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The wrongful death suit brought by the estate of Michael Tobin against the University landed in Philadelphia's Court of Common Pleas on Monday, two years after it was first filed and over four years after the accident that claimed Tobin's life.
The wrongful death suit brought by the estate of Michael Tobin against the University landed in Philadelphia's Court of Common Pleas on Monday, two years after it was first filed and over four years after the accident that claimed Tobin's life.
It seems to me that Earth Day just isn't working.
Several environmentally-based groups gathered on College Green yesterday to celebrate Earth Week with displays of alternative energy vehicles and distributions of environmental information.
Very few engineers would consider Alka-Seltzer tablets and empty beer bottles conventional project materials. But if the designers are participating in a Rube Goldberg competition, then it's all in a day's work.
Although this may be the National Society of Collegiate Scholars' first year on Penn's campus, the organization is making an impact far beyond West Philadelphia.
No one should spend Saturday nights like this: tired, achy, staring into a computer screen. I have two columns left: one on Monday and one for graduation -- my last column. Except most people don't stick around for the graduation issue, so I really have two "last columns" to write. And I've already finished the second last column. But the first last is due very soon. And I'm petrified of going to bed without an idea.
Crime was relatively light over Spring Fling weekend, despite large crowds and nonstop partying across Penn's campus.
The setting consisted of three professors, 20-odd students and nine bottles of wine. Tuxedoed waiters circulated the room with hors d'oeuvres, and vases of purple tulips decorated the blue-clothed table.
(This article appeared in the 3/31/03 joke issue)
(This article appeared in the 3/31/03 joke issue)
I'm sitting beside a pool in Austin, Texas, as I write this. The sun is shining, some odd black birds are singing and the tiny waves on the water's surface make a delightfully soothing sound. School seems like a world away.
The Roman statesman Cassiodorus once noted, "Some seek not gold, but there lives not a man who does not need salt." Though, he spoke of the value of this basic seasoning in ancient times, his comment is equally applicable to the recently opened restaurant Salt. Just a stone's throw from Rittenhouse, this petite 40-seat spot is an exercise in the power of understatement. Situated on the corner of 20th Street and Rittenhouse Square, the glowing exterior of the restaurant bears no name. Rather, it is marked only by the door handles bearing the birds-eye view of a salt shaker. Inside, one is greeted by gleaming white walls, three futuristic circular lights overhead and an unexpected built-in fireplace. Servers clad in black from head to toe move discreetly amongst the seated diners. Though the restaurant's ambiance walks the line between chic versus pretentious with its air of comfort, it steers closest to the former. Salt 253 S. 20th Street (215) 545-1990 Fare: French Upon first opening the menu, I thought that I had been given the wine list instead of the dinner menu. However, further inspection revealed the appetizer, entree and dessert offerings. As owner and Penn alum David Fields later explained, he combines the wine list with the dinner menu in an effort to make the list less intimidating than the heavy tomes usually handed out at other restaurants. Along with the usual categories of white, red and burgundy was a notable "Hard to Find" list. While the pricing was not cheap by any standards, Fields emphasized that at Salt, he sets the wine at much more affordable prices than the same bottles would be at other restaurants. Thematically, the menu leans heavily toward seafood and mushrooms, with several appetizers and entrees combining both. The menu changes daily as Fields explained, different types of mushrooms may be substituted or a bottle of wine may added to the selection. Fittingly, chef Vernon Morales uses a variety of salts to season his dishes, ranging from kosher salt to the French sea salt, gros sel marin. Although everything from the name to the white walls to the heavy emphasis on seafood had the word "salt" playing on repeat inside my head, our selections from the menu were anything but briny. We began our meal with two appetizers, both appropriately fresh catches from the salty sea. The crispy seared scallops, glazed salsify and a Meyer lemon and miso dressing were tender and tangy. The squid ink risotto with roasted rock shrimp, in a piperade jus was delicious, although extremely rich, leaving one to wonder how a fairly small portion could be so filling. For our entrees, we selected the hanger steak served with a braised short rib crepinette, shallot cracklings and a serrano ham and potato terrine. Delicate and tender, the steak practically fell apart in my mouth while the terrine offered a dose of Spanish infusion to the plate. For our second entree, we chose the Nova Scotia lobster with chestnut puree, honshimeji mushrooms and a sea urchin emulsion. Likewise, the lobster was delicious as well, although the sauce was a bit rich for my guest's liking. Each dish was presented on modern white china, in keeping with the decor of the restaurant. For our desserts, we chose the caramel poached apples with a star anise crisp and spiced ice cream along with the warm chocolate cake with hazelnut praline and chocolate sorbet. Each option was excellent, though the chocolate cake by far was the best choice, as each bite was a combination of oozing liquid chocolate and airy cake. On a side note, Salt wins extra points for serving La Colombe coffee. Overall, Salt offers a cozy, yet inspired dining experience that is perfect for small groups or dates. And with an environment as warm and inviting as its food, this is a restaurant worth its weight in salt or perhaps even gold.
