Dear Pennizens,

Sophomore year, a member of my Management 101 group showed up to a meeting with a two inch gash on his forehead. The group work carried on as normal, no one asked a thing and we hammered out a paper on why Kodak missed the ball on digital photography. At the end of the meeting, I timidly asked, “What happened to your forehead?” He looked up for a second, then away, and replied “Uh, let’s just say it involved a beer bottle.”

For some bizarre reason, this is not an isolated incident. This week, two Penn seniors are on trial for attempting to maim a classmate. According to the Daily Pennsylvanian, two seniors allegedly struck another in the head from behind with a beer bottle. The sharp object cut off half of the victim’s ear. Granted, the ear was not bitten off in an Evander Holyfield rematch, but what’s the difference? A kid is missing part of his ear. How’s that for a friendly night out at Copabanana?

The pacifist within me shudders. A night out should be fun; aggravated assault is a whole other ballgame. What argument could have led to such a tragedy? Women, booze, calculus? Perhaps they were settling a gambling bet. The victim maintains the assault was unprovoked, rendering this act even more ridiculous and shocking.

I always wonder what happens to these Penn criminals. Not the guy who stole your laundry after you left it in the Quad washing machine for a full week, but actual criminals. Let’s see here, the line-up of public shame: people having sex in high rise windows, people tar and feathering Princeton students and threatening to light them on fire, people “accidentally” winding up in a strange female’s room and suddenly it’s “assault,” the people on trial for murder, the people caught kicking a female Democratic protester in the head at a Republic convention, people caught <gasp> plagiarizing for major publications. You know, the kind real cops care about.

At first, you go private on Facebook, take a few weeks off of school, talk to grandma about a cash advance for a retainer, get your attorneys together and finally haul ass to court. People discuss them for a little while, mayhap post some ignorant comments on the DP website and after a few rounds of ritualistic public shaming, the fire dies down. But what happens to them after? In the case of Tar-and-Feather, you come back and speak at NSO about not tar and feathering students in the future. Was that part of the settlement? Next year, will freshman have an orientation speaker telling them how not to hit people in the face with beer bottles?

I imagine your real friends would still talk to you and your parents, of course. And money talks: a hefty bank account certainly has something to do with a return to normalcy. In between paying the lawyers, paying Penn, and taking time off to “find yourself,” being a criminal at Penn certainly adds up.

I’ve never actually bothered to follow up on these miscreants. Aside from the fact that I am not a stalker (in the conventional sense), usually you just feel bad for these people. So a few friends got drunk, had an altercation and wound up in front of a judge. It’s shocking at first, pitiful later, yet ultimately forgettable. Perhaps this is exactly what Penn criminals need—a little time away from the limelight and a little time to get their normal name back and come up with witty rebuttals to say at parties.

In closing, this Halloween, let’s avoid real brutality as much as possible. Stick to the fake blood: it’s cheaper (in terms of medical bills), kitschier (always a plus) and easier to get out of your newfound “friend’s” sheets. Happy Pumpkin Slut Day!

Tootles,

Anna

Editor in Chief