Free at last, free at last

I’m sad to graduate Penn? I’d be lying if I told you otherwise. And I’d be lying if I told you that the thought of life in the “real world” with no paycheck from my parents and no job prospects on the horizon doesn’t make me hyperventilate. But recently, about three hours ago to be exact, as I was leaving yet another trainwreck of a midterm I adopted a zen-like attitude. Like a man who somehow finds peace in front of the firing squad I’ve accepted my fate. More than that, I’m embracing it.

You see, even though there’s a lot I’m going to miss about college — I won’t bore you with the trite list of college rituals here — there’s one thing I won’t miss: the rat race. Our whole lives we were fed this line about taking the right classes so we could take AP or IB courses which would get us into the right colleges which allegedly will get us into the right grad schools or the top positions at think tanks, i-banking firms, etc. And while I know the job force is plenty competitive at least I know from now on my life will no longer be governed by the all-mighty GPA.

As much as I’m sad to be leaving Penn, and there’s plenty of classes I wish I’d taken but didn’t, I’m looking forward to reclaiming a love of learning I haven’t had for a while. I’ve had some amazing professors and teachers over the years, but even in my favorite classes I felt learning being reduced to something rote, something that was only validated by three numbers and a decimal point. Now I’ve got a long list of books I’ve been meaning to read, more than a few of them were assigned to me the past couple of years.

As hard as it is to believe my college years are over, I still feel alright knowing that learning doesn’t end here.

A silent memorial at Auschwitz. (Julie Siegel/DP)

Yesterday was Yom HaShoah, the anniversary of the Warsaw ghetto uprising established by the Israeli government as Holocaust Remembrance Day in the late 1950s. This year it passed rather uneventfully for me. I took some time to think about the seemingly endless train tracks, the heaps of shoes and human hair stolen from the Nazis’s victims, and the haunting piles of human ashes, all of which I witnessed during a trip to Poland with United Synagogue Youth as a high school junior. But another powerful memory that came to mind was of my Yom HaShoah spent in Israel last year.

Each year the centerpiece of the commemoration in Israel is a two-minute siren at 10 a.m audible all over the country. My apartment was near one of the busiest streets in Jerusalem and I could easily see the traffic come to a standstill as people got out of their cars to bow their heads in respect and silence. For two minutes, life completely stopped. It was eery, but moving.

When tragedy strikes, as it did yesterday at Virginia Tech, the inclination is often to find words to describe what happened or what can be done next. Just hours after the shooting with details still hazy and a community still reeling MSNBC was already advertising a special report on “how it happened–and why?”

Without trying to draw too close a parallel between genocide and homicide, I think it is important to remember the power of silence in times of sorrow. Sometimes there aren’t words that can or should express what’s being felt. Sometimes silence is the best way to respect a loss too profound to explain.

Beta Gamma Eta

It’s 3 pm on Friday afternoon. Modest Mouse blares from speakers out into the street and four guys are well into their first game of beer pong. It sounds like the typical routine of one of Penn’s many fraternities, but it’s actually how my housemates and I start off most weekends.

I didn’t expect to be a part of frat culture. Not at UCSB where I spent freshman year or at Penn when I transferred. So, even after moving into a house with seven of my best friends I didn’t foresee any changes in my general dismissal view of frat life.

Seven months later, after seeing an invitation to “The men of BGH” (an abbreviation for the Bright Green House where my friends and I live) atop an Alpha Phi Crush Party ad in the DP, it looks like I might have ended up a frat boy after all. More than a few observers have made the comparison to my house and a frat and now that we’re simply known by three letters they might be right.

After all we end up drinking more nights out of the week than not. Our common room is usually sporting some mysterious odor or another. We spend most of our time exclusively hanging out with each other.

Then again we all entered into this ‘fraternity’ willingly. There were no paddles or brands when we pledged. And really we’re probably no different than most groups of friends on campus from Hillel, to the Daily Pennsylvanian or Penn Masalla.

I guess what does surprise me is that I’ve learned to live with the frat label. When the accusations of being “fratty” were first leveled at me I balked. “No way,” I said, “I could never be.” But I concede finally that there’s more to being fratty than shotgunning beers, popping your collar and blasting Fall Out Boy at all hours. It’s about having your friend’s back if he needs a wingman at Smokes or being there to congratulate him when he gets into law school. And if that’s the case than I think we’d all like to be fratty when it’s most important.