Nestled among tattoo parlors, novelty costume shops and Condom Kingdom, Overtures is a South Street oasis of maturity, class and European charm. The French and Mediterranean restaurant -- located at 609 E. Passyunk Avenue -- is rated among the city's top BYOs and is the ideal locale for a fairytale first date. Or a night out with your roommate. After entering the restaurant from the cold and walking through the enclosed patio area past the bar, the waiter offered to take our coats and chill our bottle of wine. And as we were shown to our table, we knew we were in for a treat. Overtures 609 E. Passyunk Avenue (215) 627-3455 Fare: French Bouquets of flowers ornament the restaurant's walls, quiet orchestral music fills the air and individual lamps with candles softly light each tabletop. With its pink marble-painted walls, sea-foam green molding and lace curtains on the windows, the dining room's ambiance is picture-perfect. Overtures offers both a $50 prix fixe menu, romantically scrawled in handwritten calligraphy, as well as an a la carte menu -- which, if you're looking to save money, is the better deal if you order one of the less expensive entrees. The prix fixe menu includes an appetizer, salad, entree and dessert -- I chose the creamy veloute of crab soup, the light but flavorful petite greens with a vinaigrette, the perfectly tender filet mignon and a moist chocolate cake with a caramel layer, placed on top of a sweet raspberry sauce. My guest ordered from the a la carte menu -- which consists of appetizers, pastas, entrees and desserts, as well as vegetarian options -- and enjoyed a delicious Blue Point crab cake ($8.50), a melt-in-your-mouth grilled breast of duck ($16) and a heavenly white chocolate cheesecake ($5). The entrees were served with carrots, asparagus and scalloped potatoes with onions. As we sipped our coffee ($1.25) and attempted to cram the last few precious bites of cake into our full stomachs, the restaurant's owner and head chef Peter Lamlein greeted us with two small glasses of cognac to help us wash down our meals. Lamlein regaled us with tales of his first restaurant endeavor -- a coffee and ice cream shop, which has since closed -- and on a side note, added with a calm chuckle that earlier that night, three people had entered the restaurant from the street and stole money out of the Overtures charity jar. So much for the oasis. Overtures is open Tuesday through Saturday night, 6-9:30 p.m. and Sunday night, 5-9 p.m. Dress nicely, and leave your rowdy friends at home.
