The golden throne. (Taylor Howard/DP)

When I first saw that the headline in Monday’s DP was “at $2,400 a pop, high rises get a touch of highbrow taste” I imagined that some intrepid DP reporter had broken down the per-room cost of renovating an entire room in the much-maligned high rises.

If only I was so fortunate.

No, it would appear that the $2400 unit cost in question is not for new sinks, bathtubs, ovens, stoves, or other actual infrastructure improvement that is sorely needed. $2400 was for a chair (yes, that’s “a” chair ).

The chairs in question at best uninspired lumps of metal and polyester which should be on display in IKEA with some silly faux-nordic name and a $99 price tag. Nope.

The high rises “were supposed to be modern skyscrapers,” Art History professor David Brownlee said: “If we don’t support good design, who the heck will?”

Oh gee, I don’t know: MoMA? The Guggenheim? PennDesign?

Dr. Brownlee, Penn’s housing department is not supposed to be an outlet for the grandiose interior design fantasies of Penn’s housing staff. It is supposed to be giving students a safe place to live–and it is failing miserably. Let’s concentrate on working elevators and non-exploding pipes before we move onto $2400 chairs. Oh, and I still hate you for taking away the Penn Glee Club’s clubhouse in 2403 Harnwell.

To the students, I can only say that you had better get comfy in those chairs–you’ll be waiting for the elevators for quite some time.

Go ahead, take a look at the undergraduate admissions pages for other Ivy League schools. You’ll find dazzling interactive Flash animations, QuickTime VR panoramic views of the campus, gobs of rich multimedia leverage to effectively and creatively convey the greatness of the school.

Now go back to Penn’s site (of course, you don’t even really need to go back to see it–it hasn’t changed since you applied). You’ll find a collection of pictures. And they’re not even good ones. Penn’s webmasters have even failed the oldest trick in the collegiate photography book–taking your pictures on a sunny autumn day–and instead opted to take pictures on a dreary overcast day in the middle of winter, when life is at its lowest ebb.

Popped collars weren’t even invented yet,this man is now 30. (http://www.admissionsug.upenn.edu/)

Oh, and there are quotes about Penn from current Penn students about how great Penn is. And by “current” I mean “Class of 1999.” Now this was embarrassing enough for Penn when I was applying to the class of 2007. But for the Class of 2011? 2012?!

Forget Web 2.0, Penn’s admissions website never made it out of beta. The last time Penn’s undergraduate website was redesigned, most of Penn’s current student body had yet to go through puberty. There are snazzier MySpace pages.

Aside from the undeniable subconscious psychological effect that the lack of shiny things will have on the young lad trying to compare Penn to other great schools, the website suggests that Penn is either a poorly-run school, or doesn’t really care about its undergraduates–neither of which is particularly appealing for a prospective undergrad.

In the 21st century, an excellent website is no longer optional. As the first (and possibly only) window through which the world discovers Penn, a website that captures its excellence is a necessity.

The ridiculous awfulness of the website wouldn’t be a hard problem to fix. Any PennDesign or DMD student could design a better site (heck I’ve made better sites with iWeb), and for a pittance at that. Every day the undergraduate website goes unfixed is a living testament to the university’s inability to market itself properly.

No wonder then it is unspeakably frustrating when we smugly point out our affiliation with Penn and our friend, families, loved ones, cocktail party adversaries etc., in anticipation that we will be showered with respect, adulation, daughters, job offers, and everything else befitting our own inflated sense of self-worth—only to discover that they think we’re talking about Penn State. Suddenly, “I go to Penn” has about as much intellectual-elitist gravitas as “I can dress myself!”

(http://www.wharton.upenn.edu/)

“One University” deserves One Ring to Rule Them All One Unmistakable Name—and that name is Wharton University.

Why Wharton U? Several reasons:

a) it sounds good n’ WASPy enough so as to roll right of the tongue with the very WASPiest of the Ivy League; Harvard, Yale, Wharton, Princeton.

b) The Halo effect. Changing the name consolidates the schools of the University under the most well-known name currently in its possession and one should never underestimate the ability of a stellar name to benefit those under its banner. For instance, Yale’s own business school (Yale School of Management) was founded in the 1970s, which I believe puts it in the same league as such bastions of prestige as DeVry. Yet in its short existence, Yale’s b-school is in the top ten, leapfrogging dozens of business schools that unlike Yale’s, are not younger than my parents. Why? Because of the near-universal perception that anything that says Yale on it = good, drawing flocks of bright prestige whores to New Haven’s fledgling b-school. Can the Wharton name do the same for Engineering?

c) It will infuriate the very Wharton snobs who all but deny any affiliation with Penn. Nothing could be more satisfying.

d) Franklin U is taken.

It’s not as though a name change would be without precedent. Columbia was King’s College until the American Revolution (apparently monarchy was not in vogue then). Yale was founded as the Collegiate School, Brown as the College of Rhode Island (not every name change is an improvement), and Princeton was the College of New Jersey until the turn of the 20th century. Dartmouth has always been Dartmouth—but nobody cares, really.

Even our own beloved Penn was the College of Philadelphia and University of the State of Pennsylvania before finally coming to be known as the University of Pennsylvania. We’ve had two name changes—third time’s the charm!

When I arrived at Penn in 2003, the legacy of the high rise’s shoddy construction coupled with three decades of “deferred maintenance” (the most spectacular euphemism for “not maintaining anything”) had turned the high rises into a vertical Baghdad — an endless quagmire of electrical problems, exploding water pipes, failed climate control systems (made all the more fun by windows that no longer sealed), and, of course, elevators that seemed more befitting of a high rise in North Korea than in one of the best schools in the richest country on earth.

Though my favorite high-rise disaster had to be the fact that chunks of concrete fell off one of the buildings and posed a threat to passers-by.

Three years and $75 million later, we have new IKEA furniture and spacious new windows that are strong enough to withstand having sex against them.

Oh, and the high-rises come in three fun colors–now we have monstrosities that look like giant Duplo sets.

Of course, like any band-aid fix that skirts the real issue, renovating the outside of the high-rise did nothing for the plumbing, elevators, and other infrastructure that continued to fail. So what does the University do? Stay the Course.

Instead of looking to replace the high rises, the University is preparing to blow another $106 million on the high rises to fix the infrastructure, bringing the total amount of money spent on making the high rises inhabitable again to almost $200 million.

For $200 million (a fifth of a billion dollars, but hey who’s counting?), Penn could do so much better. They could build new and uniquely non-crappy dorms in the Postal Lands, or even around the territory of the high rises right now. Heck, Princeton is building a new dorm for a mere $100 million, and they’re not the sort of place to skimp on costs (with the exception of dining hall food, according to my unfortunate Tigers-cheering brother).
And it would be hard-pressed to do any worse.

It is a tragedy that this money is being spent on the path of least resistance instead of the greater good, leaving us stuck with the eyesores that are the high rises for another half-century until a university president with greater boldness (or perhaps even greater high rise problems) decides to do what should have been done a long time ago, and demolish these monstrosities. I will be there on that demolition day, with a lawn chair and champagne — and of course, a very large check to make sure the dorm is named after me, and features a large statue of me, mounted at a sufficient height to ensure it cannot be peed on.