Since I started blogging for The Spin I’ve been overwhelmed by e-mails. There’s not enough space to respond to all of them, but today for the first time in the history of the Nation I’ll answer readers’ e-mails. What follows are real e-mails from real readers. Enjoy.

Q: Amy Gutmann’s stock has dropped drastically since she first arrived at Penn. When she got here she was the “hot” new president. Now any conversations about her being hot seem grossly inappropriate. I’ve dubbed this the Britney Spears corollary, reserved for college presidents who start off on a high note and then plummet. Your thoughts?

–Greg M., Bronxville, NY

Good call Greg. While Amy’s sex appeal sparked Facebook groups, 34th Street shout outs and other buzz around campus back in 2004, these days innuendo about the President just feels unsettling. Just like Britney Spears, the more we learned about her, heard her speak and saw her in candid photos, the less attractive she became. Other corollaries? I would dub what happened to former Harvard prez Lawrence Summers the Mel Gibson corollary. Rafael Robb? The Robert Blake corollary.

Gut causes a different kind of stir now.

Q: You’d be nothing without the success and notoriety of Stephen Robert Morse. You wouldn’t be anything without him. You and your nation are a fraud.

–SRM, Strong Island, NY

Well SRM, if what you’re saying is true than the very United States of America is a fraud. Did we not ride the coat tails of the British Empire in our infancy as colonies? And would we have come into existence if the injustice of the British hadn’t sparked a revolution that changed the course of history. So too was the Blogsbe Nation forged in the fires of outrage of Stephen Robert Morse.

Q: What is the proper etiquette in “making it rain?” I’m wondering about things like bill denomination, type of garbage bag, technique, etc. I’m sure the entire Nation would greatly appreciate it.

Loyally yours,
Ben K., Lower Merion, PA

Making it rain is a delicate and timeless art. While Pacman Jones pioneered the use of trash bags, they are in fact generally superfluous. The only thing essential to making it rain is cold, hard cash, usually one dollar bills. If you’re used to tipping in larger demoninations at the strip club than use whatever you’re most comfortable with. Once you’ve got the cash (at least 50 bills is recommended)just throw those bills up, sit back watch them float down like the feather at the beginning of Forrest Gump, but if Forrest Gump was named Candi and the bench was a pole. Other variations are the El Nino (using pesos), making it hail (using Susan B. Anthony dollars) and the Golden Shower (Sacagawea dollars).

Q: My friend and I have been arguing over which (in)famous brothers Milton and John Street most resemble. I think its Frank and Sly Stallone. He thinks its Emilio Estevez and Charlie Sheen. Can you settle this?

–Carl. R, Wilkes Barre, PA

Sorry Carl, but I gotta give the edge to your friend. While Frank and Sly have the right obscurity to celebrity ratio between brothers, they don’t have the right amount of bad boy/crazy charm of Emilio and Charlie. Charlie Sheen fits well with Mayor Street. They’re both relatively successful compared with their brothers, slightly tinged by scandal and insanity, but ultimately probably don’t have much time left in the public consciousness (Two and a Half Men and Mayor Street’s second term respectively). Meanwhile Emilio and Milton have been completely under the radar for years then came out of nowhere with these crazy comeback schemes (Bobby/ Milton’s mayoral campaign) that have been complete comedies of errors from start to finish. I guess this would make Gov. Rendell Martin Sheen?

Q: So is there a First Lady of the Blogsbe Nation? If not, I’d like to fill out an application for the position.

–Julie S., Bethesda, MD

I’m not a picky man Julie. The ideal First Lady should enjoy blogging, reading my blog, commenting multiple times on my blog after she reads it, combating awkwardness, The (white) Rapper Show, the writings of Michael Eric Dyson, ghost riding the whip, indie-rock and rap, discussing Zionism and the films of Sylvester Stallone. I don’t ask for much, just that she worships me like the golden sun god of the blogosphere I am.

Pitiful

Hold on to your keyboards Nation, Blogsbe’s about to get meta. You see as both a senior facing into the abyss of my impending graduation and a blogger for a well-respected newspaper I was intrigued by the launch of the New York Times’ newest blog, The Graduates.

The blog features eight columnists representing Dartmouth, Dillard, GW, Cornell, University of Minnesota, University of Oregon, San Diego State and Texas A & M. I have to admit I’m shocked by The Gray Lady’s blatant snub of the DP. In response I have to paraphrase the greatest movie ever made (and don’t let the fat cats at the American Film Institute tell you any different) and say this: That’s not a blog, this is a blog.

