Last Wednesday, 9 Tishrei, you may have noticed approximately 30% of the Penn population heading to Hillel or their respective homes to try not to think about food for approximately 25 hours.

It was Yom Kippur, and Jews everywhere were atoning for their sins, scrambling to get a place in the Book of Life (aka. God’s Top Friends list) and avoiding being written in the Book of Death (aka God’s shit list).

As I sat in class and stared at scores of selfish people revealing pastry bags from Au Bon Pain and spilling precious crumbs on their notebooks, I became increasingly bitter. Why were only Jews taking time that day to go to our rooms and think about what we had done?

Penn has certainly committed more sins than I have!

So I decided that in order for our school to get written in the Book of Life and dodge the collapse of the capital campaign, the University of Pennsylvania must atone for the following sins:

1. Training ITAs who, when I walk into their office in the basement of Van Pelt, either completely ignore me and the fact that I am hysterical about the impending death of my computer or don’t know how to fix my wireless internet.

2. Scheduling all of the good courses during the same time slot so students can only take one per semester.

3. Construction and repairs on Locust Walk. Its crowded enough without large areas roped off or industrial vehicles parked right in front of Steinberg Hall-Deitrich Hall. And what are with these ant hill-like mounds of pavement tarnishing Locust’s pretty red and gray brick pattern?

4. Jon M. Hunstman Hall. Only certain elevators go to certain floors, the floors are labeled with both letters and numbers and classrooms are not necessarily in numerical order. Basically you have to be an Engineering student to navigate the Wharton building.

5. Contributing at least four editors to this ridiculous laugh-out-loud hilarious 44-page personal ad disguised as a magazine. Seriously, we should be ashamed.

So Dr. Gutmann, Ben Franklin, whoever: take time to reflect and lament.

And thank your lucky stars that we have two Wawas on campus, or else there would be no reason for students to stay.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 17th, 2008 at 10:30 am and is filed under Penn. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.