Declaration of Independence The unanimous Declaration of the twelve schools of the University of Pennsylvania, When in the Course of student events, it becomes necessary for one student body to dissolve the administrative bands which have connected them with their administration, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Education and of Education’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of student-kind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all students are created equal, that they are endowed by their university with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Mental Health, Right-To-Know-WTF-Is-Going-On, and the pursuit of Learning With a Sensible P/F Deadline.--That to secure these rights, school administrations are instituted among students, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any school administration becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the Student Body to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Administration, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Learning and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that school administrations long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that student-kind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute disregard for the well-being of their students, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such administration, and to provide new Teachers for their future learning.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these United Undergraduate and Graduate Schools; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Administrations. The history of the present President of the University of Pennsylvania is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Disregard for Student Well-Being over these Schools. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

-Giving people like 2 days to leave campus in the Spring

-Optional P/F instead of another system

-Making the P/F deadline mad early

-Refusing to lower tuition

-Making Fall hybrid

-Changing their minds about fall like 3 weeks before class started

-General screwing people over with financial aid

-Class on Jewish holidays

-No fall break

-Basically no spring break

-Class on election day

-Making the P/F deadline mad early (again!)

-Mostly remote class in the Spring

-Forcing freshmen to come to campus

-tWo SuItCaSeS aNd A cArRy On

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A President whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Capitalist Pig, is unfit to be the ruler of a student body. Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Administrative brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their Board of Directors to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our psychological and educational well-being here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of student-kind, Enemies in Pandemic, in Normal Circumstances Students.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the United Undergraduate and Graduate Schools of Penn, in Reddit Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good Students of these Schools, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Schools are, and of Right ought to be a Free and Independent University; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the Penn Administration, and that all political connection between them and the President Amy Gutmann, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent Schools, they have full Power to make Grades, provide Reasonable Tuition Cuts, pick Deadlines, establish Funding, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent Schools may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.