Graffiti in Fisher-Hassenfeld last year (DP)

Blame the squirrels for those all cellophane wrappers on College Green, but take the rap when soda cans and empty take-out boxes start to crop up in hall lounges.

And when the contents of late night take-out spill into the hallway and begin to fester over the weekend, clean it up. Chalk it up to vandalism, sloth, drunken rampages, whatever. Just get rid of it. Pronto.

Trashing the halls seems to be a venerated Penn tradition as old as throwing toast or pelting juniors with ketchup on Hey Day — just larger manifestations of a schoolwide passion for putting food anywhere but in your mouth. However, littering too often crosses the line.

For several days, unidentified food (which I suspect are souring barbeque chicken wings) has been strewn across the halls in Ware. The sticky mess is splattered over several yards of floor tile, forcing me to skip comically over the mess on tiptoe. A big black trash bag has been artistically pinned to the walls. The spread’s on s tile, not carpet.

And it’s coming to a hallway near you. Over Halloween, an elevator in the high rises was vandalized out of commission. Last year, people stole furniture and potted plants from King’s Court. Sometimes, the vandalism turns malicious. Last January, anti-Semitic and homophobic graffiti appeared in corridors of Fisher-Hassenfeld.

And then, there’s senseless, run-of-the-mill destruction. Those people who don’t flush the toilets, pour coffee grinds down the sink, or vomit in the elevators. Insomia cookie boxes left on window ledges, under-the-door frat party leaflets, overflowing trash bins — courtesy of the un-housetrained few who treat public trashcans as personal garbage disposals.

Since the residential maintenance staff usually have the weekends off, they can’t come to the rescue until it’s too late. Come Monday morning, the festering remnants of our weekend debauchery rise to greet those much-enduring souls.

Vandalizers, repent now. Clean up your own messes. Release your destructive tendencies elsewhere. Turn Spring Fling into Spring Clean.

Or, if you must vandalize, do it through more creative channels. I like the poems written in chalk in Van Pelt stairwells. Or how, the other day, I spotted a Dr. Pepper can in the hands of a College Hall statue of former provost William Pepper. Try to navigate the tenuous line between art and crime. Flash mob on College Green, anyone?

Boathouse Row at Night (R. Kennedy/GPTMC )

You’d never know it, but Philadelphia is teeming with green spaces. Compared to other metropolitan municipalities, Philadelphia boasts the largest city park system in the world. Drive, jog, stroll, or roller skate through Fairmount Park any sunny day and take your pick among 63 neighborhood parks totaling nearly 12 percent of Philadelphia’s land acreage.

My favorite stretch runs along the Schuylkill from the Chestnut Street Bridge, past the iconic Rocky statue in front of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, past the old Waterworks building , past Boathouse Row all the way towards Manayunk. Pleasant detours up the rock face offer expansive views of the city and grassy knolls dotted with colonial mansions. The entire park system yields numerous picnicking areas and more than 215 miles of trails.

Given the spaciousness of Philadelphia’s urban park system, however, City Hall still under-allocates funding to Fairmount Park. Park spending amounts to roughly $50 for each citizen, whereas other cities with less park acreage dedicate a larger chunk of their municipal funds. Chicago gives $130, DC $155, and Minneapolis doles out a whopping $164 per resident.

The chronic need for fiscal support has yet to be fully addressed by the city council. The park’s 2006 advisory report recommends a $14 million increase to its operating budget–more than doubling its current budget, which has been frozen at $13 million for three decades.

One mayoral candidate, Michael Nutter, has thrown in his support for Fairmount Park. Nutter says that the park’s total budget could be boosted to $30 million by drawing on existing sources. First, City Hall could start tying park revenues directly to park purse strings. Park funds would go into a “lock box” safe from the budgetary clutches of Mayor Street and City Hall. Second, the park could draw from lucrative environmental and conservation grants. New recreation resources like skate rentals could also be introduced to supplement funding and create an independent source of revenue.

This stream of funding can be mobilized to spruce up Fairmont Park. Invest in a sorely-lacking Fairmount Park visitor’s center, for example. Or maintain the impressive collection of public sculpture along the Schuylkill banks. And, at the same time, we’re boosting city coffers by preserving a local tourist attraction. Only an infusion of new funding will continue to protect one of Philadelphia largest public assets.

The blue seats of the Penn Bus will bring out your eyes (Penn Transit)

I have 898-WALK on speed dial. That’s how paranoid I am. Given this paranoia, it’s interesting that I almost never use its somewhat frumpier corollary, 898-RIDE . But, last weekend, when temperatures plummeted below freezing and the streets turned to frozen seas of mush, I put the service to the test. At 2:30 AM, I gave the operator a ring and requested a ride from Chestnut Hall on 39th and Chestnut to the lower Quad.

