*Cooperman gets trapped in elevator

*This article appeared in the 2007 Joke Issue

Harrison College House experienced the longest elevator shutdown in its history, from 10 p.m. last night until 8 a.m. today.

The elevator held a large group that included 1996 alumnus Peter Cooperman - who has pledged $50,000 to investigate repairing the high-rise elevators if 5,000 students join his Facebook.com group - and three freshmen women, among others.

Due to a glitch in the elevator monitoring system, technical-support staff failed to realize the elevator was stuck for nearly four hours.

Facilities spokesman Tony Sorrentino said the problem only came to his attention after seeing on his Facebook news feed that a number of Penn students had joined the group "Help! I'm stuck in the High Rise elevators!"

In the group, Cooperman said he needed 5,000 students to join in order to get himself unstuck.

"What Mr. Cooperman did was truly innovative," said Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg. "We are definitely going to explore adding an emergency alert button to the revamped news feed thanks to his ingenious idea."

"You know, I just wanted to add some humanization to the efforts to revamp the elevators," Cooperman said. "I was lucky to have my Blackberry on me when I got stuck so that I could send out an electronic S.O.S."

But some students say they only joined the Facebook group because it was a similar experience they had shared, and they left the group when they saw Cooperman was the creator.

"I left the group because I thought when he spent a lot of time in the elevator, he might realize how bad they are and just give us the money already," said College freshman Clint Cohen.

Cooperman said when the elevator got stuck, he was on his way to the 13th floor, where he was planning to attend a "rad shindig."

He added that he followed the girls into the elevator after hearing them discuss the party.

"My intuition is that 18- and 19-year-old girls always know about hot parties where I can get people to join my Facebook group," Cooperman said.

"What is this guy doing to us?" one of the girls said after being rescued hours later.

The Undergraduate Assembly called an emergency meeting to attempt to pass a proposal urging the University to help.

The proposal did not come before the body after failing to get the required 2/3 vote to get it on the otherwise empty agenda.

Meanwhile, Division of Public Safety spokeswoman Karima Zedan says the University has pledged to purchase new security gates specifically designed for Cooperman that can detect if anyone over the age of 25 is entering one of the College Houses.

In unrelated news, Cooperman will be the star of his own sitcom, "Hangin' with Mr. Cooperman."

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