Mayor's Race 2007: 3 candidates, 3 Quakers - with a twist

You can call Michael Nutter the Whartonite with compassion, Chaka Fattah the college dropout with a master's degree. As for Bob Brady - professor will do.

These three mayoral candidates, battling it out for the Democratic slot in the upcoming city elections, differ on many issues. But Penn features prominently in their backgrounds, and all of them have had Penn experiences that could only be described as out of the ordinary.

Take Nutter, for instance. The former city councilman graduated from Wharton in 1979 - sort of.

When he unsuccessfully ran for City Council in 1987, incumbent Ann Land dug up some interesting dirt: It turns out that Nutter never actually received his diploma.

In an interview, Nutter explained that this was because he had forgotten to pay a student bill totalling a few hundred dollars.

And because he had walked at Commencement and completed all of the academic requirements to get his diploma, he says he had forgotten about the debt years ago.

After Land turned it into a campaign issue, he had to trudge down to the Franklin Building and shell out the money he had owed the University for eight years.

The result: Already having graduated, Nutter now has the diploma to prove it.

The arc of Fattah's Penn career was even more unorthodox.

Fattah received his master's of governmental administration from the Fels Institute of Government in 1986, despite the fact that he never earned a Bachelor's degree.

Rumors have circulated that Penn allowed Fattah, a state Senator at the time, to enroll in order to gain a political ally, but Fels executive director Chris Patusky defended the school's decision to admit Fattah without what many see as a necessary prerequisite towards earning a graduate degree.

He explained that Fels has done the same for others on a few occasions and takes into account not only academic credentials but also "demonstrated leadership" and a "commitment to public service," two areas in which Fattah obviously surpasses the average student, in admissions.

Fattah, though, isn't afraid to capitalize on his Penn credentials and argues that the education he received from Fels has proved invaluable in his legislative work as a U.S. Congressman.

"I learned policy development . at Fels," he said. "It was the most important part of my education in the work that I'm doing."

But if Fattah is the candidate with an unusual graduate degree, Brady is the Congressman who teaches graduate students on the side.

Though Brady never went to college, Political Science professor Stephen Gale asked him to teach a graduate-level class about organizational dynamics in government. Gale said he thought Brady was the perfect man for the job because "Bob Brady is truly involved in urban politics."

At the time, Brady was chairman of the city's Democratic Party, a position he still holds. Because Brady felt uncomfortable teaching by himself - having never set foot in a college classroom - he and Gale decided to team-teach the course.

It's an arrangement which has worked extremely well over the past dozen years or so, Gale says, particularly after Brady won a seat in Congress, which he says finally gave Brady a sense of confidence in teaching.

Calling Brady "a very good teacher," Gale said, "I've learned a lot in the course. He's learned a lot." He described the student reaction to Brady as "overwhelming."

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