Lauren Bialystok: From your neighbour to the north
(11/27/01 10:00am)
First of all, it's "Tronno," not "Tuh-RONT-oh."
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Accolades keep piling up at Nursing School
(10/23/01 9:00am)
Yet another award has been added to the already impressive list of honors held by the faculty of the Nursing School.
Rebecca Davidson: A threat to our health
(10/04/01 9:00am)
Planned Parenthood: This is the largest, most powerful, most
Attacks cast international students as observers
(09/19/01 9:00am)
Most Penn students understand why the Stars and Stripes are hanging nearly everywhere these days -- alongside the road, on construction sites and even pinned to clothing. After all, America is their homeland.
The investigation intensifies
(09/14/01 9:00am)
WASHINGTON -- U.S. investigators pressed yesterday to identify terrorist collaborators who may still be in a position to strike more Americans, and agents located critical "black boxes" from two of Tuesday's hijacked planes.
Some faculty stranded by air travel shutdown
(09/13/01 9:00am)
Dozens of Penn faculty members -- primarily doctors in the University's Health System -- have had to put their plans on hold due to travel disruptions in the wake of Tuesday's terrorist attacks.
W. Squash finds new head coach
(08/30/01 9:00am)
James Martel, Penn's new women's squash coach, was recruited by the Quakers 28 years ago.
Philly sports heat up in summer
(08/30/01 9:00am)
So you spent your summer in a cramped office, filing papers, answering inane phone calls, adding cream to your boss' coffee, making zero dollars an hour.
Philly sports heat up in summer
(08/30/01 4:00am)
So you spent your summer in a cramped office, filing papers, answering inane phone calls, adding cream to your boss' coffee, making zero dollars an hour.
Dancing away on Broad Street
(08/10/01 9:00am)
Mid-morning on a steamy August day, a time when most classrooms are only scenes of drying paint and settling dust, the dance studios of the Rock School, the official academy of the Pennsylvania Ballet, are anything but.
Dancing away on Broad Street
(08/10/01 4:00am)
Mid-morning on a steamy August day, a time when most classrooms are only scenes of drying paint and settling dust, the dance studios of the Rock School, the official academy of the Pennsylvania Ballet, are anything but.
Underage drinking - magic number is not 21
(08/02/01 9:00am)
At this very moment, I can register to defend our nation in far-flung corners of the world. I can help elect a President, get married or even buy a handgun. I can kill myself with cigarettes or Snickers bars or Tylenol. I can jump out of a bridge with only a rubber band to save me.
Masses canoe and kayak to PCC Regatta
(07/12/01 9:00am)
The Schuylkill is more than just a large tributary of the Delaware River.
NASA selects Penn bioethicist to guide human subject use
(06/07/01 9:00am)
In planning the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's three-year mission to Mars, ethical issues are certain to be raised, such as what to do if an astronaut gets injured during the trip.
Students protest free trade agreement here and abroad
(04/24/01 9:00am)
Trying to add their voices to the worldwide chorus against the Free Trade Area of the Americas, student protesters took to the streets of such major cities as Philadelphia, Baltimore and Quebec City this weekend. With a working document approved by leaders from 34 countries on Sunday, the FTAA will create the world's largest trade zone -- with an annual output of over $11 trillion -- encompassing all of North and South America by the time it takes effect at the end of 2005. However, protesters said they felt that the document was crafted in secrecy and favored large, multi-national corporations over the needs of working people. "It's not an agreement that the people in America are going to have a lot to do with in terms of how it gets shaped," said Penn Political Science Ph.D. student Michael Janson as he led a protest in front of Philadelphia City Hall on Saturday. "It's really being designed by a set of individuals that over history have proven themselves not able to act without checks and balances." The most violent protests took place in Quebec City, where the international leaders had gathered. Over 400 people were arrested while police warded off nearly 60,000 protesters with water cannons, rubber bullets and tear gas. "I've never witnessed that before -- to be walking around and seeing people wearing bandannas around their nose and mouth," said University of Vermont sophomore Heidi Keller, who marched in Quebec City on Saturday. "It was great because they had thrown so much tear gas that it actually wound up in the hotel where the delegates were," she added. "They had to turn off the air conditioning and they couldn't eat the food -- it kind of backfired." This weekend's "Summit of the Americas" was the culmination of earlier FTAA discussions which began in 1994 after the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement, which opened up trade between the United States, Mexico and Canada. "One of the things that the media will tell you about us is that we're protectionists," said Michael Morrill, executive director of the Pennsylvania Consumer Action Network, an independent consumer and environmental rights organization, as he marched with about 100 people in front of Philadelphia City Hall. "Well, there's a sense in which we are protectionists -- we want to protect democracy, we want to protect the environment, we want to protect human rights," he said. Despite all of the criticism, Wharton Professor of Public Policy and Management Howard Pack believes that the FTAA is beneficial. "It's a super thing," Pack said. "It will lead to lower prices for all American consumers -- and a handful of workers will lose their jobs." With the FTAA, some compared the power of business conglomerates to that of such countries as England, Portugal and Denmark in colonial times -- when many countries were exploited for the benefit for a few. "It's any of the Fortune 500 companies... where you have the research and development in America but where you have your labor in peripheral countries