Service refused. Due to the treacherous six block trek through the snow awaited, I protested. Sorry, no exceptions. Penn Transit would not give rides from one on-campus location to another.

Now don’t get me wrong. 898-RIDE shouldn’t be the lazy alternative to 898-WALK. Have a little respect for the environment and your waistline. However, when it’s bitterly cold outside and you’re forced to take the 6-block hike from 34th to 40th streets, it’s nice to know that someone’s got your back.

You might say the rule cracks down on abusers of the system. Yet a three block ride from on-campus to off-campus is, in theory, permitted. A six block on-campus ride is not.

However, where 898-RIDE fails, there are other Penn Transit options. While 898-WALK and 898-RIDE have been the mantras of Penn’s Division of Public Safety, alternative transit options haven’t enjoyed much publicity in the past.

Imagine you’re stranded on the corner of 20th and Locust. You have no cash and two loaded bags of groceries with you. If you have your PennCard, you can board the Penn Bus (along with two guests) and hitch a free ride back to campus. Even better, the Penn Bus will let you off at any stop sign or traffic light along its regular route.

Eco-friendly issues aside, it’s a great deal.
Or ditch Penn Transit entirely and take the LUCY . With your PennCard, you enjoy free rides along a route running from 30th Street Station past 40th street. For those longer journeys, try PhillyCarShare . And remember, when worst comes to worst, there’s nothing like SEPTA.

Organic cotton. (Shirtseed)

Reduce, reuse, recycle. The longstanding mantra of the green movement has now made its way into the clothing industry. Now, you can not only eat organic foods but also wear fabrics made entirely from organic materials.

Take a simple Hanes cotton t-shirt. One-quarter of a pound of pesticides goes into the production of the cotton fiber. On top of that, colored dyes in the t-shirt are derived from toxic materials. Over a lifetime, that shirt will go through several dozen trips to the laundry room that will further add to the amount of carbon in the earth’s atmosphere.

Organic cotton , however, reduces your ecological footprint. In addition to being produced without pesticides and synthetic fertilizers, organic cotton is often allergy free. Sales of the material have doubled to over $580 million over a four year period from 2001 to 2005.

Good news, considering that worldwide cotton-growing releases more pesticides into the environment than any other crop–accounting for roughly one-quarter of total pesticide use . In the U.S. alone, cotton growers emit more than 50 million pounds of harmful pesticides annually into the environment.

Apart from the obvious snob factor, wearing organic cotton reduces the amount of pesticides in the environment and often promotes fair labor policies. American Apparel , for example, markets an organic and fair trade cotton line. While you might gripe at the price tags, you can be assured that your money’s not entangled in overseas sweatshop labor. The company proudly asserts that all its employees receive paid leave, ESL classes, and on-site massages . After half a year’s worth of employment, sewers have the chance to make up to $15 an hour, way above minimum wage or the hourly wage of 9 cents afforded to some laborers overseas.

Another company, Patagonia markets recycled and sustainable fabrics. The fleece in some jackets, for instance, comes from plastic bottles that have been recycled and processed. Wal-Mart, too, has also entered the organic cotton trade. Since Wal-Mart entered the scene, it’s squeezed out Patagonia as the world’s largest buyer of organic cotton fabrics. Slowly, organic cotton is making a dent in the market. And as the market broadens, be sure to grab a piece of the pie and buy your own environmentally sustainable tee.

King Tut wants YOU! (king-tut.org)

If you’re a rare Penn student who finds yourself swimming in free time this week rather than midterms, head to the Franklin Institute. Built to satisfy the kindergartener within all of us, all the science exhibits are meant to the explored, deciphered, walked through, jumped into, and absorbed hands on.

Start the trip with a run inside the giant heart . It’s four hulking tons of plaster and paper mache, installed with a sound and lighting system to simulate the voyage of blood through the human heart. The two-story blow-up replica is scaled for a body as large as the Statue of Liberty. Pretend to be a blood platelet or a cholesterol-carrying lipoprotein as you amble through the winding corridors. Peer down a tricuspid valve or step into some carotid muscle pulsating with red and blue light.

Tired of those biology midterms? Skip over and get a handle on the real stuff. Want to learn physics? Sit in the cockpit of a jet, or strap on wings and experience the Bernoulli effect firsthand. Walk into the coal room of an enormous 350-ton locomotive. And don’t forget to pay your respects to a 20 foot tall replica of the father of all things good, Ben Franklin, whose national memorial sits in the opening rotunda.

