Letters to the Editor

Cable decisions still made by University

To the Editor:

We appreciate your coverage of the recent news concerning Comcast and ownership of the West Philadelphia cable television franchise.

Indeed, this is a development we've been following with great interest for some time.

However, the editorial ("Is it really 'Comcastic?'," SP, 6/15/2006) misses an essential point: As reported in your article ("Comcast cleared to takeover Phila. cable providers," SP, 6/8/2006), the University owns and operates its own cable TV network system -- all programming is acquired here at the University with Penn-owned satellite dishes and is sent around campus by way of a Penn-owned wiring network. Moreover, all decisions about the channel lineup offerings are made by a Penn advisory board composed of students, faculty and staff.

These essential elements -- Penn ownership of its cable infrastructure and complete University control over its content -- will not change. There are no plans whatsoever to "allow Comcast to take over the University's cable access."

While there have been tremendous advantages to the University by partnering with the local franchise holder -- our mutually beneficial relationship with Urban Cableworks/Time Warner is more than a decade old, and we look forward to a very similar relationship should their parent ownership shift to Comcast -- the University is quite free to select only those corporate partnerships which would be advantageous to Penn.

We're confident that Penn Video Network will continue to provide cable television content that supports the University's academic, cultural and residential missions, and will continue to do so with tremendous value at a competitive cost.

Christopher Cook

The author is the Penn Video Producer for Information Systems and Computing

Issues with cookie delivery service

To the Editor:

What happened to Insomnia Cookies? Was it those 2 or 3 hour waits for delivery? Over-rapid expansion? Lack of staff? Lack of oversight? Absentee owners? Irresponsible financials? And will it re-open in the fall?

I'm eager to see what happens. From August 2005 to May 2006, I was one of those $9.00 an hour operators who worked from 8 p.m. to 4 a.m., filling orders for hot chocolate chunks and skim milk and also fielding complaints from angry students about cookies delivered broken, wet or that just never came.

How could you blame the store staff -- who filled 30 or 40 orders an hour on busy nights -- and made deliveries by bicycle in all kinds of weather?

There were other complaints, not so excusable, about refunds that took a month to go through (when the current business model is days); the owners who didn't return phone calls; the full voice mail; the "info" e-mail that was never answered.

For these, there was no good answer. I told students what I believed: The owners were honest people and cared about their business -- ignoring the business reality.

That reality bit me when $918.00 worth of Insomnia Cookies paychecks were returned unpaid on June 7th. Seth Berkowitz was made aware of the situation, through one of his former managers, but wouldn't speak to me directly. To-date, Mr. Berkowitz has made no effort to contact someone he described as one of his "most reliable workers."

Am I angry? Yes. But, since many of Insomnia Cookies workers are students, I'd caution anyone in the Penn community before taking a job or placing an order with this growth stock.

Karen McBain

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