Playwright's visit ends frosh reading project

Windber, PA The University hosted Tom Stoppard, an orator, intellectual and playwright, for an exhilerating three days in February. During his stay on campus, students and faculty became enthusiastically involved with learning for the sole purpose of learning. The days Stoppard spent on campus were the final act of the 1995-96 Penn Reading Project, affecting a large portion of the University community. At the beginning of the school year, 5,000 copies of Stoppard's play Arcadia were distributed to incoming freshman, faculty and parents. For the project, freshmen discussed Stoppard's play in small groups across campus, watched scenes from the work and had opportunities to attend faculty symposia about the play. While on campus, Stoppard participated in lectures, panel discussions and classes with the University community. The excitement Stoppard generated flowed flowed into the surrounding Philadelphia community, as residents from the entire region came to hear him speak. By the close of Stoppard's three-day visit, faculty and students across the four undergraduate schools were equally disappointed to see him board his plane. "Stoppard doesn't just jump on an airplane when someone asks him to," said English Professor and Steinberg Symposium Chairperson Robert Lucid said. "He came because we kept the text alive through education." According to the English Undergraduate Chairperson Al Filreis, the entire Stoppard Dymposium transcended the boundaries of what is normally considered vurriculum and extended the idea of the "intellectual community" well beyond the classroom. After a reception and dinner for Stoppard at Eisenlohr Hall hosted by University President Judith Rodin, a proclamation from Mayor Ed Rendell was read declaring February 7 "Tom Stoppard Day" in Philadelphia.