Perhaps the two most important pieces of advice freshmen receive are to avoid dating people in their hall and to avoid citing Wikipedia in a paper for class. While the first is questionable, the second makes sense most of the time. After all, when the Benjamin Franklin statue in front of College Hall was renamed the "Liora Pollick Statue" on Penn's Wikipedia page, no one noticed for two months.
If Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings has her way, the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) will be a shadow of its former self. Under Spellings's recently proposed plan, FAFSA would cut the number of questions it asks from over 100 to roughly 27.
Alicia Puglionesi is a College senior from Havertown, Pa. Her e-mail address is puglionesi@dailypennsylvanian.com.
Library use on the rise To the Editor: Last week in an article and subsequent cartoon, The Daily Pennsylvanian implied that use of Penn Libraries is in decline. To correct the record, I offer a few relevant metrics. In the five years between 2003 and 2007 (our latest complete statistics), circulation of books, videos, audio materials, microforms and laptop computers increased by some 20,000 items.
The other night, as I was walking home from rehearsal, I overheard a conversation that disturbed me more than anything I'd heard in a while (interviews with Sarah Palin notwithstanding). I was walking down 40th Street in front of a couple of guys, clearly Penn students, who were talking about a woman they knew.
In May, I was dumped by e-mail. I received an notice from Student Financial Services telling me I would need to select a new lender for my Federal Stafford Loan. My original lender - along with 136 other institutions - had stopped offering the loans. A couple months later, a friend at another school updated her Facebook status to say she "thinks student loan companies can suck it.
In May, I was dumped by e-mail. I received an notice from Student Financial Services telling me I would need to select a new lender for my Federal Stafford Loan. My original lender - along with 136 other institutions - had stopped offering the loans. A couple months later, a friend at another school updated her Facebook status to say she "thinks student loan companies can suck it.
If Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings has her way, the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) will be a shadow of its former self. Under Spellings's recently proposed plan, FAFSA would cut the number of questions it asks from over 100 to roughly 27.
Alicia Puglionesi is a College senior from Havertown, Pa. Her e-mail address is puglionesi@dailypennsylvanian.com.
Have you noticed the financial crisis developing right before our eyes - this country's worst since the Great Depression? Most of us know it exists but don't understand it to the extent we should. I randomly surveyed over 120 Penn students, and only 31 percent reported that they were "extremely confident" or "pretty confident" in their ability to understand the current financial dilemma.
Alex Jacobson is a College junior from Los Angeles. His e-mail address is jacobson@dailypennsylvanian.com.
Election officials shouldn't be fashion police. Thanks to vaguely defined state laws banning "passive electioneering" in the polling booth, some counties in Pennsylvania plan to prevent voters from wearing campaign buttons or t-shirts when they cast their vote.
Spring Break 2008 saw 175 Penn students make the pilgrimage that care forgot. Their work was hardly a big easy: Students cleared wreckage, rebuilt houses and even helped out at an animal shelter. But the sad truth is that despite these students' best efforts, New Orleans will still succumb to the next major storm.
We get it. Our economy is collapsing around us. The bailout plan doesn't bail us out. Seniors are having a hard time getting jobs. While we shouldn't ignore the urgency and ripple effects of this economic crisis, we also can't allow it to overshadow preexisting global concerns that threaten our existence, especially ones that we can actually control.
Jennifer Lesser is a College junior from Minneapolis, Minn. Her e-mail address is lesser@dailypennsylvanian.com.
Hypothetical scenario: You wake up after a night of partying, naked in a stranger's bed. You gaze around the room with horror when you're hit with a flash of recollection - vaguely, you remember taking multiple shots, staggering away from the party, making out, struggling to say no, feeling too drunk to fight back.
Questionable funding To the Editor: The plan to help businesses along Baltimore Avenue improve their facades ("Residents weigh in on Baltimore Ave. makeover," 9/22/08) has a laudable goal but has been poorly executed. It is eye opening that only one-third of the funding is going to the improvements themselves, with two-thirds to the University City District's (UCD) overhead costs.
The Penn Project for Civic Engagement (PPCE) is built on this premise: "We dream about what we value, then work to turn those dreams into reality." Put another way, the work of citizens in a democracy is to define the public interest and to build common ground for actions that will further the public interest.
Penn students have until next Monday to stand up and be counted. Oct. 6 is the last day to register to vote for the presidential elections. All Penn students who will be 18 before Election Day and are American citizens can register. For more instructions, see the box below this editorial.
Applying to graduate school? Get ready to familiarize yourself with some alphabet soup: GRE, GMAT, LSAT, MCAT. The latter three concern those students applying to business, law and medical school. Students hoping to pursue the arts and sciences take the GRE, or the Graduate Record Examination.
Now that the firestorm surrounding the Logan Hall-Claudia Cohen Hall Fiasco has died down, we can put the whole episode in a little bit of context. Frankly, the name of the building won't compromise the quality of your Philosophy lecture in Logan/Cohen 17.
Janice Dow is a College sophomore from Rowland Heights, Calif. Her e-mail address is dow@dailypennsylvanian.com. Related StoriesMore turn to libraries in economic downturn - News
We recently published two articles about student government's collaboration with Penn's minority communities to improve undergraduate minority representation in major campus institutions. The Daily Pennsylvanian is an active supporter of and a participant in these efforts.
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