Zachary Noyce

Dear Senators McCain, Obama and Clinton, I'm a registered Pennsylvania voter who's been listening to you since the 2008 Presidential election season started shortly after the Berlin Wall came down. Now I'd appreciate it if you'd take a minute to listen to me.

It's a rough time of the semester - the calm before the storm for procrastinators like me. I still have about 70 pages of papers left before I can burn my Campus Copy bulk packs on Hill Field and perform a celebratory end-of-semester dance. But between now and the day Penn Police pistol-whip a confession out of me for disturbing the peace, I'll face daily existential crises.

Before too long, we won't know our way around campus at all. That's because Penn has a proud tradition of renaming anything and everything in response to large sums of money. In the latest demonstration of that tradition, Logan Hall will be re-christened (or de-christened, perhaps) Claudia Cohen Hall to honor the late ex-wife of Ronald Perelman (perhaps you've heard of his Quadrangle).

Penn's Police can now send you text messages. On Friday, The Division of Public Safety conducted a comprehensive test of its new emergency alert system. Taking a page from PhillyCarShare's ComprehensiveFieldGuideAboutHowToNameThings, UPennAlert decided in its message that putting spaces between words just takes too long.

About once a month or so, I like to go into the Financial Aid office to ask a question or two - and to remind them that I am still desperately poor. So just in case they happen to have a couple thousand dollars that they're looking to give out, I'm their guy.

I've pretty much made up my mind about this: I would like to have a good job someday. While I haven't conducted any scientific testing yet (and I'm seriously questioning whether that grant will ever get approved), I'm pretty sure that I'm not alone. These are different days from those of our parents.

Penn has been facing nothing short of a housing crisis for years now. In spite of all the faithful converts to off-campus housing options, the fact that Penn doesn't have the space to accommodate its students in College Houses means too many have been forced converts.

What do you mean, you haven't settled on your final project yet? We're already three weeks into the semester! This year, as always, Penn students will launch advertising campaigns, write unique research papers and think of business proposals. More and more classes ask students to apply the knowledge that the classes purport to teach.

I dare you. Just try to think of something more relevant to you than real estate prices in the Bronx. Well, thanks to the UA Readership Program, you'll never miss a Knicks box score or a Staten Island Zoning Meeting write-up. You'll always know which new Brooklyn bar is a hit and it will be harder than ever to avoid wondering what Tom Friedman keeps hidden in his mustache.