Mother Nature is doing her annual “I’m taking off my clothes, wanna peek?”-thing right now, and for the past few weeks, we’ve been smitten with the crunchy leaves, the brisk [insert pluralized time of day here], the pumpkin-spiced [insert JAPpy drinks here] and the crisp [insert bangs that Kathy Najimy sports in Disney's "Hocus Pocus" here]. It’s a party, y’all, and we’re all invited! To celebrate the season, send us your best autumnal pictures by this Thursday and we’ll post our favorites by the start of the Fall Break. And remember the golden rule of photography: you don’t NEED to Instagram it.

Yesterday we asked for your pretty fall photos, and here’s what we’ve got! These shots prove that campus is just as beautiful as anywhere else, and probably more so. Thanks to everyone who helped out!

Missed your chance to send pictures in? Tweet them at us and we’ll retweet you all day. And if you’ve still got a hankerin’ for Penn in her prime (looking at you, abroad kids) ogle the Office of University Communication’s collection here.

We live on a college campus in autumn. This is one of the prettiest places in the world to be right now; fall at Penn is where admissions brochures come from, and what people think of when they imagine “Ivy League.” Naturally, our newsfeeds have been more than a little cluttered by muploads and photographers alike posting homages to the season. We want to see those pictures!

Send us your beautiful foliage, your waning sunlight or your “people playing frisbee in the Quad without a care in the world” and we’ll put them up on UTB for the world to see. You can tweet them at us, tag our Facebook page in your pics or use good old-fashioned email. Just send them quick— soon it will be too cold to operate your shutter button without freezing a finger off.

Soon enough, kids. Soon enough.

Fall is officially here. This means many things to Penn students: changing leaves on the Green, the return of sweaters, scarves and boots, Halloween slutacularness. It also means something else for College House residents: the switch from A/C to heat. While this change isn’t as bad as the heat to A/C switch (does anyone remember the sweaty disaster that was Reading Days Spring ’07?), it is still insanely complicated. See below.

Dear Residents,

Housing Services has asked Facilities Services to begin the transition from air conditioning to heat in the College Houses and Sansom Place. Because temperatures have been variable and will continue in that vein, the transition will not take effect immediately. The chilled water supply has been discontinued in the buildings that are air conditioned.

The switchover process is somewhat complicated and the transition from air conditioning to heat is not immediate. There is a two pipe system in the College Houses and Sansom Place that serve as a supply and return. This system pumps either hot or chilled water, but not both at the same time. The transition process from summer air conditioning to winter heating requires that chilled water temperatures in the system be gradually raised. Read the rest of this entry »