Fresh off the news of Kal Penn’s visit to campus, SPEC has announced its fall Connaissance speaker: HuffPo empress and namesake Arianna Huffington. Penn will speak at Irvine two days before the election and Arianna will (joyously or mournfully) take the auditorium the night after America heads to the ballots. Needless to say, Penn will not be lacking star power the week after next.

Huffington has a lot of accomplishments under her designer belt, like having a top online news site and content aggregator, founding the first digital media enterprise to win a Pulitzer and getting spoofed on SNL, but her greatest honor to date will surely be having the most popular college president introduce her at Penn. That’s right, A-Huff and A-Gutt are BFFs! Tickets ($5 in advance) for the November 7 post-election powwow are now on sale online and on Locust – don’t miss out on Arianna making Penn her little potato pancake.

In case you haven’t yet heard, Penn is joining a handful of other universities in aiding same-sex couples by issuing them a series of tax benefits.  Because same-sex marriage is not recognized in Pennsylvania, there exists a tax that a Penn employee must pay on a partner’s benefits, although the tax does not exist for heterosexual couples.  The new tax benefit issued by the university is meant to offset this cost.

What all of this means, basically, is that Penn is continuing its efforts to create a just environment for all faculty, staff, and students.  And, it’s one of the first universities to implement this practice, known as “grossing up.”  Way to go!  But, really, this should come as no surprise.

Neuroscience and the fine arts, together at last. It seems like a match made in Opposite Backwards Mirror Land, but Penn PhD candidate Greg Dunn has managed to pair the two quite harmoniously.

In an interview and slideshow featured on The Huffington Post yesterday, Dunn discussed his paintings, which utilize Japanese minimalist painting techniques to illustrate the structure of human neurons. (Seriously, go click that link. These are really cool.) Dunn explains that the aesthetically simple painting style, with its sharp contrast and negative space, is an evocative medium for conveying the complexity–and beauty–of the human mind. Indeed, Dunn’s paintings seem like the rare illustration appropriate for both a biology textbook and a gallery wall.

Kudos to this ingenue for his creativity. Just think what other awesome medicine-art partnerships we have to look forward to! Interpretive dances illustrating the respiratory system? Sculptures made of squished-up organs? A First Friday event at HUP with free glucose bags for all? We can only imaaaagine.

Not too long ago, Fling was named the number two sanctioned college event in America. And we rejoiced. But evidently it only fares well among “official” events, because Penn’s favorite slopfest was left off of HuffPo‘s recent list of the 10 craziest college parties in the country. Apparently a single rowdy tailgate at Duke is crazier than Fling. For this, we shall not STAND!

Tensions are running high in this heated time of whining and protesting about not getting floor passes to the Fling concert (anyone got an extra, by the way?). Instead of pointing fingers, take this opportunity to unite. Rage harder than you ever have before, in solidarity, to prove that Fling is one of the craziest college parties—no, no, is the craziest college party of them all. Leave Tiësto so blown away by your ability to fist pump with abandon that he shows up to the next stop on his college tour wearing a Penn shirt. Do it for glory. Do it for pride. Do it for FLING!!!!!!

Well, this is embarrassing. Today, HuffPo College created a slideshow that demonstrates recent instances of students from each of the Ivy League schools screwing up in some pretty big ways, from drug rings to sex scandals and everything in between. Our crime? Oh yeah, that UA hazing “scandal.” Eek.

While it may come as a shock to some– brace yourselves– let’s not forget that going to an Ivy League school does not deem one completely infallible. But this does serve to reinforce the old adage: smart people do really stupid things. Tell us what you think!

How many times have you wanted to stand up in the middle of recitation and scream “SHENANIGANS!!!” but were just too scared your constitutional rights would not be respected? Fear not, comrades: the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) has your back!

In a recent Huffington Post article (and in today’s DP), FIRE named Penn one of the country’s best colleges for free speech on the basis that it has “at least nominally protect[ed] speech that would be protected by the First Amendment” and hasn’t “committed a serious incident of censorship…for at least several years” — that they know of, at least. Those criteria don’t seem all that stringent, but hey, we’ll take it! Add that to Penn’s inclusion in numerous gay-friendly rankings and it seems we have ourselves our own little social utopia in West Philly.

Believe it or not, there’s more on the oft-debated topic of “Is Penn Actually Worth It?” The Huffington Post says yes! Yes, it is worth it, the $200,000 is worth it.

HuffPo has a slideshow of the colleges with the biggest payoff by calculating Return on Investment for different schools. Known as ROI, for Wharton folk. At Penn the annual ROI is 11.8% while the 30-Year ROI comes out to $1,361,000. Read the rest of this entry »