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Saturday, Dec. 13, 2025
The Daily Pennsylvanian

Michelle Dubert









The Daily Pennsylvanian

On Dec. 11, 2002, I did math homework for the last time. I was done with derivatives forever, since the following day I was accepted early decision to Penn. High school sort of went uphill from there. Last year, 22,754 of the world's overachievers applied to Harvard, 3,869 of whom applied early.



The Daily Pennsylvanian

In one of the more defining moments of my Penn life under Amy Gutmann's reign, 34th Street asked the University president if she believes art has to be beautiful. "No," she answered flatly, definitively. Next question. The notion of what art truly is and what it looks like is a topic that connoisseurs and dilettantes debate with equal tenacity - what qualities make something art? What makes a Jackson Pollack "art" over, say, a larger-than-life rendering of a fictitious Philadelphia icon? The Philadelphia Museum of Art has wondered that recently, as it fought to preserve its artistic hegemony over a city proposal to set an eight-foot-six-inch bronze Rocky Balboa statue at its steps.