STAFF EDITORIAL: Priorities for a new semester

Academics, the state of the Health System and campus construction weigh heavily on our minds in the new year. On the academic side, the Wharton and Law schools enter another semester lacking permanent leadership, more than 15 months after their deans announced plans to step down. We trust these searches will move swiftly toward completion. In the College of Arts and Sciences, the faculty will move to flesh out the proposed pilot curriculum for 200 members of next year's freshman class and begin to overhaul an inadequate advising system. Neither effort, however, can adequately move forward without the input of Penn's current undergraduate population. This, too, is also a pivotal semester for the University of Pennsylvania Health System, whose ongoing fiscal crisis has already begun to chip away at Penn's solid financial status. Currently, administrators are considering further cost-cutting measures and the Trustees are deliberating changing the Health System's relationship with the University. The system's eventual recovery or further difficulties will depend heavily on actions taken in the next few months. And the bevy of construction projects ongoing around Penn will continue to consume the attention of the student body -- as well as much of the sidewalk space around campus. This is to be the semester when the Perelman Quadrangle opens after years of renovations and the finishing touches are placed on Sansom Common. Elsewhere on campus, the future Huntsman Hall and Sundance Cinemas should begin to emerge from piles of dirt and gravel. In a transformation that will only reach fruition long after most current students are gone, the University's dormitory and dining renewal plan should move ahead as two noted architectural firms study plans to radically redesign the learning and living environment in Hamilton Village. The University's semester-old alcohol policy and the debate over who will get to attend a new Penn-supported public school will also continue to grab headlines. Some of our New Year's wishes have graced this space in years past: increased fundraising for undergraduate financial aid, programs to improve minority recruitment and retention among students and faculty and better recreational facilities for a woefully underserved campus. Increased undergraduate research opportunities and faculty recruitment in several beleaguered departments remain high priorities. This will also be a year when politics matters. Penn's relationship with the City of Philadelphia, warm during the Rendell years, will be tested by a new administration in City Hall. And in the national arena, the upcoming presidential race holds significant consequences for higher education, and the country as a whole. We welcome you back to campus with a sense of cautious optimism that the lengthy process of change, of which we are now only in the middle, will bear fruit for the Penn community in 2000 and beyond. But as the University has survived Y2K and prophecies of millennial doom, administrators must work diligently to address the priorities on which Penn's future success as an academic institution will depend.