Letters to the Editor

Celebrating a life

To the Editor:

Very few things that appear in the DP headlines touch me personally any longer. I was at Penn from 1959 to 1969 and most of those I knew then have vanished. However, the article on Sylvia Charp's death ("Engineering professor dies after accident," The Daily Pennsylvanian, 9/9/03) touches me very greatly.

Sylvia was the director of instructional computing at the School District of Philadelphia in the 1960s. In that position, she was responsible for building Project GROW, a network of Philco Computers able to deliver distance learning to high schoolers -- Computer Assisted Instruction, as it was called then.

I met Sylvia Charp in connection with work the Wharton School was doing on educational planning. Eventually, I did my Ph.D. thesis on a very complex resource scheduling problem that plagued her system -- the kids' diverse learning rates created demands for computer resources that were too variable for her computers to handle, resulting in severe scheduling problems.

Sylvia Charp was a lovely and fascinating person. In the highest and best senses of the word, Sylvia Charp was an "operator." She knew everyone in the world of educational computing and talked with them almost daily. She was helpful to those around her in many big and small ways. Sylvia connected those who needed help with those who could provide it. She and her husband Sol were two of the most warmhearted and generous people I met in 10 years as a student at Penn. It is unspeakably sad that such good people have to leave our presence and inexpressibly happy that students can find such great people at Penn.

Martin Stankard Wharton Graduate '65 SAS '69

Questions in Catholicism

To the Editor:

While I think Catholicism can be an exhaustive discussion, I believe that Donna Gentile O'Donnell makes too many presumptions in her column ("Time to bring the Catholic Church into the modern era," DP, 9/9/03) to be taken seriously by the Bishop. As a Roman Catholic myself, a product of quite a few years of parochial education, I would like to clarify some points which O'Donnell speaks passionately and yet perhaps too quickly upon.

While it might be frustrating to hear that discussion on a particular topic is over, that is no reason to throw around allegations that the current position of things are archaic or wrong. Some points that O'Donnell makes, such as those regarding same-sex couples and their rights within the church as active members, I wholeheartedly agree with. However, to say that rules such as celibacy or male-only priests should be optional is to totally undermine the foundation on which Catholicism -- the religion she practices -- was created.

For example, if a basketball player kept making flagrant fouls whenever he was on the court, or even if a number of players were to do so, do you think the referees would have a conference seeing if it would be better to maybe allow flagrant fouls? Surely not! In fact, those players would be forced to either play by the rules and not commit flagrant fouls -- something which provides for the safety of themselves and others -- or to be removed from the team.

In the case of celibacy -- a precept that was put forth to help priests feel a deeper connection with God and not with the desires of this world -- the rule is meant for spiritual augmentation. To make that rule optional is to totally undermine the ends which celibacy is meant to achieve. Perhaps the argument is less sound for women in the priesthood, but it still remains the same -- men and women are divided as priests and nuns so that they may serve God in specific ways. If your purpose for becoming a religious servant is in fact to serve God, then why be so concerned in how you may do so?

These are simply questions to ponder, as Ms. O'Donnell so forcefully asked a Bishop to answer questions which I am sure he has put much more time and spirituality into considering than she has.

Meagan McGowan College '04

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