Category: Opinion

A shooting that resulted in the injury of one man occurred at the intersection of 40th and Walnut on Tuesday, November 11th. 

Are you interested in public service? Politics? All things life in Washington, DC? Penn in Washington could be just the program for you. Here’s what you should know before applying.

As those who attended Penn last year would know, students found themselves in the midst of an incredibly competitive and polarizing election cycle. On Locust, then-freshmen such as myself were greeted by volunteers and activists seeking to register us to vote or campaigning on behalf of individual causes. While activists and campaigners from Planned Parenthood, the Harris Campaign, and Dave McCormick’s campaign held events here, I encountered little conversation about the war in Ukraine.

At a university where efficiency is a moral virtue, intimacy, too, has become streamlined. PMP mirrors the logic of contemporary dating apps: forms, filters, swipes, metrics. The slow unfolding of affection has been replaced by the calibrated precision of compatibility scores. In a world built on optimization, even love is expected to perform.

In the age of social media politics, Zohran Mamdani has emerged as Gen Z’s ideal candidate. His platform reads more like a child’s wish list than a serious plan to lead the nation’s largest city. However, that’s exactly what makes him appealing to a generation raised on instant gratification and online idealism. 

On September 10th, Charlie Kirk was fatally shot in the neck. While many rightfully condemned the violence, many members of the media and Penn students alike have responded disgracefully. 

On July 30th, Wharton administrators unveiled a set of new club regulations they claimed necessary to comply with the recently enacted Stop Campus Hazing Act. However, I’d argue these rules will undermine meritocracy and worsen an already challenging process. 

As a young male college student, I don’t feel seen or spoken to by the Democratic Party. I’m tired of being reduced to the kind of caricature Walz described. Like many of my peers, I care deeply about fairness, opportunity, and decency. But when I hear party leaders imply that men like me are misogynists by default, I start to question whether this party still wants my vote.

I support Israel because history—and my experience at Penn—has taught me that I have no other choice. After October 7, I knew that the coming rhetorical fight would force me to lean on that principle. I knew that my community—one that I value deeply—would soon have to fight a heart-wrenching, fraught, and completely necessary battle. 

Sentimentality has no place in foreign affairs. When we allow our judgement to be clouded by emotional considerations, we run the risk of making catastrophic miscalculations on behalf of the American people. If we do not heed the lessons of history today, we gamble with repeating this mistake at a far more disastrous scale in Israel.