Ryan Benjamin

Picture this: The University of Pennsylvania, fall 1951. Harry Truman is the president of the United States, we are in the midst of war with Korea and women are not allowed to sit on chairs in Houston Hall. Also that fall, my grandfather entered Penn as a freshman, just shortly after the University stopped using informal quotas to limit the number of Jews who were accepted.

The first time Susan Boyle popped onto my computer screen, I had no clue she would become a phenomenon within days, shocking the world with her unbelievable singing talents despite extremely low expectations. "Susan really makes you wonder how much undiscovered and unharnessed talent there is in the world," Engineering senior Mike Abuschinow said.

We entered the room ready to learn, as we always do. But this was no ordinary class, you see. As the sun began to set on the chilly Sunday evening, the group - half Penn students, half Dalits, or India's "untouchables" - carried flowers and refreshments. Then class began.

This year, Penn sent congratulatory letters to 3,926 students out of the 22,939 that applied - an acceptance rate of 17.11 percent. But last year, the acceptance rate was (gasp!) 0.10 percent lower. A minute fraction of a percent, but unfortunately many students - and this newspaper - seem to think such an increase in acceptance is a "situation.

Last Sunday's Undergraduate Assembly meeting confirmed that we live in an age in which we must please everyone. And by everyone, I mean "minorities." This week it got so bad that the UA's Working Group on Minorities in Undergraduate Education introduced several proposals to "stand up for these gender and ethnic minorities and say that they are an important part of the University," as volunteer member and Wharton and Nursing sophomore G.

Imagine this: One day, Philadelphia has 1.5 million people in it. The next, most of the population disappears, and nearly four years later, only half has returned. The city would be desolate, its institutions destroyed, its buildings abandoned. This is reality for people in St.

Diehard DP fans, come on down for a DP Columnist Quiz! (sort of) Your ideal spring break activity come true, I know. We as DP columnists simply scratch the surface, so this goes a little beyond in keeping you informed. I will attempt to prove that we actually cover a broad spectrum of issues - even though you might say we only write about course requirements and Facebook - and that we use facts to contextualize our arguments.

How many times have you been accosted by a panhandler, who you think is homeless, outside of Wawa? The attitude among students is overwhelmingly "not in our backyard." So I recently asked a random sample of Penn students what their first reaction would be if a student group planned to operate a homeless shelter on campus.

Forget the fine print. Anyone who's been paying attention to the latest Facebook "crisis" - in which the site's terms of service removed the users' right to their own content after deleting their accounts, and then reneged - must realize that no matter what the words say, Facebook will always have access to our content.

When it comes down to it, we respect and follow the leaders we feel we personally know best. So really, that's rarely Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton or Tiger Woods. Instead, the leaders we tend to emulate are those we directly interact with. One of those leaders is Nicholas Kristof, the New York Times columnist who travels all over the world to report on the world's most heinous crimes against humanity.