where the safety, environmental and occupational safety standards are lax," Temple University junior Maggie Serota said at the Philadelphia rally. "Corporations take advantage of that to increase profit." But Pack contends that most of those protesting are ill-informed about the trade topic. "Nobody elected those people who are protesting -- in my view most of them don't know much about these issues," he said. The protesters did believe that they had an impact on the negotiations. The pact now includes a clause that requires countries participating in the FTAA to uphold democratic principles, and the leaders also promised to release the text of the trade agreement to public scrutiny for the first time. "Since there was this huge protest it made a lot of press -- now people are asking what went on in Quebec," said College junior Matt Grove, who traveled down to protest the FTAA in Baltimore. As for the many people who have never heard of the FTAA, Groves replied, "Most people never heard of the World Trade Organization either until there were like 60,000 people on the streets of Seattle." With the approval of the FTAA on Sunday, talks among trade officials will hammer out the details until 2004, when the country's leaders will gather again in Argentina. But the protesters did not feel that their efforts were in vain. "We knew that we weren't going to stop them from signing it," Keller said. "As long as we get people to mobilize and get a strong enough movement, eventually by [2005] we can do a lot to save the world from globalization."
Penn set to study electoral fairness
(04/09/01 9:00am)
Despite the 50-odd commissions that have originated to tackle election reform, the Fels Center of Government -- by proposing a national voting fairness index -- hopes to finally find success in number 51. And an internationally recognized leader on election fairness demonstrated how much the United States still has to learn about elections by looking abroad. On Friday, Fels Director Lawrence Sherman announced the formation of the Fels Voting Index, which will track errors in vote tallying across the country. The project will present the results in a yearly report to the nation. "This is a chance for the Fels Center to provide the key performance measurement for our democracy," Sherman said. Scholars and political officials from both parties met on Friday to help advise Fels students and faculty on the index's development. Researchers will begin combing through election results this summer. "We live in an era of close elections in which what happened in Florida last fall has become a frequent occurrence in state and local elections," Sherman said. "As long as elections are close, our governments need to ensure that votes are counted with even more accuracy than found in banks counting money." The index will begin by grading states on criteria including the number of under- and over-counts and the uniformity of voter registration systems. Sherman hopes that the funding, which is still being sought, will allow for scrutiny on the county level as well. Many of the other commissions are focusing on specific improvements, like improved voting machine technology. The Fels effort hopes to be the impetus. "Once these rankings get published, the states and counties at the bottom of the list will make the media and voters in these communities demand improvements," said Annenberg School for Communication Fellow David Eisenhower, who is collaborating on the project. "The U.S. News [and World Report] practice of ranking colleges and universities has made big changes in the quality of higher education," Eisenhower said. "The Fels Voting Index could do the same for the quality of democracy." Emory University Political Science Professor Robert Pastor, who has worked to advance the cause of worldwide free and fair elections with former President Jimmy Carter for the past 15 years, came to Penn on Friday to put the Fels proposal in perspective. Pastor addressed about 20 students after meeting to discuss the voting index. "There are many people who believe that democracy should be more than free and fair elections, but it can't be any less," Pastor said during his speech. In countries where democracy was once deemed to be impossible, such as Nicaragua and Mexico, Pastor intervened as part of an international team to help increase democratic practices. With the number of democratic countries having increased by a third in the last 30 years, the United States has much to learn from these other countries, he said. "The most implausible of all scenarios occurred in the year 2000, when a free and fair election judged credible by all of the parties in Mexico occurred at the same time that our own election was questioned by the political parties," Pastor said. Past elections gone awry in Panama and Jamaica have resulted in many deaths, Pastor said. However, he added that has not been the case in the U.S. yet. "When you have a margin of technical error that exceeds the margin of difference between the victor, you have a recipe for a very serious problem," he said. "In the U.S. we have a different technique for dealing with this problem. We send in the only species in Florida more dangerous than sharks -- they're called lawyers." Pastor explained that problems with the American political process extended beyond Election Day and included a "rotten" campaign finance procedure. "Is Canada any less democratic than us for conducting its election in 36 days at a cost of $50 million, as opposed to our presidential election which goes on for four years and costs $3 billion?" Pastor said, noting the American elections are essentially continuous. The United States also lags behind other countries in terms of voter turnout -- especially among young people. Only about 55 percent of Americans vote, compared to up to 65 percent in other industrialized democracies, Pastor said. "I think the big thing is just awareness that problems exist," said Master of Government Administration student David Reed. "This past election really made people step back and realize the types of problems out there -- and that they don't just happen in town council or school board elections."
