Well, this is interesting. We just got wind that the winner of the Nora Magid Mentorship Prize, a seriously prestigious prize that goes to a graduating senior who has shown promise in non-fiction writing, was awarded to a former DP columnist. And not just any DP columnist, but one who in fact wrote a plagiarized column for the paper in 2007 and was subsequently fired.

Such background information is not hard to come by, as a Google search of the writer’s name will quickly reveal both the published article itself and a scathing IvyGate post on the subject.

We do acknowledge that everyone makes mistakes, the winner definitely has talent as a writer (so did Stephen Glass), has had impressive internships and yeah, it was a few years ago. However, it did happen during the writer’s Penn career, for the school paper. Did the judges forget to Google or just not care? Anyway, this just seems kind of surprising, or there’s something we’re missing.

There’s breaking news for all you friends of the liberal arts: you can now apply to Wharton, even if your biggest collegiate foray into mathematics came in the form of MATH170.

Our buddies at the DP reported this morning that the Wharton MBA program will begin accepting the GRE as well as the GMAT. So if you’re still in a pickle over whether to go for that PhD in Medieval Literature or to sell your soul to get an MBA, now you can apply for both.

We just can’t promise you’ll get in.

Whether you love them or you hate them, writing seminars are at the core of the Penn experience. After churning out endless drafts and descriptive outlines, students often debate whether they got value out of the experience. Many say they’ve learned nothing that they can apply to their future college writing, while others find the skills they’ve learned to be extremely valuable.

That debate is about to get a little more complex. Last week the DP reported that the writing seminars will start to include a research component. Sounds helpful, right? Now we’ll finally be able to apply all of those skills! Well, maybe. It’s intended to “provide a more cohesive, uniform approach across all critical writing courses.” Because those five forms and outlines simply provide too much leeway. Thanks, Writing Program!

Don't go to Copa anymore.

In the spirit of today’s unofficial holiday, we’ll point your attention to the Daily Pennsylvanian‘s recent article, “Is marijuana healthier than alcohol?“. The article, which ran Thursday, says a new study “claims that marijuana is less harmful than alcohol to users and to society and advocates that colleges punish for marijuana use no more than for alcohol use.”