34th Street Magazine's "Toast" is a semi-weekly newsletter with the latest on Penn's campus culture and arts scene. Delivered Monday-Wednesday-Friday.
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It was 10:56 on a chilly Wednesday evening. Six of us hunched over the coffee table, waiting for the finale while I attempted a complicated recipe I had seen the week before. "Dammit! I never should have tried this!" My roommate peered up at me. "You're microwaving popcorn.
At last week's Trustees' meeting, architect Michael Van Valkenburgh unveiled the plans for Penn Park, the new site of athletic fields and an important part of PennConnects, the University's eastward-expansion plan that will unfold over the next several years.
Rome wasn't built in a day - we've all heard that one before. Well, Penn also wasn't built in a day and in fact, Penn is being built and rebuilt every day. Our University has come a long way since 1740. It has seen new buildings and new leadership and different policies and different priorities.
Many have been arguing that "Harvard Narcissists With MBAs Killed Wall Street." In a recent Bloomberg News column, Kevin Hassett, director of economic policy studies at the neoconservative think tank American Enterprise Institute, alleges just that.
Hassett argues that over the past 20 years there's been a significant increase in the number of Ivy League graduates pursuing careers in finance - and that this trend is inextricably connected to the current economic crisis.
Positive news has been few and far between when it comes to finances these days. Therefore, it's heartening to hear that Penn administrators have worked hard to keep the necessary tuition and board increases as low as possible.
This year, Penn tuition will rise 3.
'It doesn't matter if you win or lose - it's how you play the game." If you played Little League or soccer growing up, you probably heard that all the time. The idea that "everyone was a winner" didn't seem silly. If the losing team of the league didn't get some kind of prize for trying, those poor kids might be sad.
Ensuring fairness in teaching
To the Editor:
I am appalled at Penn's permissive attitudes toward political activists who wrongly use their authority in the classroom to politically indoctrinate students. Although the concept of academic freedom allows professors to teach subjects of their own choosing in their own way, professors specifically sign a contractual code of ethics with the University, and are required to adhere to professional standards which specifically prohibit taking sides on controversial issues.
How many times have you been accosted by a panhandler, who you think is homeless, outside of Wawa? The attitude among students is overwhelmingly "not in our backyard." So I recently asked a random sample of Penn students what their first reaction would be if a student group planned to operate a homeless shelter on campus.
Last week, as I waited on the corner of N. 8th and Lehigh for the No. 47 SEPTA bus that would take me back to Center City, I was struck by the depressing, sporadic gaps of land every few houses. The entire street was pockmarked with vacant lots on which scrubby brown grass competed for space with broken glass, crushed beer cans and discarded candy wrappers.
By now, many of the facts are widely known: three students hospitalized for confirmed meningococcal infection in a period of days; numerous other students evaluated in the Student Health Service and the Emergency Room, some admitted to the hospital for observation and empiric treatment pending test results; upwards of 3,000 students dispensed preventative treatment; measles; ongoing communications and updates to students and the broader university community; one very tired Health Service director.
Coming off the likes of Paul Krugman, Nicholas Kristof and Maya Angelou, it's easy to become blase about the caliber of speakers that Penn attracts. And while all the highly publicized speakers visiting this semester have been engaging and interesting successes, the speakers gracing campus this week are particularly commendable.
For most Penn students, the homeless are accepted as a fact of life in West Philadelphia, one of the things seen but not quite registered on a daily basis.
That's why it's gratifying to hear about Penn students' recent outreach efforts to homeless Philadelphia residents.
Yesterday, 2,700 Africans died of malaria, 144 South African women were raped and 14,500 children under 15 were infected with AIDS. International development efforts need both more time and more money to help eliminate these tragedies.
Thus the College Dean's Advisory Board announcement that it will be developing an international-development minor must be met with praise.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, then this year's Penn Reading Project is certainly the shortest work to date.
Rather than reading (or, in most cases, not) a book, as entering freshman have done for the past 10 years, the class of 2013 will be asked to "read" The Gross Clinic - a painting by Philadelphia artist Thomas Eakins.
Say you're a DJ for Penn's student-run radio station, WQHS. Your show airs at 8:00 p.m. every Wednesday, which is a great time - most of your friends can listen as they do homework. But right now you're not worrying about listenership, it's getting to the Hollenbeck Center, a good 30-minute walk to the no man's land of Penn's campus.