City immigration a hot topic as Census numbers roll in
(03/21/01 10:00am)
With the results from the 2000 Census now tallied, leading thinkers on the topic of immigration gathered last night for a talk entitled "Immigration and the Future of Cities." The Census data showed that immigration allowed cities such as New York, Chicago and Los Angeles to increase in population. While Philadelphia saw a decrease in overall population, increased immigration in the city helped to counter the scale of the drop. The keynote speaker, Penn Sociology Department Chairman Douglas Massey, sought to set straight common misconceptions as to why such immigration was occurring, especially since many politicians see it as a cure for urban ills. "The idea that you can turn immigration on and off like a faucet is unrealistic," Massey said, who has spent the last 20 years studying migration patterns between the United States and Mexico. "The social networks make it relatively resistant to reversal." Globalization, with its huge communications abilities, has made it easier than ever to maintain such contacts in foreign lands. In fact, this is why people immigrate today, Massey said. "International immigration is not seen as a way to settle, but as a means to keep things viable in their home country," Massey said. Immigrants no longer venture abroad for a big new house, but rather as a source of income to support relatives in their home country. Massey's research shows that the income sent back home is mostly used for housing. Encouraging Philadelphia to increase its share of the nation's immigrants -- which is currently less than one percent -- Massey prodded the city to look beyond regionalism and become a global player with such countries as Mexico and Canada. The talk also touched upon how cities need to solve their own social problems while they seek to encourage new residents. "It may be all well and good... to make the city more attractive to immigrants, but we also need to pay attention to our homegrown racial woes," Massey said, noting the problems still facing African Americans. Sociology Professor Elijah Anderson, who has studied many of Philadelphia's poorest neighborhoods, said he has found great feelings of racial distrust in the African-American communities. "It looks like the white community is ready to undermine the black community," Anderson said, adding that the "poorest of the poor" in these neighborhoods are competing for jobs with places like China and Mexico. Such a situation makes them reluctant to new immigration. Councilman-at-Large James Kenney, a longtime booster of attracting more immigrants to Philadelphia, said that he wants the city to be an "immigrant-friendly city." "We not only want you here for our own economic selfishness, but we want to celebrate your diversity as well," Kenney said. College senior Matt Thornton, said that "although they addressed the issues, no one had a good idea how to go about doing it." The talk, which was the annual Albert M. Greenfield Memorial Lecture on Human Relations, marks the beginning of a five-part faculty seminar on immigration and cities. "This was a great start," Wharton Professor Susan Wachter said. "It really reflects the depth of thought that we have here."
Panel discusses challenges of being gay and `out' at work
(02/16/01 10:00am)
It's job search time for Penn students. So, last night at Logan Hall, the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Center and Career Services together sponsored "Out in the Workplace." The program of panel discussions was geared towards students who are looking for work and are open about their sexual orientations. The program, which began in the mid-1980s and runs every other year, drew around 25 attendees. "We chose the focuses of the panels based on the professions that tend to be chosen most often by Penn students," LGBT Center Director Bob Shoenberg said. There were two separate panels -- one with lawyers and public servants and one with professors. The first speaker, Kathryn Kolbert, a public interest lawyer, spoke about many issues confronting gays and lesbians, including parenthood. "Having children as lesbians has been a fabulous experience," she said referring to her two children with co-panelist and partner Joann Hyle. Kolbert, a graduate of Temple University Law School, has dealt with women's rights litigation and is credited with helping to save the Roe v. Wade abortion decision in her arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court. Hyle, an attorney at the prestigious Philadelphia corporate firm Pepper Hamilton, discussed the openness of her current working environment. Her firm, she was eager to point out, is a "fine place for a lesbian who is also a lawyer." And panelist Kevin Vaughan, the former regional director for Health and Human Services for the Mid-Atlantic states, echoed the other speakers' thoughts about working in a comfortable setting. "I don't want to go someplace or work someplace that won't accept me for who I am," Vaughan said. Vaughan himself is embarking on a job search, since his Clinton administration position has ended. He discussed job searches from a hands-on viewpoint. Another panelist, Marc Stein, a history professor at York University in Toronto, Canada, spoke about his experiences in the late 1980s and early 1990s as a doctoral student at Penn. "When I came to Penn, I was coming out of a queer workplace," Stein said, referring to his job as an editor at a Boston magazine geared towards the gay and lesbian community. "Penn proved to be a positive workplace for me," he added. Stein discussed the "problems and horrors of the job market," after he graduated from Penn. Stein searched for a steady position for five years, enduring 25 interviews before finally landing a job with his current employer. Another panelist spoke about the difficulty she faces in teaching a class as both a lesbian and an African-American woman. "It barely feels safe to be black," Beaver College Psychology Professor Angela Gillem said. Many of those in attendance gave the session positive reviews. College senior Michael Hartwyk, for one, praised the discussion. "It was very informative." Hartwyk said. "[The organizers] made a good effort in getting different perspectives." The second part of the program continues next Wednesday, with speakers from the corporate and health care professions.