All information was obtained from the University Police logbook. --Rebecca Blatt
All over the world, computers and the people who use them are in the process of recovering from a bout of the "SQL Slammer" virus, and College freshman Andrew Tejerina is recovering right along with them. With University Internet servers down for three days, Tejerina has barely been able to check his e-mail for what feels like eons. Right now, sitting in a chair by his desk, Tejerina shakes his head. His room is neat, but it certainly has the presence of a college student, with a belt slung over the ladder to his loft bed and a pair of fuzzy blue slippers by his desk. His roommate, a varsity tennis player who Tejerina likes but almost never sees, has a Giants poster up. "Is it working better in Woodland?" he asks of the Internet, frustrated. When he hears that the answer is affirmative, he gets slightly annoyed. After all, life in the age of Instant Messenger is tough when computers are broken. For Tejerina, e-mail and AIM are fairly important, as they allow him to keep in touch with lots of people outside of Penn, including his friends from high school and, when he has forgotten to call home for a while, his mom. Luckily for Tejerina, Internet issues are some of the worst of his problems. Tejerina has just gotten back from the gym, where he manages to exercise two hours a day, six days a week. Still, compared to many of his friends, he is "a lightweight." Most of the people he hangs out with work out for four hours a day and replace late night study sessions with running. One of his favorite stories of the year is when one guy finally conquered the treadmill in his college house's basement. "He always says he's running against the machine -- 'It's just me and the machine,'" Tejerina says. "One day, he was just running on the treadmill so long it completely broke. It just stopped working." Tejerina is silent for a second. "How satisfying must it be to run a treadmill to death?" he finishes, a big smile on his face. From working out to going out, Tejerina's friends are part of his favorite aspects of life at school. In fact, he's still really close to the guys he met at the beginning of the year. Sure, lots of people have told him that friends often change from first semester to the second. And others have warned him that he should keep his options open, just to make sure that the people he met early on, most of whom live near him, are the right friends for him. Still, Tejerina is pretty sure they are. He's happy with the way things are now, and he plans to keep it that way. "We're a pretty tight crew," Tejerina says of the bunch. He's munching a sandwich when Tyler Wallen, also a College freshman, saunters in and grabs Tejerina's Brita to fill up a water bottle. "When do you want dinner?" Wallen asks. "I don't know," Tejerina says with a shrug. "I just took a sandwich -- I was hungry." "How about seven?" Wallen continues. "Don't have an exact time or anything," Tejerina replies, with a bantering crack characteristic of him and his friends. Wallen, No. 4 on Penn's hockey team, asks where some of the other guys are. Tejerina explains that they are still at the gym, battling the treadmill. "Andrew is the quintessential Penn student," Wallen says, playing to the reporter. "He's a fantastic athlete, a wonderful musician, an all-around great guy." "I basically live in his room," Tejerina says, returning the compliment. "I have a key." Still, despite all of the good times, Tejerina is glad that first semester is over and that he has escaped an evil course load. "I was in Calculus 104, which was the biggest mistake of my life," he explains. He did not take the Calculus AP in high school but still decided to fulfill the College math requirement with 104 and not 103 in order to challenge himself. "I don't know why," he says. "I always hated math." Unfortunately, the time he spent trying to pass calculus took away from time he could have put into his other courses. He had no idea that college would really involve studying. Tejerina is continually surprised by how much work he has, especially because Penn has been given the moniker "The Party Ivy." His sister at Yale does almost no work and gets all As, so he did not expect to have to buckle down quite as much as he was forced to. Last semester, he almost never went out on weeknights because he had Spanish at 9 a.m. everyday. This semester is a bit of an improvement, but he is still not allowing himself to sleep in too much. "Being the dedicated student I am, I scheduled class for 10 a.m. everyday," Tejerina says. He figured that at least if he woke up early every morning, he would have empty afternoons during which he could be productive. But that has not worked out quite as he planned -- instead, he takes naps most afternoons. "I just end up justifying why I need to take one," he explains, jokingly perturbed. Still, Tejerina does not believe that last semester's less than stellar academic performance stemmed from a lack of effort -- he simply chose classes poorly. His roster for this semester, which includes two music courses and an introductory psychology class, excites him more. "I'm a music major who is also going to major in something else," he says. What the something else is, he is not yet sure. He is sure of what fraternity he is pledging, though. "Beta Theta Pi," he says, proudly. He and five of his friends decided to rush it together, and they all pledged. Choosing a frat was not a difficult task for him. By the time rush started, he had narrowed