This enormous playground dedicated to Franklin now plays temporary home to artifacts from King Tut’s tomb. The exhibit, officially dubbed “Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs,” runs at the Franklin Institute until September and promises to be a lavish affair with all the commercial flair of Disneyworld. The local cafe is selling Tut cheesecake, a Tut trolley transports tourists about town, and the final exhibit leads straight to the gift shop. Tut is one large marketing blitz.

And, of course, plan to encounter long lines. Fortunately, the exhibit is well-worth the price of admission. Philadelphia is the last stop on the tour for these artifacts, which first appeared three decades ago on the cover of National Geographic . In spite of the EPCOT vibes, this exhibit isn’t as kid friendly as the rest of the museum. Yet it’s an amazing gem of curatorial genius.

I’m the kind of girl who loses things at the drop of a hat. Mittens, earrings, cards, books, sanity. The more stressed out I am, the more I lose.

The process of finding lost items is an even worse ordeal. I sometimes feel like the victim of a sadistic hocus-pocus trick a la those shrinking Muggle door keys . After copiously retracing lost steps, peeking into empty classrooms, questioning secretaries, and crossing my fingers, I usually discover the ugly fact &mdash I’m never getting it back.

Last semester, I found myself locked myself out of hearth and home. The keys had flown the coop. I swore they were in the room. They weren’t. I fumed for days. Green carbine, pink Swiss army knife, blue charm…what could be more conspicuous? I dutifully looked in obscure corners, stalked nocturnal cleaning people, called the University police. No luck.

My detective work convinced me that Penn needs to adopt a centralized lost and found system. No one’s accountable for your lost stuff, but Penn can at least make it easier for finders to locate owners. I can attest to a 100 percent failure rate in recovering lost items through the system.

Here’s a round up of the current situation. Say you’ve lost an object somewhere on the area of campus that stretches from 34th to 40th, Spruce to Walnut. First, check at the info desk in Huntsman Hall. All the Wharton buildings have a central lost & found. Purses and valuables are locked up; lost things stay put rather than circulating from department to department to municipal dump.

For Perelman Quad, try the info desk in Houston Hall . Be quick about it though &mdash found items are kept for about a month before being permanently purged. All transactions are kept in a log book. Items range from the humdrum (scarves, cell phones) to the bizarre (a pregnancy belt).

For other buildings on campus, policies are much more diffuse. Inside Riepe College House, for example, no lost and found exists. If I drop something as I’m running to class, chances are it ends up in the trash or in the domain of some local RA.

All this is not to condone negligence. Yet Penn needs to turn the campus into less of a finders keepers territory by publicizing and standardizing policies in each building. In the meantime, keep a vigilant eye out on your own valuables.

I hope you’re not scared of needles (Washington and Lee University School of Journalism)

Smoking ban, check. Trans fat ban, check. What else can Philadelphians borrow from New Yorkers? A sense of street style, perchance? Or, sticking to the possible, how about free flu shots, like New York supplies, at least for medical providers.

Alternately, if flu shots aren’t his thing, Mayor Street can start promoting physical well-being in the City of Brotherly Love the Street Way. Let’s step out of the Big Apple’s shadow and pioneer our own urban health trend. Free antiseptic wipes anyone?

In all seriousness, city governments around the world are offering free flu shots to eligible citizens, pre-empting the nasty consequences of flu season. Urban metropolises like Seattle and Toronto have caught up on the trend.

Likewise, Philadelphia can boost public health by inoculating citizens against the flu for free. Sure, it’ll make a dent in the city finances, but it pays off in the long run by reducing lost productivity from sick days and even saving lives. Rather than relying on citizens to vaccinate themselves, why not buy shots in bulk and distribute them to Philadelphians? This measure would offer the additional benefit of buffering against occasional flu shot shortages, allowing pharmaceutical companies to better anticipate demand. More importantly, it would help ensure that those who are most susceptible to the flu and least able to pay for the shots will have access to them.

Since the city government is prone to bureaucratic delay, Penn should step in to fill the vacuum. One seasonal flu shot through Student Health Services costs about $25 . Instead, the university should subside shots, or even give them out free of charge to its employees and students. For employees, this measure would curb the working productivity lost from seasonal illness. And flu shots are even more critical for students because we live on top of each other &mdash literally and/or metaphorically. Given the contagious nature of the flu, protecting most people would also yield positive benefits for the rest of the population.

Wake up Penn, reading blogs can get you out of debt. Well, maybe not this one but according to The New York Times , American households are taking hold of internet blogs as virtual diaries on the path to financial prudence.

For example, one blogger, Leigh Ann, the self-dubbed “bulimic shopper,” chronicled how she purged herself of nearly $20,000 of debt. Other debt diarists detail, defend and chronicle their daily purchases, scrupulously tallying their expenses with the zeal of calorie counters or smokers trying to kick the habit. Very Bridget Jones meets Dave Ramsey .

