This is the first part of a two part series examining the University’s problematic bag check policy. Today’s blog will focus on the problems from a student perspective. Next week, I will concentrate on the employee’s perspective.

Spring is in the air. The sun is shining, frisbees are flying, and students’ backpacks are being searched.

On Thursday (three weeks and one day before OK GO plugs in their treadmills), the University commenced prohibition the annual bag check policy in preparation for Spring Fling. Students must now open their backpacks so that no alcohol is brought into the Quad. This is to “ensure that the experience is a pleasant a memorable one” for me. (They may actually have a point about an alcohol-free Fling being more “memorable.”)
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When I first applied to this university, I was promised that Penn would give me an “experience like no other.” Unlike students at Yale, for example, I won’t have to sit through lectures from Tony Blair. Unlike those at Harvard, Princeton and even Brown, I won’t have to pay less for my education. And perhaps best of all, I won’t have that nagging responsibility to cheer for a basketball team come late March like Cornell does did this year.

So far, so good: up until now, my life at Penn has been unquestionably unique, an experience like no other indeed. That is, until earlier this morning — when I saw the front page of the DP touting this unfortunate headline: “OK Go announced as third Fling band.” Suddenly I felt gypped, swindled, even betrayed. Let me explain.

This April, you see, will not be OK Go’s first appearance at Spring Fling. Just six short years ago, they played their first Fling gig in eerily similar fashion to next month’s concert: they were the show’s opening act; they played at Franklin Field; and their accompanying lineup was almost identical.

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The surgery-suspense genre has been thriving lately, as Jessica Alba will attest. Just look at her two most recent films — Awake and The Eye. The first has something to do with a heart transplant murder scheme. The second is an Asian horror remake about the spooky history of a pair of donated eyes.

These films are popular because they exploit the natural fear of going under the knife. But sometimes fact is freakier than fiction. As the DP reports, the details of a developing lawsuit against the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania rival anything Hollywood could come up with.

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Eavesdropping on undergrads isn’t a hobby, really, just a by-product of working at Penn.

As a point of fact, half the stories I overhear on campus start or end with some variation of: “I was so drunk.” This is often offered as an excuse or explanation for behavior that is ridiculous, rowdy, embarrassing, or — I’ll grant you this — occasionally hilarious.

But it turns out you can’t blame your especially enthusiastic Soulja Boy routine on Coors Light alone.

In a series of studies in the 1970s and 1980s, students were given — over the course of about an hour — either five icy tonic waters or five vodka tonics, without knowing which was which. The results?

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Pardon my language… but today sucks. Tomorrow, too.

For the first time in four years — and only the third time in a decade — Penn missed the men’s NCAA basketball tournament.

Did I just lose your sympathy?

Look. Maybe you’re blasé about Penn athletics or sports-illiterate. But, with our basketball slide likely to continue, let me explain why a winning team benefits the school.

(And if the cost is our ethical standards? Meh.)

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After having a recurring observation or performing an inexplicable action, I often brood over the most pressing existential question to ever face teenage sit-com characters: am I weird?

Below are a few thoughts I have had over the past few weeks. Ideally, you, the reader, will comment and let me, the blogger, know if we have a shared musing or if I’m just weird. Let’s make this relationship work.

1. Shortly after I facebook stalk someone, they will inevitably appear in real life. I’ll see someone on Locust Walk, and their Facebook profile seems to appear over their heads, as I quietly judge them for their laughable music taste (Nickelback? For real?), embarrassingly contrived profile picture (your heavily-Photoshopped default with your eyes gazing to the far left is neither unique nor hip), or their “Hot or Not” application (if you have to ask, the answer’s “not”). Occasionally, I will meet someone for the first time in reality, even though I have already seen an entire album of their dog wearing clothes. I suspect that this new acquaintance remembers that “Dude, Where’s my Car?” is listed as one of my favorite movies. Neither of us mention anything.

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A few days ago, when I returned from the week-that-feels-like-24-hours known as Spring Break, I expected to be welcomed back with kindness by this university. After all, temperatures are rising, fewer Philadelphians are being murdered and this city is the political place to be right now — so my RA and GA should at very least be in a good mood, right?

Wrong. For them, this week starts the inevitable month-long countdown to Spring Fling, when students tend to drink too much in the midst of “rocking out” to acts like Ludacris and Gym Class Heroes. (I never thought I’d say this, but why did Limp Bizkit have to be a joke?)

So instead of a warm welcome after break, I was greeted almost immediately by a light blue, caps-lock-friendly flier with the following header:

Riepe College House PENALTIES FOR ALCOHOL VIOLATIONS

The sheet goes on to list various punishments for drinking, from “community service” (’cause frequent boozers are great with kids) to “4 hours of alcohol education” (bartending class?!) to the incredibly vague “police action.” Needless to say, I was scared.
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It’s been 7 years since Ludacris Rolled out. 7 years since we first asked, “What you got in that bag?”

It’s been even longer — 8 years — since ‘Cris showed us his Southern Hospitality. I don’t even remember how to drop ‘bows on ‘em.

So why make Ludacris the headlining act for Penn’s 2008 Spring Fling? I think it’s because SPEC hates music and the student body. SPEC also hates intimate venues with tight acoustics (ie, Wynn Commons). That’s why this year’s concert will be held at Franklin Field, where it will surely carry all the excitement of a Penn football game.

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I drank too much my freshman year. And I did it legally.

For, back in the day, I was a British university student. I transferred to mighty Penn and entered as a sophomore. Memories of my freshman year are often interrupted with blurry images and something to do with putting traffic cones on the heads of the hundred-year-old statues on campus. I would see them the next day, impossibly high up and know, somehow, that I had something to do with it. Maybe. I’m not quite sure.

In Britain, most universities require you only to get forty percent in your first year - in a set of exams at the very end. Combine this with being allowed to drink legally and having bars in every dorm and you get Oktoberfest, year-round, with liquor. Even though a fair amount of drinkage goes on at dear old Pennsylvania, anyone who has been on exchange to the UK will tell you that it quite simply does not compare.

I still don’t agree with American drinking laws. They are not easily enforceable and all they really achieve is adults not being able to hold their drink.

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My experience in the Florida wetlands was anything but damp. It, being spring break, was actually quite dry — boozing wasn’t allowed.

Yes, it was an odd way to spend a vacation: sleeping in bunk beds, sharing a co-ed bathroom with seven others, and eating breakfast before the sun rose. Prison and Alternative Spring Break are the only institutions that could legally force such deprivations. I was captive in the latter.

I’m not really sure why I paid to volunteer. Picking up trash, carrying heavy fences, and painting Park Rangers’ houses was far from glamorous. But whatever, I’m glad that I went, because when I returned to Philadelphia, I felt fab. (And it wasn’t because I’m a community service whore like many ASBers. I don’t get off on giving. Like most people, I get off on getting.)

I just felt accomplished to have just spent an entire week with a group of my peers without the presence of illicit substances. We actually hung out — co-ed bonding, omg — and didn’t drink, smoke, do coke, or hook up for seven entire days. (God created Earth in seven days.) That doesn’t happen very often, especially at Penn. (I’m referring to sober boys and girls, not the story of creation.)

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