The Year Review in 1997: OCTOBER

University Provost Stanley Chodorow announced his resignation after being named a finalist for the presidency of the University of Texas at Austin, the fourth school to place him on its short list of candidates in the past 18 months. Early in the month, the University released a plan to reorganize all campus dormitories into 12 college houses by next fall. While the University community had been anxiously awaiting the residential plans, the plan to outsource the management of all University buildings, which was announced the same day, came as a complete surprise to everyone -- included the affected employees. In return for Penn's business, the Dallas-based Trammell Crow Co. agreed to pay the University a total of about $32 million. But not everyone was happy with the plan, which required 175 managers and support staffers to reapply for 110 to 150 positions with the company. Shortly after the deal was announced, a group of facilities managers and staff filed a class-action suit against the University, arguing that Penn's motive in the deal was to give workers fewer benefits. October also saw a lot of interesting speakers come and go. But even "the Force" couldn't help Penn find an auditorium big enough to fulfill student demands to hear speakers like James Earl Jones and Hillary Clinton. Jones, who stressing he would even "do the Darth Vader voice" if asked, was the first speaker and the easiest to get a ticket to hear. Far fewer students were able to see Hillary Clinton, who visited Penn a week after her husband's fundraiser at Philadelphia's CoreStates Center. Through a lottery, 300 students of a pool of 1,200 were invited to see the the first lady, who praised Penn women at a speech sponsored by the Trustee's Council of Penn Women. And Chinese President Jiang Zemin's speech in the University Museum was the most exclusive -- though the 40 people who assembled outside to protest China's human rights record said they would rather not have had the controversial leader speak at Penn. --Maureen Tkacik