Considering the state of American finances, it’s about time. Last year, the typical American household found itself approximately $21,000 in the hole–credit cards and loans included.

Yet unlike many bloggers, the new breed of debt diarists has opted to hold a mirror to themselves rather than leer at society from behind the safety of their computer monitors. Blogging can turn private shame into public knowledge; the guilt it harnesses can then encourage self-control. Only a very meticulous person to go through with it, but blogging for financial solvency is one smart way to hold yourself fiscally accountable.

On college campuses, debt is rampant. Your student loans, that $2.50 you owe your freshman year roommate, $100,000 worth of SAC debt , and last semester’s overdue library fines. According to psychologists, the American compulsion to shop may be a coping mechanism for stress. Shopping sprees can be another way of letting off steam before that job interview or final exam.

Instead, let the rage out on the virtual page, not on your credit card. Are you guilty of using one credit card to pay off another? Of opening a new Visa account just to get that free coffee mug?

Shred the plastic. Stop charging and take charge.

Make like Bob Barker and get your pets spayed or neutered. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig) I>

A well-groomed and high-pedigreed crowd of canines basked in the media spotlight during last night’s Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. Toy poodles pranced about the screen, resembling oversized Q-tips. As their tongues lolled, proud owners smiledon the sidelines.

But not all pets are as adored as our Q-tipped friends. Approximately 10 million domestic animals around the nation are spending this Valentine’s Day in animal shelters. Roughly half of them will be euthanasized by lethal injection.

In the wake of claims that Penn leads the university community in animal rights violations , it’s heartening to know that Penn’s veterinary school has also been helping to ease the strain on local animal shelters.

Last April, Penn Vet partnered with the Philadelphia Animal Car and Control Association (a branch of local government) to start the Shelter Animal Medicine Program. The program provides a spay and neuter service for local animals, giving 1,200 cats and dogs each year the chance to become better candidates for adoption. The shelter’s services would save future owners the trouble and cost of the operation and offer veterinary students practical experiences in the field.

PACCA alone deals with as many as 21,000 stray or homeless animals per year. Less than one third of those local animals will eventually find homes. The rest are euthanized to save funds and shelter space. The shelter Animal Medicine Program aims to whittle down these numbers by reducing the city’s stray animal population. Spaying and neutering will save thousands of animal’s lives and reduce the city’s financial burden by cutting down animal control and euthanization costs.

So, if you’ve got love to spare this Valentine’s Day, put it to use. Adopt, or if that isn’t a viable option, donate time or money to help out local animals.

Members of ‘Six Directions,’ Penn’s Native American cultural group, on college green.

How many Native Americans are there at Penn? Well, just 2 in the Class of 2008. One dozen in the Class of 2009. And 11 in this year’s Class of 2010.

If we cast back to 2003, when official figures are available, we can see that minority enrollment in schools like SEAS is also shamefully small. The school graduated just one Native American student that year.

These dismally low numbers put the number of Native Americans on campus just about on par with the number of people at Penn who deal illegally in cocaine on the side, people from Wyoming, or people who can name George Bush’s pet cat .

Yet new initiatives promise to boost minority enrollment. Last year, Penn followed in the footsteps of its sister Ivies by implementing a no-loan policy for financial aid recipients with annual family incomes of $50,000 or below. It also began to accept the Common Application rather than relying solely on the old Penn-specific admissions application. Both these changes encouraged underrepresented minorities to apply in greater numbers.

In a more targeted direction, Penn also runs a Multicultural and Diversity Day where admitted students can mingle with administrators and experience college life firsthand. Two years ago, I was one of those prospective minority students. Matched up with peers, we spent the weekend camped out in the rooms of Penn undergraduates, tramped about on campus, and wined and dined with admissions directors.

All in all, not a bad job. Yet, apart from the admissions side of the equation, Penn can harness its academic and cultural resources to both encourage Native American enrollment and cater to the small Native American population on campus.

One shining example stands out—the American Indian Cultures residential program on the 20th floor of Harrison College House. Currently in its inaugural year, the program began thanks to the initiative of Penn’s own Native American cultural group, Six Directions . These measures highlight how crafting a diverse campus is not only about tallying the numbers but reaching out to peers. The best way to boost Native American enrollment is to foster a better environment for minority groups on already campus. This includes promoting classes that feature Native American history , hiring more Native American faculty, obtaining grant and research money to conduct research on Native American issues, and hosting cultural events from scholarly lectures to powwows. Half the purpose of cultivating diversity is allowing traditions to be shared. At Penn, if we can’t always create a perfect chorus of minority voices, we can at least allow these voices to be heard above the fray.