his choices down to two, and both of those houses' first closed rush events ended up coinciding. He was forced to choose which house to stick with early in the game, and he is happy and excited that he chose Beta. Rushing, of course, was a blast. "Lots of free food!" he says. He is not that worried about pledging, either. Two of his close friends from home are pledging Beta at Penn State, and though the process is notoriously worse at large state schools, both are surviving. Most exciting, perhaps, is the fact that Tejerina was asked to perform at a concert in Los Angeles. He still often plays the guitar and was overjoyed when a Penn graduate who works at Dreamworks saw one of his last interviews in the Daily Pennsylvanian and called, asking him to play at a PennFest concert in February. Then he learned that he would have to buy his own plane ticket. And miss classes. In the end, he convinced his parents that the plane ticket was crucial, and they consented to let him go. But his effort was in vain. He soon found out that there would be another PennFest in New York City and decided to wait till then to perform. That way, his parents would save money, and he would still have the opportunity to play guitar at a festival that promises to be a rocking good time. Tejerina should be pretty busy in the next few months, with pledging, a full course load, his commitment to the guitar and of course, his time with friends. Still, what excites Tejerina the most about his spring semester? It takes him less than a second to answer this one last question. "Spring break should be pretty cool," Tejerina says, and with that, he is off and running.
The Green Line Cafe -- a new coffee and pastry shop at 43rd and Baltimore streets -- has had a successful first week of business, according to co-owners and managers Douglas Witmer and Daniel Thut. The cafe, which opened last Monday, sells organic coffees and teas, which are bought directly from producers, not coffee conglomerates. It also sells its own line of bottled soda as well as various pastries and cakes. "It's a little different from typical coffee fare," Thut said of the focus on all organic products, something that Witmer refers to as an effort to be "quality conscious." The two also plan to expand their selection to include soups and sandwiches within the next few weeks. Witmer and Thut, long-time West Philadelphia residents, had toyed with the idea of opening a coffee shop for years. "We live in the community, and we felt that there was a need for a place like this where people can come and socialize," Thut said. "And when the building went on sale, we got serious about it," Witmer added. It took a year and a half to plan the cafe because storefront renovations took about a year to complete. Witmer and Thut said that although it is too soon to tell who their core clientele will be, they hope that the coffee shop will cater to both the University and West Philadelphia communities. They added that they do not think their distance from the center of campus will be a problem for business, which has been steady this week. "There is enough neighborhood support," Witmer said, "and any business from the University is a bonus." The cafe's proximity to the Green Line subway station, a key spot from which most West Philadelphia residents commute to Center City, will probably work in its favor, said Anthony Sorrentino, director of external relations for the Office of the Executive Vice President. The cafe is also near Clark Park, a popular spot for local residents. Sorrentino added that the University welcomes the addition of new businesses beyond the boundaries of campus. "It is exciting to see new entrepreneurs adding to the robust marketplace of University City," Sorrentino said. "The University is behind them 100 percent." The bustling cafe has been filled with people reading, socializing and enjoying the sunny winter days through the cafe's stained glass. David Bevacqua, who is not affiliated with Penn, made his first visit to the cafe this weekend. Having just returned from Italy, he said, "It is impossible to get a good espresso in this country, but this is as good as any." He added that the service was wonderful and the location extremely convenient due to its proximity to Clark Park. Daniel Flaumenhaft, who works in the School of Medicine, has already been to the Green Line Cafe several times this week. He likes the cafe because of its quiet, yet social atmosphere. One day this week, "I came in to read for half an hour and ended up seeing 15 people I knew and stayed all afternoon," Flaumenhaft explained. College junior Jamie Wong said that "it is convenient for students living off campus to have a place to go past 40th Street." Despite the long walk in the blistering cold, even Penn students who live on campus said that they would try the Green Line Cafe. College freshman Patrick Griffin, who lives in the Quadrangle, said that he would consider making the trek to 43rd Street if the cafe turned out to be better than those closer to campus. "I'd probably go if we could get a whole troop to make the journey down there," said College freshman Kristopher Holum, who lives in Hill College House, noting that he would like to see what the new cafe has to offer. But he added,"We have a Starbucks across the street, which I would be more inclined to go to." Whether the Green Line Cafe's organic fare and friendly service is enough to attract on-campus residents remains to be seen, but after their first busy week, Witmer and Thut are glad to be in business.
