I wouldn’t call this an endorsement.

By that I mean that the word “endorsement” conjures in the mind images of newspapers and important people throwing their clout behind a politician in order to get them elected. I am not important enough to deliver such “endorsements” — I’ll leave that to The DP, The New York Times and Ted Kennedy.

In the most humble terms, here is why I think Hillary Clinton should be president.

Senator Clinton has shown consistency in being an effective manager of people in the United States Senate. She has also shown she knows how Congress works and that she is an effective politician in her own right. If she were to try and change anything, or even be a wholesale agent for change, like Senator Obama wants to be, she will know what to change, and how to go about doing it without greatly angering a lot of people who could make life difficult for him.

Universal health care is an issue she has championed for years and I have admired her for it. She made many enemies when she tried back in the early nineties, but now people pine for it, as inequality in wealth in this nation has continued to grow. We know that this is an issue close to her heart and that she will eventually decide to expend the political capital to achieve her vision.

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This is the last in a four part series — my reaction to each of the opinion pieces the candidates write for The DP and finally my reaction to The DP’s endorsement. I write purely critiquing each candidate’s piece, and not from my own political point of view.

The DP’s argument for endorsing Senator Clinton is persuasive. It is definitely a clear argument to say that “hope alone” isn’t enough to place someone in the Oval Office.

Time is also on Senator Obama’s side. He has yet to serve a full term in the United States Senate, and The DP makes the point that a better demonstration of his capabilities in a national theatre would place him better to be president at a later date.

The DP also hails Senator Clinton as a “successful champion for change.” I’m not sure if this is quite right. I think of the Senator more as the agent of how to make the existing system work well, as opposed to wholesale change.

A big chunk of the editorial is devoted to healthcare, which has been demonstrably close to Senator Clinton’s heart for many years now. I come from a country with universal healthcare. The British National Health Service may have huge, perhaps even insurmountable, problems of its own, but it is there for all who need it.

That must be appealing in any country without universal healthcare, but here in America, the world’s wealthiest nation, it must be increasingly galling to many that it doesn’t exist here.

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This is the third in a four part series — my reaction to each of the opinion pieces the candidates write for The DP and finally my reaction to The DP’s endorsement. I write purely critiquing each candidate’s piece, and not from my own political point of view.

A strong editorial from the Senator, which was more inclusive of policy than I had expected. This is a very big plus since it addresses the issue of Senator Obama being perceived by some as “policy-lite.”

The fight against Senator McCain has already started. The opponents are now “Bush-McCain Republicans.” I’m not sure the two can be quite roped together (apart from their position on the war), but it certainly is the way to beat McCain.

The last thing I think most voters want is another Bush presidency. The phrase has to be coined early so it becomes part of normal political language by the time of the general election.

The Senator says a lot of great things.

He talks of whipping the Congress back into shape and curbing the power of lobbyists. I’d like to point out that this is so much easier said than done, but it is still a valid and extremely admirable view to take and hold. If you are going to be the candidate for change, you better put your money where your mouth is — or not, I guess, when it comes to lobbyists.

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Everyone knows about the Vagelos Program, one of the hardest undergraduate tracks at Penn. With an emphasis on biological science and research, Vag has an extremely tight admissions process — only a select few have ever come inside the Vagelos Building. And given its demanding workload, students drop out of Vag all the time. Those who stick with the program spend most of their time in the dank Vag lab working with yeast.

But there’s something else about Vagelos (yes, that’s a soft “g”). Apparently, its name evokes images of the female anatomy, images one perhaps wouldn’t want to associate with a building or a prestigious program.

But don’t tell that to Roy and Diana Vagelos, who, as Bwog reports, have really outdone themselves. The new name of the Barnard student center will be:

The Vagelos Center.

That’s right, the social hub of the all-girls school will be called the Vag.

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This is the second in a four part series — my reaction to each of the opinion pieces the candidates write for The DP and finally my reaction to The DP’s endorsement. I write purely critiquing each candidate’s piece, and not from my own political point of view.

I’ve read this piece a couple of times now, and compared to Senator McCain’s contribution, this is infinitely better. I have no compunction in saying that this is an extremely strong piece. Senator Clinton gave many reasons why she should be elected president. Coupled with these are plans with numbers (oh, how numbers make everything more convincing).

I pour caution on a couple of things. First, the Senator’s promise to “create” five million more “green jobs.” Sorry Senator, but I can’t let you off that easy.

