The hunger strike at Columbia has gone on for a week now. For those of you unfamiliar with the story, the jist of it is that five Columbia students decided not to eat until the following demands are met:

• a more systematic response to hate crimes from Public Safety
• a more collaborative expansion effort from the administration
• a revision of the Core that encourages critical engagement with issues of racism and colonialism
• more resources and support for the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race (CSER), the Institute for Research in African-American Studies (IRAAS), and the Office of Multicultural Affairs (OMA).

Proving once again that they can’t make a point without being assholes, the College Republicans set up a table of donuts across from the strikers. Their president Chris Kulawik does have a point though, when he says, “A hunger strike is not a legitimate form of debate. It shelves debate.”

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According to the Huffington Post this week, Ivy League faculty are donating more campaign dollars to the Democratic candidates than the Republicans by an overwhelming margin.

I argue there is a fundamental question we in Ivy League are forgetting to ask:

WWCND – What would Chuck Norris do?

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Thar be treasure all ’round, if ye know where to look.

Why, I found a treasure chest just in the bakery section of the oft-maligned Fresh Grocer:

Go around the country and order a “Philly” cheesesteak. Very few places can even come close, and the number one shortcoming is in the roll. It doesn’t seem like it would be so hard to replicate, but the taste of these mockeries proves otherwise. Have these people even been to Philadelphia?

So for just 50 cents you can have the envy of the nation. Mmm mmm, there’s nothing I like better than getting me some steak and onion and cheese to go with them and frying up some local pride.

My parents hate that I live in West Philadelphia. In fact, they hate the fact even more that technically I could live in the safe confines of our home in suburban Philadelphia, but would rather choose to live at school on a street that 34th Street voted most likely to get mugged on. I get daily emails about the crime logs and incessant phone calls reminding me to set the security alarm, all because we live in the hot bed of crime known as University City.

While my parents are thoroughly convinced that nothing could ever go wrong in the suburbs of the Mainline, little do they know that horrible crime is not just happening in our urban environment, but is also occurring at our neighboring suburban schools.

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A few years back, Cory Bray, who then headed the Penn College Republicans, claimed:

“If Penn can’t protect us,” he said, “we should be able to protect ourselves.”

Bray advocated the allowance of concealed-weapons permits for students. Of course, it was shot down and people thought he was crazy. Bray graduated last year, but maybe he had a good idea — after this we now know that we can’t always trust the security on campus.

Venture capital — noun
one of the few areas of finance where it is socially acceptable to make a boatload of money and still claim you are “saving the world”

Alternate definition - What Al Gore does in his spare time when not spreading awareness of ManBearPig
Slang - VC, Venture cap

Video presentation of Al Gore describing ManBearPig at a presentation at Irvine last week

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In an email forwarded to many listservs yesterday, Undergraduate Assembly Chairman Jason Karsh demystified some of the rumors surrounding the two sexual assault incidents that occurred between 5 a.m. and 10:30 p.m. Monday.

No thanks to the ambiguous DPS email that went out last night, we now have the facts.

4000 Block of Spruce Incident:
-Yesterday morning at about 5AM a female student was sexually assaulted in her apartment
-the victim was not physically injured
-this was reported in the DP and was the 3rd incident of stranger rape that has occurred at Penn since 1994
-they are highly unusual but naturally have a deep impact on the psyche of those within our community

Security Guard Incident:
-A Penn student was offered to be escorted by an Allied Barton security officer, which is normal procedure if an escort sees someone walking home alone and is not currently on a call.
-The Allied Barton security officer, who has worked at Penn for nine months with no prior criminal background, exposed himself.
-He was quickly identified after the incident was reported and was taken into custody.
-He is no longer employed by Allied Barton. - NO UNIFORMS HAVE BEEN STOLEN. Any reports of stolen uniforms are false.

Of course, both incidents are horrible, and my thoughts and prayers go out to the victims of such random, disgusting crime.

What perturbs me the most is that the protocol for informing the campus of these events encourages student gossip and rumor to take over, flooding out the potential real dangers that we may or may not be facing.

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In this crazy blogosphere, we measure lives by hits and misses, page counts and views, links and Google ranks. So it’s no surprise that outright ridiculous ideas and posts can gain quite a bit of traction.

Take, for example, global warming. If one is skeptical of global warming, then the blogosphere will readily fuel that skepticism — regardless of the merits behind the post.

To his credit, a true satirical master, “Dr. Mark Cox,” “published” a scientific paper on his website (only the Google cache remains). The paper claimed,

We have no choice but to conclude that the recent increase in global temperatures, which has caused so much disquiet among policy makers, bears no relation to industrial emissions, but is in fact a natural phenomenon.

Despite the pseudoscience, pseudonyms, and a pseudo-editorial board, bloggers (and even our good friend Rush Limbaugh) snapped up the story.

Dr. Cox did more that debunk global warming.

He debunked the credibility of so many “citizen journalists” who seek information on their own terms, not relative to what is true. This should definitely serve as a wake-up call to bloggers across the political spectrum. We may be not be constrained by standard journalistic practices, but we can still look quite foolish.

I see how it is.

There’s an article today in the DP about plans to make the tennis courts by the Palestra into a new park. This location coincidentally also borders the math/physics building, David Rittenhouse Laboratory.

I get the message. The Athletic Department wants to help the University create green space and get rid of eyesores. I’m not naive enough to believe that a few tennis courts are all they’re after. We nerds can’t punt, can’t pass, can’t kick, and we’re next.

Fears of annihilation aside, the circumstances we will face while DRL is allowed to exist will not be pleasant.

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We are a university that never sleeps. A walk through Hill House, the Quad, or other dorms at any hour reveals this fact.

If we have a class late in the afternoon, we’ll work until 2 or 3 a.m. and wake up around 11 a.m. or noon. Likewise, if our class is early, we may hit the sack around 10 p.m. or 11 p.m. So everyone on campus has a different schedule. Sometimes, I’ll find myself up until 3 or 4 a.m., waking at noon, class at 2 p.m., eat at 5 p.m., some activity around 7 p.m., and then dinner. I may not hit the library or Pottruck until much later.

That’s why Pottruck shouldn’t close at 1 a.m., but should stay open 24 hours a day. The dining halls, too. And maybe even all floors of the library. Students don’t stop after midnight, so neither should the rest of Penn. Otherwise, research is limited to Google, workouts limited to pushups, and food, well, most places close after 2 a.m.