Meet the 1934 Freshman class of Penn’s College of Liberal Arts. Founded in 1931, the school was the first at Penn to accept women for a four-year undergraduate degree. Only four years later, the School of Nursing opened as well. We’re pretty sure that Valentine’s Days at Penn in the 1930s were much steamier than in the previous centuries!
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 »
So cliché. Try our new ideas!
We all know Homecoming is for one thing: getting with hot alumni. But sometimes indiscriminately macking on everything that moves can get boring, dramatic or even dangerous. That’s why we’ve come up with the most efficient way to enhance your hookups: our very own point system!
For the adventurous, try to collect ‘em all. If you’re just starting out, aim for a more moderate score, lest you over-exert yourself. And of course, be careful to avoid negatives!
For the past nine months, we at UTB have been lucky to have our columnist Carlin grace this blog with her wit and wisdom. She graduated with the rest of the class of ’09, but we convinced her to bid adieu with one last post. From now on, you can visit Carlin at her new personal blog.
When I was in elementary school, we were asked each semester in my nine years of attendance to fill out a five page self evaluation. I was asked, beginning at the age of five, what was my favorite class? What was the best thing I’d learned? What kind of a friend was I? What kind of a student? What were my strengths? My weaknesses?
I would fill these out pretty meticulously, with the knowledge that not only would my teachers be seeing them, but eventually my parents would too, so what I was really evaluating was the person I wanted them to see me as. Not that I was lying, exactly. But I wanted to be seen as a leader, as creative. A wonderful friend, and wonderfully liked. Smart. Good at everything I put my mind to. When transcripts were added into the equation, I wanted to be seen as engaged; involved in every club, every advanced class, and eventually, rewarded with the perfect boyfriend and wardrobe (I got him, and dumped him two months later for being too boring. The legacy of my wardrobe, however, continues).
Though I haven’t been asked to fill out one of these evaluations in about eight years, I’ve recently found myself thinking about the way we present ourselves, in contrast to the way we actually view ourselves when we strip away the Greek affiliations, social cliques, Facebook, and general Penn-isms. I carried these aspirations of self-preservation with me through college, and added in the edgy flavor of sexual deviant and potty mouth with a rockin’ closet. Read the rest of this entry »
Where would UTB be without Carlin? This week, our campus coquette makes a list and checks it, um, 13 times.
At the beginning of this semester, I admitted to my ritualistic behavior of listing (and editing) my sex life. I now find myself, in the week that will culminate in Fling, making yet another list with a friend of equal sexual credentials. Facebook open and BBM conversations up for review, we each crafted the Final Countdown of lists: who would/should/could you hook up with before you graduate? Clearly, I am a fan of all things circular this term. Call me sentimental.
This list, as was that of “Sex, a History,” is multi-tiered. It is important to note that regardless of the classification, the overall tone is that of carpe diem: this is meant to be fun, and there should be no repercussions. Like, why the fuck not? Seize the day, man. I see two types of hook ups involved in said evaluation: there’s the obvious and simplistic “I’d Make Out With You” class of Pennsters. Meet up at Smoke’s (or Blarney, if it gets too crowded/ugly), and end up on the couch while watching a movie -– the bra stays on, maybe if you’re feeling it, you’ll rest your hand on a thigh. Then there’s the “One Night in Paris” list -– night cam optional. Finally, there’s the month-long fuckathon. Not sure how often that happens, but call me? Read the rest of this entry »
We have a sneaking suspicion that most of you didn’t heed our advice and head down to Love Park a few weekends ago to hook up in the shadow of City Hall. For those of you who stayed warm on campus, check out the final product, brought to you by gophila.com.
In the likely event that you’re reserving all brain function for midterms, papers and spring break plans, we’ve broken down a few highlights after the jump so you get the most out of your viewing experience:
Penn kids are very smart. Which means they are inherently socially inept, especially when it comes to dealing with members of the opposite sex. But fear not — I’m looking out for you, so on this Valentine’s Day you can pull off some fairly normal human interaction. Or at least fake it really really well.
First off: do you have a date? If so, you’re more than halfway there. If you buy someone dinner they’re obligated to put out and vice versa. But if its the first time you’re touching a living thing since that Bio dissection you did last semester, you’re going to need a little guidance. The “base system” from the days of yore still applies, albeit with some additional nuances. The folks over at xkcd were kind enough to diagram it for y’all. Read the rest of this entry »
LOVE Park will live up to its name this Sunday when all the city’s make-out sluts come together for a giant orgy of Seven Minutes in (Urban) Heaven. Philly’s tourism department will be filming some kind of Valentine-themed commercial. Love + city seemed to work for New York (“I <3 NY”), so why not apply the same concept to Philly? Here’s the scoop:
This commercial is for a new push of the campaign with a special Valentine’s Day twist. The filming takes place in LOVE Park and starts on one couple meeting at the Park. They immediately start kissing each other. The camera moves and we see another couple meeting and kissing . The camera continues to move and we see another kissing couple and another until we see a ridiculous number of couples all meeting and kissing at LOVE Park, as if everyone in Center City just stopped what they were doing and started making-out with each other.
More details are here. But since Penn has its own LOVE statue and we are lazy, we’re planning to just chill on College Green and make out with whoever walks by, even if it’s a squirrel.
The other night, in a break from the frigidity and classic girl-on-girl rush flirt, two of my housemates brought out lists of everyone they’d ever hooked up with–or at least those they could remember. Agreeing to skip over my own slutty whimsies of middle school (at camp one summer as an act of rebellion for being my improv partner’s beard, I got it on with every straight guy in the spin-the-flashlight circle), since I still had braces, not to mention the ghosts of high school boyfriends’ past, we concluded that our respective lists should focus on the college years, summers included.
I didn’t want to admit it at the time, but I make and edit my own list fairly regularly. Sometimes it’s every sexual encounter ever. Other times, I’ll exclude the ones I don’t think should have counted, because it was a sympathy 4-seconds with tongue in a parking lot. The most important edit though, is the group of people who definitely counted, but you wouldn’t want a soul to find out. I unfortunately have a generous pocketful of those, due to the insecure but sexually charged mid-adolescence most of us had. Read the rest of this entry »
*Trumpet sounds* UTB continues our celebration of winter break with the return of our intermittent book club! Today’s selection is College Girl by Patricia Weitz.
As bona fide college students, we simply can’t ignore a novel that heralds itself as “a sharply observed portrait of campus life and all the many pressures–economic, academic, social–that are funneled into its culture.” A college-centric novel promises to be either really juicy or really lame, Tom Wolfe’s I am Charlotte Simmons being the gold standard for lameness. Wolfe’s book (which, ooooh, was partially based on research completed at Penn’s very own St. A’s) fell flat because each page couldn’t help but reveal how scandalized Wolfe was by “kids these days,” with their sex and drugs and loose morals (all of which provided the author with an excuse to seriously overuse the word “insouciant”). While the main character of Weitz’s book is, regrettably, a tad reminiscent of Charlotte Simmons, College Girl proves itself to be unsentimental, thought-provoking, and really compelling. Read the rest of this entry »