This semester (not to mention the last few years) has flown by! I am adding to the legions of people reminiscing and unfortunately also having a public forum to express their leaving-the-nest issues.

I would like to start by thanking you, the readers of my posts for this semester. I value your comments deeply, even the intolerably rude ones, and I am grateful for your attention. Next, I’d like to thank Ashwin, the editorial page editor here at The DP for advice, being a sounding board for ideas and for generally letting me bug him. Finally, my undying thanks to Lindsey Stull, opinion blog editor, for suggesting this gig in the first place and for showing such remarkable patience with me over the semester (you’ll never really know quite how much).

Back to you guys. To the rising sophomores: man up already and start exploring this city. Philadelphia has a lot to offer (seriously) and you all (sophomores and others alike) would do well to start exploring and discovering. Whether it’s food (brunch=Rx or Ants Pants), or clubs (jazz around here, more conventional downtown), or art (First Fridays and antiques row are a lot of fun), Philadelphia has much to offer you. On top of studying like crazy, make sure you take the opportunity to fill up on such experiences. As great as New York is, don’t count Philly out — it has a lot New York does not.

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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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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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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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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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Should the Olympics come to Philadelphia and Penn (and I hear there is a bid in the works), a cautionary tale. Remember to never trust the French.

For those who don’t know, the symbol of world unity, the Olympic Flame, passed on from runner to runner and lit by the Sun in ancient Olympia, was extinguished. Multiple times.

Shock horror, my friends. Millions of dollars go into developing the torch. It is the uber-torch. It withstands gale-force winds, oxygen deprivation and torrential rain. You can stick the damn thing under a power shower and it won’t go out. The designer, however, forgot to protect it from one particular factor - a mistake of staggering proportions.

The French.

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I had a rather rambunctious night last night with my friend Jose Cuervo, and ended up making an extended offering to the porcelain god. So extended was my act of worship that I think I killed it.

What does this have to do with you?

Well, when it comes to trying to resurrect your god, especially when you have another kind of offering to give it, Philadelphia’s plumbers are rather indifferent. So we come to the first part of the title: Plumbing.

I called no less than fifteen plumbers in the local area. The best they could do was Monday. Monday. That’s 2.5 days of going from my apartment to Huntsman to use the goddamn toilet. By the tenth plumber I was pretty irate —

“Would you like it if you had a clogged toilet for three days?” I cried. By the fifteenth, I was livid.

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So it has been brought to my attention that, in fact, we are a bunch of nerds. And, as usual, I blame Princeton.

For it was they who hosted a team from Middlebury playing Quidditch. Oh yes, Quidditch. I don’t care if we hosted them first, I still blame them, mainly to avoid despairing at our own sheer idiocy. Thankfully Ivygate blames them, too.

For those of you not cool enough to know, Quidditch is the game of the wizarding world, as described in the Harry Potter novels.

The game involves flying around on broomsticks with three different kinds of balls - one type (the Quaffle) to throw through hoops, one type (the Bludger) that renders you unconscious and the Golden Snitch, a tiny little ball that whizzes around, the capture of which ends the game and earns you 150 points (usually winning you the match). The rules are important for what comes next.

In the Middlebury version, the Snitch is played by a “hyperactive college student” in a yellow jersey, sporting a sock from his behind in the hope someone grabs it and ends the game. I think he’s also asking for feel-up, but that’s just me talking. I mean, kid, what the hell is wrong with you? You are not a Snitch, you’re an idiot hoping no one catches the sock flapping invitingly in the region of your arse.

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