as well with The Final Toast.


The Daily Pennsylvanian

Hey, did you know that Barack Obama and fam have a new super-duper-adorable dog?! He's a cute, fuzzy-wuzzy Portuguese Water Dog given to the First Family by Senator Ted Kennedy. His name is Bo and he is so cute! And did I mention that he's now usurped Suri Cruise for the media's prize of "OMG Cutest Thing Ever!!!!"? Of course you knew that Malia and Sasha finally got the promised pup, the same way you knew that the video of Susan Boyle's performance on Britain's Got Talent has received 17 gazillion hits on YouTube and the same way you knew that Lindsay Lohan and Sam Ronson are dunzo.


The Daily Pennsylvanian

As an architecture major, I get pangs of jealousy every time I hear that the architect du jour is building some shiny new super building on someone else's campus. Whether it's Frank Gehry at MIT, Renzo Piano at Columbia or Norman Foster at Stanford, it's tough not to be envious when Penn's last superstar designer was Lou Kahn back in the 50s.


The Daily Pennsylvanian

Today, members of the Undergraduate Assembly will gather to elect the chairman for the next academic year. While the entire student body does not get to vote in this particular election, the chairman, more so than any other undergraduate leader on campus, speaks for the entire student body.



The Daily Pennsylvanian

You are reading an eight-page newspaper today. On this day last year, you were reading a 14-page paper. And, though it's a rarity for The Daily Pennsylvanian to drop to such a low size, it is not the first eight-page paper of the semester. Unfortunately, every newspaper in the country is slimming down its print edition.


The Daily Pennsylvanian

Last week, the Columbia Spectator wrote about the college's plan to add a sustainable-development major for fall 2010. Cited as "trans-disciplinary," the major would encompass multiple topics and include a fieldwork component. This degree program - which sounds like old-school environmental studies on steroids - will be the undergraduate arm within the school's Earth Institute, which works to "help achieve sustainable development primarily by expanding the world's understanding of Earth as one integrated system," according to its Web site.


The Daily Pennsylvanian

Tomorrow is Earth Day, the celebration of all things nature (and a possible extension of yesterday's festivities for some). Though I'm not entirely certain of the difference between Earth Day and Arbor Day (something about deciduous?), Obama said the environment was important so I'm celebrating both this year.




The Daily Pennsylvanian

Let's be honest - as college students, we take a lot for granted: no class on Fridays, Wawa and FroGro's late-night hours, our ability to watch daytime television like retirees and often, our health. Sure, we keep Student Health on their toes, but for the most part, the diseases that plague our nation tend not to affect our age group.


The Daily Pennsylvanian

One of the first lessons we all learn as freshmen is that you can bursar an iPod at Computer Connection, then have your parents unknowingly pay the bill for it later. Devious, aren't we? "Bursaring" - the practice of getting billed by the University for a wide variety of on-campus purchases instead of paying for them up front - has always seemed a unique aspect of the Penn culture to me.


The Daily Pennsylvanian

Straightening historical facts To the Editor: I'm assuming others will write in to debunk Emerson Brooking's offensive defense of the Confederate flag and the racism that it has symbolized through the decades ("In defense of Dixie" 4/15/2009). But I was also struck by the line in his piece that read: "Almost 300,000 Southerners fought and died under the flag of the Confederacy, and the resulting Reconstruction altered the course of the South's economic and cultural development, creating a depression that would linger for generations.