When I came to Penn, I thought of myself as a poster child for anonymous hookups. As a naive freshman, nothing seemed better, but the trouble with having a bunch of one-night stands began at my freshman year sorority bid party. I started making out with a good-looking guy. I was confident with him, kind of bitchy; it was hot. He asked me to guess which frat he was in, but I couldn’t. “You’ll see when we go there,” he said. It wasn’t a suggestion or a question—and I liked that, because it was obvious I was going home with him. He was teasing, being kind of an asshole. Exactly what I wanted. He never even asked my name.

We went back to his house, where we put on some music, drank more, danced around and made out. He finally asked my name when he was saving my number in his phone, but part of the excitement of the hook up—all hook ups, for that matter—was the anonymity, so I didn’t tell him. “Just save it as Wednesday Night,” I tried to say seductively (it was probably just embarrassing). After I spent the night, he never called. I was slightly disappointed, but I took it in stride. Read the rest of this entry »

Ever considered living life like a monk? Us neither, but a class at Penn, taught by Justin McDaniel, aims to bring students closer to the monastic lifestyle.   This religious studies course, with no papers or exams (plus), ditches phones, coffee, and processed foods (minus) in an effort to understand the simple life of a monk.  The class, which has garnered a lot of buzz, divides by gender and dresses simply, and each class progressively gets more intense.  By mid-March, these kiddos won’t be engaging in any physical human contact or getting any stories from the outside world.  Sounds tough, right?  McDaniel says the students are generally really into it and the class is taken really seriously.

Let’s get real here. Valentine’s Day is quickly approaching, all your romantic ventures are dead-ends, and you might actually be thinking about joining the convent.  Make it a reality!  It’s a little late to sign up for the class now, but get on the waitlist for next semester.  This year, one hundred students were clamoring to get a spot.

After a two-year hiatus, we’re proud to re-present the seventh installment of Pennetration, UTB’s bedroom diary column, featuring sex, vice and everything nice on our Ivy League campus. Without further adieu, we present the adventures of one brave lady’s tale: Karma Is A Drunk Bitch.

Spring Fling is a time to try new things. Fling is also a time to shirk all responsibilities and, ipso facto, personal dignity. The following is what happens when you have none to begin with:

The Incident began one Saturday night when my best friend “Lucy” and I were walking home. Approaching our front door, I suddenly realized I would be ending the night alone– simply unacceptable.  The solution seemed, at the time, obvious: I texted two guys, certain that the one to respond first would be most capable of keeping it up.  One was the guy with whom I had ventured under the button the previous night (let’s call him Matt), and the other was a rando from West Point whom I had met and made out with in the span of the last two hours (we’ll call him West Point, because remembering names is for the frivolous).  In some unfortunate turn of events, both texted me back.

No, not that kind of dirty, ya PERV. Paul Rozin, a psychologist and emeritus professor here at Penn was featured in an article in today’s New York Times for his expertise regarding the evolution of disgust as an emotional response.

According to the article, disgust, which up until recently was not fully understood from a psychological perspective, is one of the most universally elicited emotions–more so than anger and even fear. Initially, disgust evolved so we would avoid putting dirty things in our mouths (as if that’s ever stopped anyone). Rozin and his colleagues conducted research to elaborate this hypothesis, finding that another reason disgust exists is to separate ourselves from animals–which explains why we (well, some of us) find behaviors like pooping, dying and sex super icky.

The rest of the article reflects on the immunological response to disgust and how it’s used to promote cleanliness in advertising. Yay, science! Yay, Penn! And most of all: YAY, POOP.

Penetration isn’t always a good thing. Take electrodes, for example–neuroscientists have been surgically implanting electrodes into mice and rats to study their inner brain activity for decades. While the procedure is considered widely acceptable for small rodents, the idea of having sharp things jabbed inside your own brain just to, like, save lives or whatever, may not be so pleasant.

Here’s where Dr. Brian Litt, M.D. (and professor of Neurology) comes in. He and his team of researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine have come up with a way to study inner brain activity without going all Dr. Frankenstein on us. Check out a full description (plus pics!) of the device after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

The feature diarist this week from Daily Intel’s Sex Diaries “dates” a Whartonite living in London, although that doesn’t stop her from being a whore finding plenty of other guys to use as material.  The self-proclaimed “sorority princess” from Morningside Heights engages in frat boy foreplay, TA flirting, and best of all, a Skype session with the BF in which he suggests “doing it on a pile of money.”

“Is this normal Wharton behavior?” she muses.  We weren’t aware this was a thing, though the later mentions of reading The Economist and discussing their futures in Westchester together sound pretty standard.

In case you haven’t dug deep into the annals of UTB, we used to have our own version of Sex Diaries, which you can read here. Curiously enough, no one’s done it on a pile of money… yet?

In case you missed it, the second episode of The Bachelorette aired last night.  This week, between clips of overdramatic music and close ups of dewy roses, Penn dental student Ashley Hebert survived three remarkably weird dates.

William (the one who looks like Prince William but with better teeth) earned the first solo date, which was something of a commitment-phobe’s nightmare.  After flying to Vegas, he met Ashley in some chapel/mall hybrid where they perused wedding cakes, rings and literally walked down the aisle in some sort of mock-ambush wedding joke that really wasn’t a joke. Um, okay.

Read the rest of this entry »

While the New Year brings good cheer, it is once again time to take a moment to remember what we’ve lost this year; an ode to things at Penn that have run their course.

Strikes
Deceased: June 2010
Cause of Death: Rowdy kids and being sketchy
Survived By: Quieter Locust housing, flash mobs, people trying to come up with better things to do for birthday parties
In Memoriam: We’re still not sure we ever had fun here, but it made for great people watching.

Read the rest of this entry »

The times, they are a changin’. Soon enough, it’ll be May, my fellow seniors and I will don cap and gown and…well, before we get there…I’m just here to announce some exciting changes on this here blog and bring you on a quick, brief, non-sappy nostalgic adventure.

When the Class of 2011 started at Penn some seven semesters ago, things in our little world were quite different: Bush was president, it was just about impossible to register for classes on the old Penn In Touch, no one used Twitter and your parents weren’t on Facebook. But you know what else wasn’t around? Under The Button.

Come along! More nostalgia, accolades and a shockingly bizarre Kenn Kweder video after the jump! >>

Does reading all the words on UTB take up too much of your time? Perhaps you’d be interested in a more digestible, visually-minded take on our usual offerings! We’ve started a Tumblr, where you can go for a slightly watered down version of this wonderful blog – just think of it as UTB express. We’ll be pulling from a few less conventional sources over there (ie, The Walk’s blog), so be on the lookout for some exceptional content that might not make it on our formal site otherwise. Also, we’re very equal opportunity, so if you have a Tumblr account and follow us, we will follow you back - no questions asked. Follow us here.

Update: We forgot to mention one of the best features of our new offshoot – the questions toolbar! You can submit a question about absolutely anything that you want an answer for (for instance, ”Where did Pennetration go?” or “What’s the deal with that vase full of styrofoam at Saxby’s?”), and we will do our best to find an answer for you. Hop to it!