Call it dorm room disgust, call it restlessness for the high rises to replace their aging furniture or just call it insanity. But whatever you call it, no one can deny that creative genius is thriving here at Penn. If you had an old iron, an elevator cord spool, some plastic bottlenecks, a decomposing couch and some scotch tape, what would you do? To some Penn students the answer is obvious -- decorate the apartment. College sophomore Scott Sokoloff first heard about the abandoned cord spools that were extracted from Hamilton College House's infamous elevators from a senior. The wheels in his head were already turning as he headed out to the dumpsters. And by the time he was rolling one of the huge circular monstrosities past bewildered Spectaguards in the Hamilton lobby, his mind had already transformed it into a buffet table. Within a month, it had been cleaned off, covered in a tablecloth and had become an integral part of the numerous weekend meals that he and his roommates hosted in their apartment. Looking back on life pre-spool compared to life now, Sokoloff proclaims, "I believe that no room is complete without a gigantic wheel." Right down the hall from Sokoloff resides another budding interior designer. Engineering junior Peretz Cik is the mastermind behind what he proudly refers to as "the ghetto pulley." Using old plastic bottles and string, he created a pulley system in his Hamilton dorm room whereby he can close the door while sitting on his bed across the room. "I used bottlenecks because they're smooth, and the string pulls over them with little resistance," Cik reports. When asked if he used his engineering knowledge to develop the system, Cik answers in the affirmative. "In order to shut the door, the string had to have a force at a certain angle and have the string pointing toward a certain corner of the door." Next, Cik displayed the projector that he had built to turn his room into a movie theater with nothing more than a cardboard box, a $5 page-magnifier from Staples and a dorm room wall. The only problem that Cik ran into was that the lens inverted the image and projected it upside down. Cik, undaunted, proceeded to hook up the TV to his computer so that he could invert the TV image before it went through the projector. "Who wouldn't do this?" is Cik's final conclusion. The high rises are not the only hotbeds of redecorating innovation. College freshmen Matt Aquino, Byron Drumheller, Robbie Biggs and Ken-ichi Hino bonded early in the year in their Quadrangle hallway of Butcher -- soon after, their two rooms were famous for their late-night parties. "Well-known? Just ask our RAs," Aquino says with a smile. However, the boys realized early on that their cramped rooms with bulky beds were not ideal for the kind of atmosphere they wanted to create for their parties. That is why one night, it suddenly struck them that they could move out of one of their rooms and make it into an official lounge for such occasions. "That was it -- at 3:30 in the morning we started moving furniture, and we did it all night," Aquino says. Slowly, they found things to add to their new pad. Aquino's father, who is in the liquor business, gave them old memorabilia that they used to decorate the walls, and one day when Drumheller and Aquino were on 41st Street, they found an old couch that they dragged all the way back to the Quad in the cold. Next came the scotch tape that they used to write messages on the wall to be further accentuated by black lights. Unfortunately, they were soon put on probation for their parties, and their party room became a place for them to just chill. But not all of Penn's on-campus creations are large-scale productions. Take the case of College sophomore Nora Badal's old iron. She had nothing in her wardrobe to iron, but she did have a hankering for grilled cheese last year in the Quad. As a result, her iron quit its day job and moved from smoothing out creases in her shirts to ironing out toast. "I wonder what you can make with a curling iron?" she ponders. MacGuyver would be proud.
STORRS, Conn. -- They'll be back.
For the last six weeks, Penn grad students Ben Studebaker and Shasta Jones have done nothing but sleep, eat and drink body building.
Solutions by The State News