The government does not create jobs, unless you are planning a new Department of Greenness or just planning on giving the EPA five million more people. The Senator must therefore explain how she expects to encourage the generation of five million green jobs. That’s a huge number and requires much further explanation. Right now, it smacks of an empty campaign promise.

(Empty? Surely not! You mean she might not have meant what she said?)

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Today, I feel that it’s appropriate to quote a story originally told by John W. Schlatter in Chicken Soup for the Soul:

“Mark was walking home from school one day when he noticed the boy ahead of him had dropped all of the books he was carrying. Mark knelt down and helped the boy pick up the scattered articles. Since they were going the same way, he helped to carry part of the burden. As they walked, he learned that the boy’s name was Bill…[t]hey arrived at Bill’s house and Mark was invited in. They ended up in the same high school [and when] the long awaited senior year came, Bill asked Mark if they could talk.

Bill reminded him of the day years ago when they had first met. ‘Do you ever wonder why I was carrying so many things that day?’ asked Bill. ‘You see, I cleaned out my locker because I didn’t want to leave a mess. I had stored away some of my mother’s sleeping pills and I was going home to commit suicide. But after we spent some time together…I realized that if I had killed myself, I would have missed that time and so many others that might have followed. So you see, Mark, when you picked up my books that day…[y]ou saved my life.’”

Today — April 16, 2008 — marks the one-year anniversary of the Virginia Tech Massacre, which left 32 dead and many more injured.

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This is the first in a four part series — my reaction to each of the opinion pieces the candidates write for The DP and finally my reaction to The DP’s endorsement. I write purely critiquing each candidate’s piece, and not from my own political point of view.

Today I cover yesterday’s piece by Senator John McCain.

To call this editorial a poor piece of electioneering would be generous. At absolutely no point does he actually say why people should vote for him to be president. The entire piece is a commentary of youth involvement in politics, and how amazed he is by it. Then again, he doesn’t need to win anything til November so I guess his campaign doesn’t really care very much about this article.

It shows.

At one point, he states that his daughter, Meghan “is proving that young people are participating in the political process without losing their sense of self and authenticity.”
No, Senator, while your daughter is our age and it is admirable that she is campaigning for her dad, young people are proving that young people are participating in the political process.

Does he really need his daughter to tell him what is plainly evident?

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The Fling Concert sure has come a long way since my freshman year, when about 28 slack-jawed Sonic Youth fans huddled around a makeshift stage at Wynn Commons to see their favorite band put on a memorable and really tight performance.

Friday’s show was in many ways the inverse of 2005 — thousands of students stood on Franklin Field’s bleachers, happily grooving to mainstream-approved music of no real substance. But if the performances were generally underwhelming, the crowd’s enthusiasm was truly awe-inspiring. In my four years here I’ve never seen the student body come together with that kind of energy.

Some notes:

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In the fall of 2008, I’ll be studying in Paris, France — mostly because of my penchant for silly hats, effeminate men and unlikely combinations of the two.

But I’m a College student, so I’m not part of Penn’s current problem with getting engineering students abroad. Sometimes, that’s the fault of engineering students — who perceive study abroad as “difficult,” uninteresting and inconvenient. Other times, it’s the fault of the program; to study at France’s leading scientific school, for example, engineering students are required to stay a full academic year. (And really, who wants eight whole months of pacifism, gastronomic bliss and encouraged societal polygamy?)

So how do we convince more SEAS students to spend time away from this university? Apparently, Penn’s original strategy — locating itself in West Philadelphia — hasn’t done enough to push future engineers away from campus. But perhaps we can solve the problem with an idea taken from Virginia’s Randolph College: reinstating the collegiate field trip.

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Being Ivy League and elitist an’ all, we have to stand out from our Ivy sister schools. On the outside, we too have old-fashioned buildings, a rather stuffy disposition (in comparison with others such as your stereotypical state school) and, well, we can come across as rather intimidating. The same can be said for Harvard, Yale, even those Ivy League idiots in New Jersey.

So what can we do to set ourselves apart?

Invite our prospective freshmen down at exactly the same time as this university descends into a weekend-long drinking binge. With bouncy castles (moon bounces in American).

It’s the ideal way to bridge that gap between college-style adulthood and those last vestiges of childhood. It also underlines that unlike our sister Ivy universities, we can work hard and have a lot of fun (by the way — read this bollocks article in the Daily Princetonian — it’s about working and playing hard at Princeton. A quick perusal shows this guy has no idea. I especially like the bit about DJ Bob.)

Dear freshmen, we at the University of Pennsylvania have the unique ability to get dangerously wasted and then release our remarkably destructive inner children.

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