The truth is, New York Times, The Graduates just makes you look desperate. It’s obvious you’re trying so hard to keep up with the times, but you just don’t get it. A blog is supposed to give readers something they can’t get from traditional print. It needs to be short, snappy and to the point (with a touch of snark thrown in). All of the most successful blogs–Daily Kos, The Huffington Post, TMZ, to name a few–have mastered this, and that’s in part why you’re intimidated by them. Meanwhile you’ve got your graduates blogging at 700-plus words and on an irregular pace (after 1 post apiece Sunday and Monday no new posts). Just ask Julie Siegel, you gotta keep bloggin’ if you want us coming back for more.

So take a page from The Spin, Times. You might have already missed your chance to co-opt the Blogsbe Nation, but that doesn’t mean I won’t throw you a few tips anyway.

More than 100 neighbors turned out in the southwest Philadelphia neighborhood for a nonviolence rally where gunfire recently killed a mother of four and injured three others. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

Congratulations Philly! You passed quite a milestone this weekend. Just in time for April Fool’s Day, police reported four more murders, bringing the total to 104 so far this year. Really though, the rampant violence is no laughing matter.

Last year at this time Philadelphia had endured 20 fewer homicides. Still, most Philadelphians hoped the epidemic had pinnacled last year with 406 deaths (a nine-year high up from 380 in 2005, 330 in 2004). Now, it actually looks like the City of Brotherly Love is headed for a new grisly record.

Meanwhile, the city’s leaders pontificate and the police seem impotent to silence the gunshots wreaking havoc on Philly’s streets. But they aren’t too toothless to silence another menace–Anthony Riley. Friday’s Philadelphia Daily News reported that Riley, a street performer and erstwhile American Idol hopeful, was arrested for disorderly conduct.

According to the Daily News Riley was singing in Rittenhouse Square around 9 pm when Officer Greg Wilkinson arrived and with about as much tact as President Bush at a G-8 summit ordered him to stop singing:

When asked, “Isn’t this America?” the officer allegedly replied, according to witnesses, “No. This is Afghanistan.”

So Riley kept singing.

And when Wilkinson again threatened to arrest him, Riley held out his wrists.

Wilkinson slapped handcuffs on them and then called for backup.

While Wilkinson’s behavior is more likely the case of one bad apple in a basket of otherwise just and conscientious officers, it still creates quite a problem both for Philly’s finest and the citizens they’re sworn to protect. With the city on pace for another year atop America’s murder rate rankings, there is already a crisis of confidence. Behavior like Officer Wilkinson’s doesn’t help assuage the concerns of a city watching it’s youth being ravaged by gunfire while its police force seems powerless to stop it.

The New York Times reported yesterday that Columbia has disciplined eight of its students for their role in the protest during a visit by Jim Gilchrist, founder of the anti-immigration Minutemen Project. The students stormed the stage in the middle of speeches by members of the group. Students at our more rebellious northern neighbor staged a demonstration even more ill-advised than Stephen Morse’s. Check it out:

Of course the “discipline” in question amounts to little more than a slap on the wrist — “warnings and censures [that] will be noted on the students’ transcripts for varying lengths of time.”
All this begs the question, what is Penn’s administration doing about our own free speech controversy?

Last week’s Finkelstein mini-scandal gave Penn a chance to enter the college free speech fracas.

I wouldn’t argue for discipline by the university, especially considering Columbia only took its course of action when its hand was forced by national media coverage. Penn is fortunate to have had its own firestorm constrained largely to the pages of the Daily Pennsylvanian (and The Spin), and following Columbia’s symbolic example wouldn’t accomplish anything.

Still, there is no reason President Gutmann or other members of the administration shouldn’t have weighed in on on the controversy. When a dispute of this nature, especially one that threatens to engulf an entire academic department, goes on for more than a week on a college campus, you would expect the leader of that community to make some sort of statement, token or otherwise.
The administration’s silence on the issue belies at best apathy and at worst a complete detachment from and disregard for the compelling issues affecting the community their supposed to be leading.

