Judging from the Penn football team's five Ivy League championships in the past ten years, Penn Athletic Director Steve Bilsky is anticipating another league title in the near future. As tradition has dictated, with a championship comes the ritual tearing down of the eastern Franklin Field goal post and subsequently tossing it into the Schuylkill River. But the Penn Athletic Department, along with the Office of the Vice Provost for University Life and University President Judith Rodin, is seeking to create a new tradition in the wake of dangers surrounding the tearing down of goal posts. Bilsky and Vice President for Public Safety Maureen Rush will meet with all four class presidents, Graduate and Professional Students Assembly Chairman Jeremy Korst, Undergraduate Assembly Chairman Seth Schreiberg and Vice Chairman Ethan Kay today to discuss possible celebratory alternatives to uprooting the goal posts. It will be the first of a semester-long set of meetings to discuss the issue with the student groups. Before hearing any of the specifics of Bilsky's plans, Kay said that he believes that the best solution will involve a safe execution of tearing down the goal post. "We're meeting together because the spectacle this year was maddening," Kay said. "We all realize that we can't let what happened happen again. "Students are going to expect a level of symbolism," Kay added. "And I question our ability to deliver that, and to satisfy everyone in the University without a strategy that involves the goal posts, but I'm surely amenable to [Bilsky's] ideas."
But after compiling several counter-arguments of injury and death in goal post-related incidents, Bilsky believes there is no alternative to developing a new tradition. "I think it's been said on a national basis that it almost appears that schools feel the need to outdo each other in terms of celebration," Bilksy said. "Where it used to be tearing down goal posts, it has now come to street events, turning over cars, bonfires and serious, serious injury." The administrators are considering conducting a contest that will potentially award a student for thinking of a new tradition. The ideas are in very preliminary stages, but the notion of a prize is on the horizon. "It's our general experience that the students can be a lot more creative than we can be," Bilksy said. "And the University is open and willing to do that. But the only guideline is that it's safe." Bilsky noted that the Penn community has traditionally been a leader in devising ways to show spirit, citing toast-throwing at football games, unfurling rollouts in the Palestra for basketball games and singing "The Red and the Blue" at the culmination of campus-wide events. The Athletic Department also took control of the line for basketball tickets by adding security and increased regulations, whereas previously, students would camp out on the street for tickets.
