Pennsylvania's Charters Face A Difficult Road
(10/01/25 1:45pm)
Move fast and break things.
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The Emperor Has No Code
(09/08/25 2:49am)
Cluely’s company onboarding package includes the following: a work laptop, ID, house keys, a five–motif Van Cleef, a corporate Hinge premium subscription, 74 servings of whey protein, and five honey packs. “Put it in your coffee next time,” Chief Marketing Officer Daniel Min (W ’25) advises on the company’s official TikTok page. “Trust me, it tastes great.”
Come as You Are
(09/19/25 4:05am)
For many, the words “sexual education” often bring to mind a stuffy high school classroom—condoms on cucumbers, Googling STI symptoms, your gym teacher sitting you down to talk about “growing hair down there.” But it’s in college that these early lessons truly bear fruit. On campuses, sex ed morphs into something else entirely. Debriefs with roommates, whispers at parties, and Sidechat discourse become informal kernels of knowledge, filling in vast gaps left by inadequate high school curricula.
The Schuylkill River Fishermen
(07/24/25 10:28pm)
As summer sighs her first warm breath, fishermen take to the banks of Philadelphia’s Schuylkill River. Though many Philadelphians know the river for its reputed pollution and rumors of three–eyed fish, urban anglers have become a fixture of the river’s banks. Curious passersby may be concerned or intrigued, but at the end of the day, this is Philadelphia—it’s not the strangest thing to happen in this city.
It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Penn Christmas
(07/11/25 5:54am)
Mid–May is a season of endings on Penn’s campus. Seniors don cap and gown, final exams loom, and students buzz along Locust Walk cramming in final moments with friends before the school year ends. The familiar sights of family SUVs lining Spruce and Walnut streets, IKEA rugs spilling from trash bins lining the halls of residential houses, and parades of red–and–blue move–out carts rumbling across campus return. Outside of dorm rooms, abandoned lamps and tangled piles of string lights line the corridors like spotlights on a red carpet leading out of the school year and into summer.
Penn Ten-tative
(05/16/25 1:17pm)
Graduation has always been scary. But for the Class of 2025, graduation just got a little bit scarier. These seniors are leaving the frying pan for the fire, trading a University under federal attack for an economy in chaos. National hiring freezes have limited job opportunities for many hoping to work in the public sector or research. Delays to the Fulbright Program have disrupted many students’ dreams to study abroad. And plenty of idealistic students hoping to work on Capitol Hill have paused, given the current status of American politics.
Can I Say That? Can I Stay?
(04/04/25 4:00am)
Donald Trump (W ‘68) is back in office. For some, it’s a sign of the end of democracy. For others, it’s a long–awaited opportunity to reassert a nationalist agenda. But beyond the polarization—the sensational headlines, partisan battles, and congressional gridlock—there are quieter consequences unfolding in classrooms, dorms, and visa offices.
DOGE’s Wake of Destruction
(04/18/25 4:00am)
“Every single person that I have worked with in the past ten years in this field who is not at the World Bank is either furloughed or terminated,” says Penn professor Heather Huntington.
Coast–to–Coast Conversations on the LA Wildfires
(04/20/25 6:18pm)
Between Jan. 7 and 31 of this year, two major fires roared through Los Angeles County, leaving behind the shells of cars and empty foundations of houses. On the western side of LA, the Palisades fire destroyed more than 20,000 acres of the Pacific Palisades; in the east, the Eaton Fire consumed 14,000 acres of Altadena, Calif. and nearby neighborhoods. By the time they were contained, 29 people had died, 200,000 were forced to evacuate, and the fires would become the second and third most destructive in California history.
Inventing a Sustainable Future
(04/25/25 4:00am)
The butterfly effect was initially developed by mathematician Edward Lorenz in the 1960s. He posited that a tornado could have been caused by something so seemingly unrelated as a butterfly flapping its wings halfway around the world weeks prior. In decades since, it has become a catch–all way to describe how everything in the universe is interconnected, and a seemingly minor shift can ultimately cause a much larger change.
Inside D.C. Fashion Week
(03/07/25 5:00am)
Washington is known for power suits, not power silhouettes. It’s a city where the most daring fashion choice is not wearing Allbirds to brunch. It is a town of navy blazers, sensible flats, and men who dress like their mothers still buy their Barbour jackets.
