04/27/09 5:00am
This year's Hey Day saw the usual tossing of flour and condiments and shooting of milk-filled super-soakers - but in smaller doses than in past years.
According to College Senior and Class of 2009 President Brett Perlmutter, this slight shift away from hazing - a custom that began in 2002 - is a result of a pledge nearly 1,600 seniors signed promising to go easy on their younger classmates.
04/24/09 5:00am
As part of the AT&T; Aspire initiative, AT&T; Pennsylvania donated a grant of $300,000 over three years to Penn's Netter Center for Community Partnerships's College Access and Career Readiness Program. The donation was a portion of the nearly $800,000 in grants to programs throughout Philadelphia related to high-school achievement and post-graduation preparation.
04/17/09 5:00am
Next Year, the Undergraduate Assembly and the Civic House Associates Coalition are making New Student Orientation more civic-minded.
The UA's Civic and Community Engagement committee is introducing five new proseminars - courses taken by incoming freshmen during NSO for no credit - that will focus on community service and civic involvement.
04/10/09 5:00am
On April 1, Rabbi Michael Uram entered the Eastern State Penitentiary - the penitentiary on Fairmount Avenue that has housed the likes of Al Capone and Willie Sutton. He was there to dedicate the Alfred W. Fleisher Memorial Synagogue, a chapel built in the 1960s and restored and renovated for use today.
03/30/09 5:00am
It was in a conversation with a friend that 2007 alumnus Cho Kim, now a graduate student in the School of Social Policy and Practice, heard about the Davis Projects for Peace Foundation.
Kim took one day to formulate his idea to win the $10,000 grant and one more day to write the proposal for the foundation, which grants students funding for projects to be implemented this summer. He received the award on March 16.
03/24/09 5:00am
Early Sunday morning at a house on 55th Street in West Philadelphia, the students of JAM for Philly - a community service and religious group comprised of Muslim and Jewish students - put aside their differences and picked up paint brushes to renovate the home for a family in need.
03/19/09 5:00am
When the West Philadelphia Alliance for Children gathered in the Civic House living room Tuesday night to teach other students how to "step" - a dance form using hands and feet to create intricate beats and rhythms - it was clear a celebration had begun.
The event was just a taste of Civic House Week, a series of activities commemorating the 10th anniversary of Civic House on Penn's campus this week.
03/04/09 5:00am
Student-athletes often seek a close, caring community within their teams. The 30 or so Penn athletes involved with the Fellowship of Christian Athletes in Action are looking for something more - they are on a quest toward a more enlightened path.
Lacrosse player and College junior Jill Taylor and several other members of varsity sports teams at Penn founded The Fellowship at the end of last year in order to give student-athletes a place to celebrate their shared faith alongside their shared passion on the playing field.
03/02/09 5:00am
By EMILY FOX
Staff Writer
fox@dailypennsylvanian.com
In the final hours of February, Penn seniors gathered at Smokey Joe's Saturday night to mark the end of Feb Club, as well as of a surge of success for Seniors for the Penn Fund. During the night, the Unite ONine team - the group responsible for recruiting donations to the Penn Fund - made an 11th-hour comeback.
02/26/09 5:00am
Between studying biochemistry and economics and researching tuberculosis and enzymes in a lab on campus, College junior Tariro Mupombwa managed to find a way to give back to her home country of Zimbabwe.
Mupombwa is in the process of starting a nonprofit to collect sewing machines in the United States and send them to the Salvation Army-affiliated Bumhudzo Old People's Home in Zimbabwe.
02/20/09 5:00am
College career services throughout the country are feeling the reverberations from the economic crisis that began last fall, leaving students with more confusion and less opportunity.
According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, a recent National Association of Colleges and Employer survey of about 50 colleges and universities found that more than half of the schools reported an increase in traffic to their career services centers while only 20 percent reported a decrease.
02/16/09 5:00am
When 2-year-old Zion saw Penn students encouraging a little girl to let them check her eyes with a large camera, he removed his thumb from his mouth and cried, "I want a turn."
Zion and 20 students from his day care class at the West Philadelphia Community Center, located at 36th Street and Haverford Avenue, participated in vision screenings last Thursday morning as part of Focus First, a Penn community service initiative.
02/06/09 5:00am
Two Jews, two Palestinians, a law student and a recent alum sounds more like the makings of a joke than the makings of a non-profit microfinance company.
But gathered in Huntsman Hall last night, the founders of lendforpeace.org were not kidding around as they celebrated the launch of their Web site.
02/05/09 5:00am
According to Hillel director Jeremy Brochin, Penn Hillel received a $1 million donation to run and revamp Hillel, as well as to support students.
Anna Dubin, wife of the late Irwin Dubin, made the contribution in memory of her husband, a Penn alumnus. The donation will be paid over the course of several years.
02/03/09 5:00am
A dozen undergraduates don't often spend their Saturdays at a suburban home with a professor from the medical school. It's even less common that students would join this professor on a weekend to study the Book of James.
But for students involved in Penn Students for Christ, these meetings are customary.
01/30/09 5:00am
Through a round of "speed-friending" and a game of Taboo last night, Hillel and Penn's chapter of the NAACP hoped to tackle the taboo topic of race and religious relations on campus and help students from Penn's Jewish and black communities get better-acquainted.
01/21/09 5:00am
The Office of Study Abroad may have closed the door on studying abroad in Israel this semester, but the window of opportunity might not be closed for good.
College sophomore Elliott Thomasson, a modern Middle Eastern studies major who plans to study in Israel next year, is confident that the current situation in Israel will not inhibit his study abroad plans.
11/21/08 5:00am
Everyone knows that when there's a train wreck, it's impossible to turn away. And when local news anchors reporting on these disasters become the train wrecks themselves, it's even harder. The gods of guilty pleasure are surely smiling down on us, allowing this calamity to play out right before our very own television-strained eyes.
11/07/08 5:00am
Send your condolences to loyal magazine readers. This October, publication corporations laid some of our favorite and most famous publications to rest and significantly cut back on the shelf lives of those magazines that have managed to survive. Magazine publishers have lifted their dark veils to lay off workers, cut the number of issues put out or close shop completely.
10/24/08 5:00am
Franklin Delano Roosevelt once claimed the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. Yet with many Americans spooked by the economy, this fear is translating into an altogether perplexing economic phenomenon.
According to a report put out by the National Retail Federation, more people plan to celebrate this year's Halloween than ever before - despite the frightening fall of stocks, savings and financial security.
