Aliya Sternstein - The Penn Reading Project: In need of an overhaul

Imagine the entire city of Philadelphia -- cheesesteak assemblymen, students and Benjamin Franklin impersonators -- flipping through pages of The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin this summer. Sound fictional? It's real in Chicago and here at Penn.

Check out the Penn Reading Project and the "One Book, One Chicago" project. The Penn Reading Project mails first-year students a shared intellectual experience, via paperback book, every summer.

Chicagoans opened their first book last fall. And last week, librarians and Mayor Daley assigned a spring book report for the city: Elie Wiesel's Night -- an account of his survival in Nazi death camps, now particularly relevant in light of ethnic cleansing, genocide and occupied Afghanistan. How's that for non-fiction?

But the class of 2006 will likely not be as blown over with its assignment as the windy city.

Traditionally, the Penn Reading Project receives, at most, a chuckle. Many freshmen preoccupied with dorm assignments and meal plan selection could care less about a homework assignment before they have even found the campus. The accompanying study materials find their way to the bottom of the pile of Penn mailings -- underneath the PennCard applications and bank brochures.

In addition, the books do not always appeal to the masses. The Daily Pennsylvanian reported that 1992's selection, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, actually turned off a significant number of freshmen, who mistook the former slave's autobiography as an extension of New Student Orientation's diversity education.

Looks of bewilderment consistently follow the mere mention of the Penn Reading Project. My year's mailing, The Woman Warrior -- an account of a Chinese-American's girlhood spent fighting the ghosts of her ancestors -- met a combination of awe, apathy and hatred among men.

And yet, the program -- at its core -- is a good idea. Smooth, glossy, shiny, brand-new books can be as attractive to freshmen as free pizza. The program can't be all that bad, if the University of North Carolina copied our program (with proper citation).

At Penn every spring, diligent Oprah-wannabe professors from all four schools, along with student representatives, scour booklists for the perfect embodiment of the collegiate text. Penn Reading Project Director David Fox, who helped pick my book, raved to the DP that year, "The Penn Reading Project sparks an interest in freshman that goes on for the rest of the year. We wanted a book that would do that."

I just dug up my book again, skimmed through to reminisce and to remember the terror that preceded move-in, but I could hardly recall the central themes of the novel or the characters. Again, there is a core to this program. Not quite sure where it is, though.

The Penn Reading Project needs an overhaul. Dreamt up as an intellectual version of the movie-watching pajama party, the dream is still just that.

How about this? Instead of choosing several books and voting intra-committee, the University opens up the final vote to the incoming freshmen themselves -- maybe through an online poll or as an insert in the PennCard paraphernalia. Narrow the stack to three picks, and -- here's the tricky part -- discuss all three books in the fall. The students only actually read one book, but they learn about all three, as well as their new roommates and classmates interests, or lack thereof, in books.

That's how you enforce bonding. That's how you make them think. Give them choices. Isn't that what a liberal arts education is about?

Such a massive face-lift would take time, but if the University starts out slowly -- with even the tiniest of improvements -- the makeover would be complete soon enough. Right now, the Penn Reading Project seminar discussions in the fall stimulate blank stares and yawns. Ben wouldn't like that.

Aliya Sternstein is a senior Psychology major from Potomac, Md.

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