Author: Casey Ryan, C’95
I am confident that if you ask any alumnus/a from the nineties about Penn’s knack for creative acronyms, you will get a laugh and a story about a memorable one. From standing in line in Palestra at CUPID* for my Penn Card to calling PARIS* one last time to see if I passed Business Italian and if I would actually graduate, I remember that my life at Penn was peppered with acronyms and initialisms. I wanted to share with you my favorite current acronyms from campus.
10. PASS – Penn Alumni Student Society
9. SPEC – Social Planning and Events Committee (can’t have a fling without ’em).
8. PENNCAP – Pennsylvania College Achievement Program
7. WCIT – Wharton Computing and Information Technology, pronounced like “wicket.”
6. MAP – Major Advising Program, “You don’t have to be ‘lost’ to take advantage of MAP, just curious.”
5. LIFE Program – Living Independently for Elders Program
4. Penn ReunionFACTS – Penn Reunion Fall Alumni Class Training Session
3. WHALASA – Wharton Latin American Student Association
2. JBaGeL – Penn’s Jewish LGBTQIA Community, from Jewish Bisexual Gay and Lesbians
1. PHINS – Peers Helping Incoming New Students, which references the dolphin on the Penn Shield.
I’d love to hear what your favorites Penn acronyms are, whether they are still used or are a blast from the past.
Frankly Penn 
ACLC – Alumni Class Leadership Council
TCPW – Trustees’ Council of Penn Women
VPUL – Vice Provost for University Life
BRB – Biomedical Research Building
KCECH – Kings Court English College House (I didn’t live there, but they have a great acronym!)
“PASS” to me always means Penn Arab Student Society, because I met one of their members through PLBD‘s social lessons, and thereafter was added to their email list and got invited to many of their events! (I am/was also a member of PLBD, and once we joked that we are Phi Lamba Beta Delta…)
WICS – Women in Computer Science (I was a member by default, being a DMD major)
SMAC – Singers, Musicians, And Comedians (within PAC)
PS: When I first came to Penn, I used to pronounce SEAS as “say-ahs”, like the word “seas” in Spanish (see the verb conjugation chart towards the bottom – http://www.spanishdict.com/translate/ser), rather than in English!
UA – Undergraduate Assembly
UMC – United Minorities Council
WATU – Writing Across the University
SATU – Speaking Across the University
DP (of course) – The Daily Pennsylvanian
DRL – David Rittenhouse Labs
How do I still remember these? 🙂
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