After a total of 32 hours spent driving to St. Louis and back, my brain can’t process a whole lot. Luckily for you dear readers, I have just enough mental strength to impart to you the wisdom I gained from my pseudo-Kerouacian journey. Without further ado, I present to you the rules of the road trip:

1. Delegate responsibilities. Any successful road trip needs a driver, a navigator and a DJ at all times. Music is as essential to keeping a road trip on track as Google Maps.
2. As a corollary to the above rule, any members not fulfilling one of these roles has no right to criticize. No back-seat driving/Djing. Wait your turn and lead by example.
3. All local/regional-specific restaurants take precedence in pit-stop decisions. There’s no need to stop at Micky D’s or Taco Bell when you’ve got options like Cracker Barrel or Bob Evans. Cholesterol comes in many glorious forms, and it’s important to sample them all.
4. A) Any social commentary (e.g. Midwesterners are incredibly fat or Eastern Illinois is a God-forsaken wasteland) is best kept in the car. Public pronouncements of such views should be avoided at all costs.

   B) The same goes for political commentary. Restroom graffiti like “Deport Bush to Mexico so he can be with his friends” serves as reminder that Bush’s low approval ratings aren’t just from people who find him too conservative.

5. Under no circumstances should you attempt to ghost ride your whip.

Morse in motion. (Philip Ng/DP)

Voltaire once famously remarked, “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” If that’s so, Stephen Morse, 34th Street Food and Drink Editor, might paraphrase Voltaire to say, “I disapprove of what you say. You’re a holocaust denier.”

I’m speaking of course of the now notorious visit to our campus by DePaul University assistant professor of political science Norman Finkelstein, author of several books including The Holocaust Industry and Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History.

During his speech Finkelstein essentially laid out his arguments: 1) The state of Israel egregiously abuses Palestinian rights and must end its occupation of the West Bank and 2) All criticism of Israel has been deflected by various organizations with blanket accusations of anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial.

So, what was Stephen Morse thinking when during the question and answer session, according to sources at the event, he demonstrated Finkelstein’s point by yelling that the “Furer would be proud” of Finkelstein and calling him an anti-Semite as he marched toward the speaker with his arm outstretch in a “Heil Hitler” salute.

The questions of whether Finkelstein should be welcome on campus at all or whether the Political Science department should have sponsored his visit have been debated ad nauseum by everyone from Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz to our very own Spinstress Julie Siegel. Morse’s behavior raises the question of how to properly confront someone whose views you find not only disagreeable, but also vile and despicable.

I can understand the passion affecting Morse and the many readers who have commented on the DP’s web site. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict isn’t known for eliciting passive responses. Still, the accusations being hurled by both sides whether they be of Nazi-style atrocities on the part of Israeli soldiers or Holocaust denial by Israel’s detractors feed into a cycle of hopelessness that begins with simple rhetoric and ends with the dehumanization of one’s opponents.

If people are so disgusted by Finkelstein’s words, they should think carefully about their own before they speak out against his.

Water, water everywhere.

I have a confession: I am a water snob.

It’s ridiculous I know, because I can’t taste the difference between a 5 day old Franzia and a 5 year old Cabernet. Still, I insist on only the finest Brita-filtered water, forgoing the convenience and low-cost of the tap. And given the explosion in the bottled water industry in recent years, I’m not the only one with discriminating tastes.

You won’t hear this from me often, but I’m wrong. Not just wrong. Stupidand Wrong. Bottled water isn’t any healthier, but that hasn’t stopped me and millions of others from chugging Aquafina or Dasani like a sorority girl on a crash diet. Which is why I’m so excited about March 22nd — my chance to make amends also known as United Nations’ World Water Day.

This year’s campaign is more than just an effort to teach about the “more than 21 percent of children living in developing countries who do not have access to clean water” (booring) or the fact that “80 percent of all illness and infant mortality is due to waterborne disease. Lack of clean water is the second largest killer of children under five” (yawn). This year,Esquire Magazine, UNICEF.and NYC based ad agency Droga5have teamed up to create the Tap Project . Through the Tap Project hundreds of NYC restaurants will ask patrons for a $1 for tap water, a subtle reminder that what comes free and cheap to most Americans is unavailable to close to 1 billion people worldwide.

Now I know what you’re thinking. That’s all well and good for those highfalutin’ New Yorkers, or second semester senior with the time and signing bonuses to hop up to New York for a meal, but what does the Tap Project have to do with me? I thought you’d never ask. You can go online right now and make a donation. Whether you want to give $1, the donation that New York restaurants will be requesting, $16.39, the cost of 3 Brita filters on amazon.com,or more it’s easy to give and easy to help.

Next time I take a drink from the tap it won’t be lead or chlorine
I’ll be tasting, but instead the sweetness of smug self-satisfaction