The potential first ever male First Lady is coming to a campus near you. Very near you. This one, in fact (and not Drexel).

It seems somewhat more than a coincidence that President Clinton plans to come to campus just as it appears that the Pennsylvania primary might actually count. And he’s talking on a race thing, apparently. No, nothing to do with an election at all. He is, after all, the nation’s first black president.

Personally, I’d love to go hear him speak. I’ll be queuing for my ticket early. He is a terrific speaker and I thought he was a great (if not great, then very good) president and I’m interested in what he has to say. I also want to tell my grandkids that I saw Bill Clinton speak. I have absolutely no interest in being able to say the same time about his predecessor or his successor. Do any of you feel that way too?

I like that Penn is getting a round of decent speakers for a change. After Jodie Foster’s Eminem moment (see below), I feared that we would be the Ivy with the crappy speakers.

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Today is President’s Day, the federal holiday honoring the February birthdays of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln — our two finest presidents. (Bush comes in a close third.) During their presidencies, both Washington and Lincoln fought hard for American freedoms; neither one, evidently, fought hard enough to get us a day off.

But I’m not going to spend the day being bitter. Instead, I’ve decided to honor the presidents who have graduated from this prestigious university in hopes that Penn sends more men and women into the oval office in the future. (And not as interns.)

After all, Penn has to have an illustrious list of White House alumni, right? Our Ivy peers have long lists of presidential grads: Harvard has sent seven men to the West Wing, among them JFK and FDR; Yale clocks in at five, including Clinton; even Columbia has sent three men to head the executive branch over the years. So it only makes sense that Penn has… one alumnus-turned-president? Really? Just one?

Now to add injury to insult: it’s William Henry Harrison.

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It’s no secret that humans are getting older. Medical reports have identified dozens of reasons for this trend, among them healthy eating and exercise. And one professor — University of California’s Michael Rose — predicts rather drastic life expectancies for the near future.

“In 400 years, people will live to be 1,000,” Rose told the Orange County Register a few years ago. “We’ll be playing golf in our 900s.” (”Fore!” “What?” “FORE!!” “What?!?”)

By Rose’s estimates, some humans alive today will go on to be 200 years old. Just imagine how crowded Denny’s will be.

By my count, a 200-year lifespan means a few things. First, Larry King might live another 30 years. Second, somebody somewhere is working on new Viagra that could raise the dead. (As opposed to the near-dead.) And third, people will soon get a lot uglier. And smaller. And more out of touch with today’s youth.

So is older really better? Apparently, Penn answers this question with a resounding “yes.”

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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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Quick free association:
Rhodes scholar. Academic All-American. White House fellow. Miss America.

Looking at Ivy League graduates, who (usually) doesn’t belong?

Miss America might seem like the exception, but that could change this weekend as Lindsay Casmaer (College ‘05) attempts to bring the title to the Ancient Eight. The reigning Miss Missouri, she’s in Las Vegas right now, doing… pageant things… in advance of Saturday’s competition, televised at 8 p.m. on TLC (You can see a short video interview here, read Lindsay’s travelogue here, and vote for her here.)

Our school’s filled with diversity, but admit it: pageantry and Penn in the same sentence is a bit surprising. As it happens, Lindsay didn’t come to Penn as a pageanteer but began competing last year — hoping to pay back student loans — so if you doubted whether West Philly attracts former Little Miss Sunshine types, you’re probably right.

But why is it surprising to think Miss America could be a Quaker? Every few years, some Ivy Leaguer’s in the competition, and a parade of Harvard-associated women have walked across the stage in recent years.

Is it because we assume that pageantry is for the less studious… or because Ivy Leaguers are known for brains and ambition before beauty?

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MIT now releases 90 percent of its coursework material online. Will this be the beginning of the end for college campuses? Though MIT won’t offer degrees online, it seems only a matter of time until other elite institutions decide to.

I applaud MIT for putting the material online. It’s a great service to anyone who needs to learn linear algebra immediately, and by anyone I mean probably one person ever. However, getting an online education is nowhere near as valuable as a real college experience. Sure you learn the material, but think back to the classes you took just two or three years ago. How much of that material do you still remember? I barely even remember the titles of the classes I took freshmen year.

The classroom of the future?

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Kudos to IvyGate for finding this clip of The Spin’s favorite Penn alum. John Fitzgerald Page is back with a message! Heed his warning!

“If this could happen to an Ivy League grad, and someone, you know, who has an IQ like mine this could happen to anybody.”

You too could suffer the incredible backlash of having people removing you from their friends page!

On another note, I can’t figure out his stance on whether or not the emails were his own personal, private, personal, business or not. He really needs to clarify that more.

General introductory courses here at Penn can be some of the toughest in the curriculum. The “econ scream” is a testament to that. And anyone who has suffered through Chemistry, Biology or Physics 101 will tell you — it wasn’t fun.
These courses are designed to provide students with a broad foundation of knowledge. Classes are large, curves are usually prodigious, and breadth takes precedence over depth.

Some schools are trying to change this. At Cornell, for example, professors have suggested amending the biology curriculum to rid it of large introductory classes and instead offer 5-6 smaller, more specialized classes.

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The hunger strike at Columbia has gone on for a week now. For those of you unfamiliar with the story, the jist of it is that five Columbia students decided not to eat until the following demands are met:

• a more systematic response to hate crimes from Public Safety
• a more collaborative expansion effort from the administration
• a revision of the Core that encourages critical engagement with issues of racism and colonialism
• more resources and support for the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race (CSER), the Institute for Research in African-American Studies (IRAAS), and the Office of Multicultural Affairs (OMA).

Proving once again that they can’t make a point without being assholes, the College Republicans set up a table of donuts across from the strikers. Their president Chris Kulawik does have a point though, when he says, “A hunger strike is not a legitimate form of debate. It shelves debate.”

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I’m sure you all remember the controversy that was stirred up across the nation in response to Islamo-Fascism Awareness week, or Terrorism Awareness Week as it was politically correctly re-dubbed here at Penn.

The president of the Muslim Student’s Association had it out with Bill O’Reilly, Santorum once again humiliated himself despite repeated attempts to sound like a legitimate politician, and we all were reminded of just how myopic some people’s world views really are.

At Dartmouth, this week is “Islam-Fashion Awareness Week.” It’s hard to believe that Al-Nur, the student group sponsoring the week, claims they don’t want “the event to be seen as a response to Islamo-Fascism week.”

After the jump: Hijabs, abayas and niqabs hit the runway.

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