PenAlert: Penn Launches New Emergency System for When Your Dumbass Classmate Loses Their Apple Pencil
Photo by Sophia Hernandez
October 9, 2023 at 2:20 pm
UPenAlert: Apple Pencil DROPPED in Van Pelt Library. Use caution, police on scene, avoid area. See www.publicsafety.upenn.edu for details.
The Penn Division of Public Safety announced last Monday that they would be rolling out the beta version of a new emergency alert system to recover students’ lost or stolen Apple Pencils.
The program, UPenAlert, has been in the works ever since the student protests outside of College Hall demanded Penn to send out campus-wide announcements to aid in the frequent searches for their essential school supply.
Student protester and Wharton junior Frank Guggenheim said he hopes to see the new system eliminate the intermediary steps of an Apple Pencil search, such as professors having to send grammatically incorrect Canvas announcements with messages like “somone left their apple pencil in class, come by office & see me.”
“This chick in my class started blowing up our “FNCE HW ANSWERS” group chat going on about how she ‘lost her pencil in class, has anyone seen it’ blah blah blah,” Guggenheim said. “Like girl, stfu and send the problem set.”
As the Apple ecosystems of the student body grow larger and larger, Wharton junior Andrew Jordan said the least the university could do is provide security coverage for the widely-used writing utensils.
“It’s good to see Penn acknowledging the plights of us one-percenters,” Jordan said. “It’s always ‘let’s provide MacBooks for the FGLI students,’ ‘let’s give the FGLI students free textbook access codes,’ but who’s there for us when we lose our shit? Apple Pencils aren’t even that expensive.”
College senior Stacy Ryan, who lost her Apple Pencil four times this semester, is grateful that she no longer has to message her professors on Canvas asking them if they’ve seen it.
“It’s a debilitating feeling not having a single writing utensil to your name. I know it’s only one thing I need to keep track of, but I’ve got a lot of shit on my plate rn, yk?” Ryan said. “And those things are just so convenient, I don’t even remember the last time I bought a ream of paper.”
DPS said they anticipate some minor troubleshooting with the initial testing of the program. They recommend students to start getting their names engraved on the pencils to improve response time.
UPenAlert: Pencil FOUND under a chair in the Moelis Reading Room. Police and Allied Security patrolling the area. You may resume normal activity.