Rodin actually funny, say drunk DP eds
(01/22/01 10:00am)
As the country watched the inauguration of a new president, The Daily Pennsylvanian held its own inaugural bash -- with fewer politicians but a lot more alcohol. The DP held its annual banquet Saturday at the University of Pennsylvania Museum, marking the official departure of the 116th Board of Editors and Managers and the inauguration of the 117th Board. Keynote speaker Loren Feldman, the executive editor of Philadelphia Magazine, spoke about his experiences in journalism and the many connections that he made during his time at the DP. "It if weren't for the DP, I would still be renting cars," Feldman joked as he recalled his first post-graduation job with Enterprise Rent-a-Car. University President Judith Rodin made a brief speech in which she poked fun at both herself and the DP staff. Rodin joked about the sling that she had been sporting recently, attributing her arm injury to the incessant tugging of Undergraduate Assembly Chair Michael Bassik. "I think she finally showed Bassik for who he is," one DP staff member said. And in annual tradition, the DP sports department walked out of the banquet hall for pizza in the lobby to protest the ongoing speeches and awards -- right in the middle of Rodin's speech. Sports writer Sebastian Stockman claimed he encountered the president on his way back to the party. "Judy Rodin tried to come on to me," said Stockman, who arrived at the festivities promptly at 6:59 p.m. in order to take full advantage of the open bar coctail hour. Newly inaugurated Associate Sports Editor David Zeitlin attempted to justify the traditional protest. "We don't have any culture," Zeitlin said. "All we know is sports and basketball." Upon hearing that his quote might appear in the paper, Zeitlin became violent, resorting to stealing another reporter's dessert. The sports department was vindicated later in the evening when Brian Hindo won the DP Alumni Association Michael Silver Writing Award. The DP Alumni Association gave its annual photography award to David Graff, a former photo editor. Outgoing Senior Sports Editor Rick Haggerty was named Editor of the Year, while outgoing Production Manager Megan Hall took home Manager of the Year awards. The banquet honored DP General Manager Eric Jacobs for his 25 years of service to the newspaper, presenting him with a framed copy of his first front-page story for the DP. A scholarship fund for work-study students was created in his honor. And in the after-dinner dance for DP staff members at the Penn Tower Hotel, one open bar simply wasn't enough for the festivities -- the DP reserved two. The star of the evening was outgoing Sports Editor and current 34th Street Voice Editor Jesse Spector, who made his presence felt all over the ballroom. Spector sang a rendition of "O Canada," which editorial page editor Jonathan Margulies described as "robust." Spector was the winner of the random hookup award, which he earned through his escapades with a member of the production staff. But Spector's achievements were nearly overshadowed by two female members of the business staff, who, for the second consecutive year, displayed their affection for each other on the dance floor. Other members of the 116th editorial staff displayed their respective states of inebriation. When asked for the time, outgoing Managing Editor Ben Geldon looked at his watch and responded, "Christ, I need to go have many more beers." Sources say Geldon remained stuck on his third beer for quite some time. Not to be outdone by his former boss, outgoing Assignments and Features Editor Eric Tucker spent a portion of the night grinding with other members of the DP staff. "By the end of the night, I will have done or said something inappropriate that I will deny ever having done or said," Tucker said. Although his performance this year paled in comparison to last year's banquet, Tucker did manage to drunkenly kiss the hands of random male DP staff members and speak to them in Italian.
Race issues divide men in blue
(11/17/00 10:00am)
When Penn Police Officer Pat Chad walked into roll call on August 6 -- the anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing -- several years ago, the tables were lined with mushrooms. "Pat, doesn't that remind you of your family?" one of the Japanese American's fellow officers asked, referring to the mushroom clouds produced upon the explosion of an atomic bomb. After roll call, Chad, who left the department earlier this year, complained about the incident to his sergeant. "I told the sergeant I didn't appreciate it, and I didn't think it was funny," Chad said. But the sergeant, Chad says, told him that it was not a big deal and to "get over it." "That's just the way it is at Penn Police," Chad said. "You just took it and went along."