Humanities are F*#ked (Kinda, It’s Complicated)
(03/28/25 4:00am)
Questions about pragmatism have, for a long time, plagued the humanities. Fields such as English and fine arts have historically been intertwined with the “starving artist” trope—the image of someone willing to give up their financial wellbeing for the pursuit of creative passion. Meanwhile, internet videos of graduates of New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study have recently gone viral, with users mocking the practicality of their self–designed humanities majors. In response to BA concentrations such as “Art as a Social Mechanism” and “Care Politics,” some social media users commented on the unemployment and debt that the graduates would face, while others simply called NYU Gallatin a “clown school.”
En Garde! Encore!
(02/21/25 6:52am)
It’s getting late in the evening, but Aaron Jones (C ‘25) has a ways to go before he can call it a night. He’s rehearsing and re–rehearsing every move in the dance studio until each step, twirl, and gesture is etched into his memory. Aaron isn’t the only one toiling away. As a new member of the band Penn Sargam, Raghav Gopalakrishnan (W ‘28) is knee–deep in the process of adding his clarinet to the group’s rendition of the latest pop hits.
Hitting the Decks with Penn’s DJs
(02/07/25 5:00am)
It’s 1 a.m., towards the tail end of what began as a normal house party. As the night goes on, most stream out one by one, going home to finish their readings or simply head to bed before the next day’s classes. The chatter dies down, the room empties out, and only a few stragglers stick around, tapping their feet or making idle conversation. The room is cast in shadow, with a solitary blue lamp and the glow of a TV playing “Crazy Realistic Trip Visuals 4K,” the only source of light in the increasingly desolate venue. Through it all, there is only one constant: the DJ standing under the stairs, twisting the knobs, hunched over his decks in furious concentration. The size of the crowd is immaterial, the lack of lighting a mere distraction. In his mind, all that is solid has melted into air—only the sound remains.
Generation GPT
(01/31/25 6:02am)
Students taking a class taught or organized by Mathematics and Electrical and Systems Engineering professor Robert Ghrist—who goes by prof–g—often encounter a unique type of tutor. It is available 24/7, not bound by a strict office hours schedule or a reticence to answer emails late at night. It never runs out of practice questions or examples. And it is always able to get back to you in moments, even if dozens of students are asking it questions simultaneously.
Rethinking Marriage in the Modern Age
(02/14/25 5:13am)
“I probably wouldn’t be married if I knew I was going to have health insurance. That’s not because I don’t love my partner and [don’t] want to spend the rest of my life with him. It’s because I didn’t want to actually take part in this institution,” says Miranda Sklaroff, a Ph.D. candidate in political theory at Penn. Sklaroff knew she and her partner wanted to have kids. But she had concerns about healthcare, which she wasn’t sure Penn would provide. “It was just something we had to do.”
Philadelphia Schools Are Hanging Up On Phone Bans
(12/06/24 4:46am)
When Steph—a mother of three in Philadelphia—visited a new private school with her eldest son, she noticed crosshatched calculator holders hanging on the classroom doors filled—but not with dedicated number crunchers. They were for smartphones. Now, a few months into the new school year, these high school students know the deal: There will be no phones in class.
Penn’s Other Student–Athletes
(11/15/24 2:54am)
One of the most important members of the Penn Curling Club is Luke Krier’s (C ‘27) mother. Without an eligible driver for the competing players last season, Krier stepped in, ensuring that the team could attend bonspiels, or curling matches, with other schools across the Northeast. Flying in from Minnesota, she drove the team up to ten hours to other universities in a rental car. As an “honorary member” of the team, according to several of its players, Krier stepped away from her accounting position in the thick of tax season to help the team thrive.
No Historic Preservation without Representation
(11/08/24 5:14pm)
On Sept. 13, the Philadelphia Historical Commission (PHC) voted 9–0 to approve the creation of the Washington Square West Historic District, spanning 26 blocks between Walnut and Lombard Streets and 8th and Juniper Streets. Nearly 1,500 residential, commercial, and religious properties fall within the boundaries of the new district, the largest in the city.
Weaving Through Bike Lanes and Legislation
(11/01/24 2:26pm)
Philadelphia’s bike infrastructure has long been a contentious issue. Ask any cyclist, and they’ll relay stories of weaving in and out of bike lanes due to stopped vehicles, dealing with aggressive drivers, and navigating streets littered with potholes and broken glass. But on Oct. 24, Philadelphia’s City Council unanimously passed a bill that expands and increases fines for vehicles in bike lanes and could mark a turning point in protecting cyclists.
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