LETTERS: Thursday, February 10, 2000

Standing up for Penn Standing up for PennTo the Editor: I do not wish to complain about this policy, however. I would like to recommend a solution for the Athletic Department to consider. The idea is to create a buffer zone between the student section and the general admission section. In this way, the courtside student section would be further removed from the general admission section, enabling the alumni ticket holders to sit comfortably and still see over standing students. To accomplish this, seats beside the student section and the general admission section on the side of the court could be blocked off and unsold. That's all. Simply, two or three columns of seats will go unused and unsold at each home game. Now, the sacrifice of these seats would be somewhat problematic to the alumni season ticket holders that might lose their current seats in the targeted sections. They would have to be relocated. Or the students could lose these seats and the Athletic Department could avoid relocating alumni. And the issue of decreased attendance would not be a big problem. The loss of several dozen seats would go unnoticed for the majority of home games, which do not sell out, and would only affect attendance at the Princeton and Big Five games -- three or four annual contests. Renovation to the interior of the gym would not be needed. Nothing would be changed. The alumni would be happy to see games. The students would be very happy to stand and be rowdy. The basketball team would be even more happy, knowing that standing students will help them beat Temple, Maryland and Princeton at home next year and for years to come. This is not a novel idea. Duke and Stanford have done it. It worked for them. It can work for us. Jeffrey Millman College '03 To the Editor: In response to Jeremy Reiss' column ("We're not Penn State, but that's our secret," DP, 2/8/00), I'd like to propose the ideal solution to Penn's name recognition problem. As we tire of informing people that we're "Not Penn State," conventional wisdom has suggested we rename ourselves Franklin University, after our founder. This proposal is twice flawed. Not only would it guarantee us decades of anonymity, but, moreover, our misidentification would continue -- everyone would mistake us for Franklin and Marshall University. Fortunately, there is a better option, one that's been facing us all along -- right in the middle of Locust Walk. I propose that Penn officially change its name to Wharton University. All of our problems would be solved in one fell swoop! A title both unique and revered and, moreover, already our own. Never again would we be misidentified or underestimated once we assumed this globally renowned name. Folklore majors could interview fearlessly with McKinsey and Goldman, their degrees from Wharton ensuring instant respect from any potential employer. Ultimately, wouldn't it be worth the change if for no other reason than to leave Finance majors without any separatist rhetoric left to spew? "I don't go to Penn, I go to Wharton!" would become entirely meaningless. Smugness all around, I say. It's still three months until Commencement. If we get moving now, nobody will ever again joke that my Philosophy major is a degree in bartending -- not when it reads "Wharton" across the top of my diploma. Tom Kretchmar College '00