One week ago, Dartmouth College launched the Institute for Writing and Rhetoric and officially came over the to dark side. For Big Green students, this means one thing: like us here at Penn, they no longer have the right not to write.

Starting next fall, Dartmouth students won’t be eligible for exemption from the school’s freshman writing requirement. In past years, up to 20 percent of Dartmouth’s incoming class was excused based on high SAT scores. But now every single one of them will enroll in the dreaded First-Year Seminar.

One part of me thinks this is a good thing. After all, Dartmouth students should graduate with writing skills in certain areas — like how to record the minutes for meetings run by Penn grads. But the other part of me remembers those Writing Seminar horror stories I’ve heard from students at this university, and I just can’t wish that kind of torture on our Ivy brethren in New Hampshire.

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There’s nothing quite like a fair weather fan.

I met a bunch of ‘em last night, all in the form of “Giants fans.” Some were from New York, others from Jersey. Some just wanted to see the underdog win. And some were on TV, like all those celebrities at the Super Bowl — among them Pamela Anderson and her own impressive giants.

Even last Tuesday I met a couple of fair weather fans. They called themselves “McCain supporters” after quickly switching candidates when Giuliani failed to win in Florida — where a campaign is less “Vote or Die” and more “Vote Before You Die.” So I’ve seen questionable allegiances everywhere in the last week, in politics and pigskin alike.

But this is not one of those rants against the fair weather fan. I’m from Chicago, so I understand what it’s like. Every summer I cheer for the White Sox or Cubs depending on who’s above .500 (so I usually end up rooting for neither). It’s far too convenient a practice to ever criticize.

What gets me, then, is that this campus is chock full of fair weather fans but absolutely barren of true Quaker fans. I think I might know why.

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If you’re like me, then you spend most of your waking hours daydreaming about a world where squirrels and humans coexist in peace. For one thing, it’d be a place full of hilarious rodents like the one below. And for another, it’d be devoid of people like Mike Huckabee — who said he used to fry squirrels in a popcorn popper back in college. (Seeing all those folks around him eating squirrel meat was probably what convinced him that humans haven’t evolved.)

But echoing what countless relatives, psychiatrists and elementary school teachers have told me in the past, there aren’t many people like me. In fact, it seems that my pro-squirrel views put me in the vast minority on campus, as Penn is overrun with people who’d love nothing better than to see our squirrels die.

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Last Friday, a teen sex scandal hit Allentown, PA involving two girls, one cell phone.

The girls, 14 and 17, are students at Parkland High School, and the cell phone was used to take photos of both in pornographic poses. The images were subsequently spread via text message to approximately 40 Parkland students and then to the “wider world.”

Those are just the facts. I’ll pause for a second so you can laugh, cry or call your Allentown-area little sister to make sure she’s just a recipient.

But moving on, this story disappointed me for a few reasons. The first is that it reinforces the voyeuristic nature of adolescents, something we’re all too familiar with here at Penn. You probably remember about two years back, when an Engineering student posted photos on the Internet of two students having sex by an open window in the high rises (in the process redefining the term “glass blowing“).

This high school porn outrage isn’t much different, and both stories prove our incessant need to study biology outside the classroom. One Parkland student even created a Facebook group (”Parkland…Where Porn Stars Are Born”) to canonize the event. Good luck on internships, kid.

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This Monday was MLK Day, this year brought to you by Lyndon B. Johnson. Two weeks from yesterday, however, is Super Tuesday — which Wikipedia says is also referred to as the Tuesday of Destiny. (Regardless of accuracy, I will call it that until I die.)

There are a couple of reasons I’m especially excited for Super Tuesday ‘08. For one, this is the first presidential election cycle I can vote in, and everyone says you never forget your first time. (That’s what they were talking about, right?)

But more importantly, this year’s Super Tuesday will go down as one of the most important in recent memory. Both sides of the presidency are still up in the air, and Feb. 5 looks to be the day that solidifies our two contenders for November. This is a race where there’s no sure thing: no incumbents, no dominant party and no Al Gore. I can’t wait to be part of the change that all the candidates are talking about.

There’s just one big problem: Pennsylvania has no say in the matter.

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