Letters to the Editor

To the Editor: I find it highly ironic that the Nominations and Election Committee would select the InterFraternity Council to serve on the University Council over the University Honor Council. Fraterities serve to create an elite, intentional community in the guise of brotherhood. Meanwhile, the UHC strives to ensure that the entire Penn community recieves the highest quailty of moral and ethically development in our journey for an education. The selection of the IFC overrpresents the number of men on this campus. Thus, assuming that the Latino Coalition and UMOJA have male members, the new seats are going to represent men at a higher rate. The orginial selection pool seemed to have some of the best and brightest organizations at Penn applying to serve Penn. I can only hope that the IFC serves us well.

Melissa Byrne College '02

To the Editor: As the co-author, with Dick Clarke and Bill Keller, of the 1971 SCUE White Paper, I want to add my kudos to those who wrote this year's report. The key issue, however, is not a lack of a full analysis of education at Wharton, Engineering or Nursing, nor the need for a full plan for advising -- two criticisms which we heard in almost the same words 30 years ago. The focus must be the commitment of the administration to take the best ideas from the White Paper and work to implement them. Each time that has happened -- as it did with President Emeritus Martin Meyerson in the years after our 1971 White Paper -- real progress has been made. That is why Peter Conn's support now is so important. Even more important, however, will be the efforts made by the president and the provost. I urge Provost Barchi to set up a special working group to review this year's SCUE White Paper and determine how to best implement its recommendations. The most important thing about the 2001 White Paper, like each of predecessors back to the first report in 1966, is not the report itself. It is how Penn students and faculty have worked together to implement the excellent proposals that have been developed by the unique and still vital group known as the Student Committee on Undergraduate Education.

Stephen Marmon College '71, Wharton '81

To the Editor: I was thrilled to join hundreds of Penn students, staff and neighbors from the West Philadelphia community at the UC Green Arbor Day event on Saturday in a truly a miraculous transformation -- by noon, a barren stretch of road was transformed into a beautiful and inviting streetscape lined with more than 100 new trees, thanks to the hundreds of volunteers who came out. I cannot begin to acknowledge all the people who contributed their time, money, tools, food and sweat to the day. I was so proud and moved to see so many student volunteers out in full force on a cold Saturday morning. David Levin, co-chair of the Undergraduate Assembly's West Philadelphia Committee, did a remarkable job rallying the troops for this mission. I was thrilled to see so many fraternities and sororities, members of the Graduate and Professional Student Assembly, the Undergraduate Assembly and the college houses. I was also delighted to see Penn students, joined by their peers from Drexel, Temple, the University of the Sciences, Philadelphia University, Community College and even the University of Tennessee. I also want to offer my thanks and compliments to UC Green and Esaul Sanchez for his extraordinary energy, creativity and leadership. Under the green spell, neighborhoods like ours look and feel dramatically better, cleaner and safer. And as we saw on Saturday, greening the neighborhood brings the entire community together. I also want to salute the many residents and landlords who lent their support to the vision of a greener Walnut Street. The West Philadelphia community is showing the rest of the city how to take charge of its future and revitalize a neighborhood. Thanks and congratulations to everyone who came out!

Judith Rodin University President

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