Sophia Wushanley

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.

Despite all of its physical and mental advantages, a lot of girls shy away from weight training for fear of a Schwarzenegger-like transformation. I can assure you that this is virtually impossible.

People who believe that it constitutes a real harm to be exposed to an opinion they find bigoted will never feel safe in the sort of conversation that needs to be had the most: one that actually engages with the opposition.

Somewhere along the line, a lot of people have come to see science as an ideology we can opt in or out of rather than a process of logical enquiry.

Firstly, asking ourselves questions about free speech and its limitations as a response to the attacks lets in the idea that there could be a legitimate justification for retaliating against someone’s expression with brutality. I don’t think I’m alone in believing that this idea is ridiculous.

This Thanksgiving, my sister was back from her first semester of college, already a little bit overwhelmed.

The problem ... stems from the fact that people conflate freedom of speech with being given a microphone and a pat on the back.

Luckily enough, after three years of immersion in “Penn culture,” I have good news to share with any worried underclassmen or compassionate, concerned outsiders who’d like to hear it. I am, in fact, capable of occupying myself with activities that will never make it onto my resume, I have never justified the time I’ve spent eating a meal with a friend by calling it networking and Fear Of Missing Sleep consistently trumps Fear Of Missing Out on my list of concerns.

Although I subscribe to the belief that, in our advanced society, it’s wrong to kill animals for food, I understand that we live in a world where there are enough starving people that moral outrage on behalf of the exploited honey bee seems a little misplaced, and where the objectification of women causes enough damage that PETA’s “I’d rather go naked than wear fur” campaign makes me worry more about the state of women in our society than the state of cattle.

In imaginary America, affirmative action is unfair because it treats two equally privileged candidates unequally. It is unnecessary because Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream has been realized and we all see character, not skin. It is nonsensical because minorities aren’t disproportionately poor, uneducated and incarcerated. We can hope for this America but we cannot pretend it exists or has ever existed.