'Yup, I go to Penn State,' Confirms Wharton Sophomore Ashamed of Trump Affiliation

While making polite small talk on the Amtrak to Union Station in Washington, D.C., Anna Yeoman (W '20) declined to clarify the truth when the elderly woman in the adjacent seat mistook "Penn" for Pennsylvania State University. "Yup, I go to Penn State," Yeoman confirmed after a short pause, during which time she stared blankly out the window past her seat partner and deliberately chose to dissociate herself from The Wharton School and its famous ties to America's First Family. 

Yeoman, who likes to think of herself as a "generally honest and well-meaning person," had never lied about her education until the incident on the train this past weekend. In fact, she used to regard her undergraduate school with pride, having worked her way up from a working-class suburb outside of D.C. to one of the top business programs in the world. 

But ever since the 2016 election, Yeoman has become less confident in her affiliation with Wharton and the greater University of Pennsylvania in general. "If the question of where I go to school comes up, I just say 'Philly' and hope they don't ask for the specifics," she says, reiterating that she does not like to lie about her background. But when her elderly acquaintance assumed based on her Penn baseball hat that she was enrolled at the oft-confused public university in State College, PA, Yeoman "could not shake the image of Donald Trump saying 'I know words, I have the best words,'"—a claim he credited to his Ivy League education. With this distasteful thought in mind, she let the mistake slide. 

But it didn't stop there. Yeoman's seat partner continued to make conversation on the subject of colleges, mentioning that her grandnephew also attended Penn State. Instead of ending the conversation there, Yeoman took the opportunity as a chance to mentally escape the near-constant reminders of the Trump family's legacy at her real school. "I told her I knew her grandnephew, Derek, and would call him up to get lunch and talk about our mutual interests when I get back to campus," she admitted. 

"I know it was wrong," said Yeoman with a heaving sigh, "but for those 12 minutes of our conversation, everything felt really right."

At press time, Yeoman was reportedly peeling a Wharton Undergraduate Finance Club sticker off her laptop.