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Penn junior Tim Begley made one shot-fake, then another, before turning to find a wide open Charlie Copp at the top of the key. Penn's senior guard then buried the biggest shot of his collegiate career with 38 seconds to play in regulation, a three-pointer, to pull the Quakers within three points of the No. 12 team in the nation.
When I applied to be a Daily Pennsylvanian columnist, I wrote in my "What makes me a unique columnist" statement that I had no intention of writing anything political. I said I would leave it to the other columnists to write their right-wing or left-wing slant on current political topics. I wrote that I would stick to Penn themes: issues that concern us and topics that entertain us. After all, it is a Penn publication. We should talk about Penn subjects.
American Idol gives me hope for the future. Not because I have any dreams of belting out A Moment Like This to millions of television viewers. But consider this: Take a group of preteens, who, week after week, choose American Idol as their most-watched show, and try to predict whom they will worship as the new American superstar.
With the Partial Birth Abortion Act of 2003 now law, Congress and the president have closed the latest chapter in the continuing saga that is the legislative fight over abortion. However, this is not the first and will not be the last word in the story.
Ah, youth.
According to new research, "Just Say No" isn't cutting it anymore.
In late July, when tabloid mainstay Liza Minnelli announced that her heavily publicized marriage to entertainment promoter David Gest was ending, few, if any, were surprised. More seemed relieved that this shaky "house of cards" was finally going to obey the inevitable laws of gravity and topple. From the wild stories surrounding their $4 million wedding to the surreally goofy photos featuring a wack-job lineup including Michael Jackson and Elizabeth Taylor, little appeared everlasting or even logical about this coupling.
Rev. C. Stephen White, known on Penn's campus and at colleges around the country as "Brother Stephen," is in police custody following his arrested on July 2 for allegedly approaching a fourteen year old male and offering to pay to perform oral sex on him.
Koran in one hand, Bible and American flag in the other, Rev. Stephen White was a familiar sight on College Green. [Ari Friedman/DP File Photo]
Wearing a red shirt reading '215' in large print, Jared Greenberg's music filled Dunlop Auditorium with classic rock-inspired music on Saturday night for an inspired cause -- the New York City based organization Musicians on Call.
A total of six male juveniles have now been arrested in connection with a series of related robberies and assaults that occurred on and near campus last month, according to University Police. The suspects have been positively identified in two of the incidents, an assault near 40th and Pine streets and an April 5 assault on Locust Walk.
I've just realized I've been missing out. My life is incomplete. I've never had that One Summer.
There are certain things we simply don't often discuss in public forums. Sex is one of them. But whether or not we talk about it, the truth of the matter is that people across the world are having sex at this very moment.
Many remember college as the best years of their lives. And according to a recent study, more and more students are extending their college experience, as the national four-year graduation rate has seen a decline.
Last Friday, I was one of many who watched the South Asia Society's Spring Show. I bought my ticket on Locust Walk just days after seeing the predominantly Indian-American dance troupe PENNaach perform. Although my official line for both shows was that I had come in support of my participant Hill House residents, secretly I knew I was there for a reason much more selfish. I will come clean now and announce that I am a closet fan of all things Bollywood -- the glitzy Indian (roughly) equivalent of Hollywood. I have been since the ninth grade, when my parents came to own a satellite dish. Through it, I discovered the South Asian answer to MTV, something called Zee TV. It couldn't have been anything but love at first sight, really. The lure of charged, highly spirited dance sequences, colorful, fantastic costumes made wet thanks to the effects of strategic rainfall and the gyrating men with their fluid hair, was certainly too great for a girl in high school to resist. I spent a good deal of my free time memorizing the words to Hindi love songs. Important to note -- I don't actually know Hindi. Much to the confused frustration of my parents, I would sing things like "Ho... ek la dakii ko dekhaa to aisaa lagaa ek la" loudly in the shower. They chalked it up to teen rebellion and left it alone. Once in college, I became a member of the Indian Students' Association. It seemed somehow natural for me to do so. I didn't think twice about it. Oddly, perhaps, the fact that I wasn't South Asian seemed unimportant to me. I felt very much included over the course of my three-year association with the group. With time, thankfully, I was taught to look beyond the gloss of Bollywood in my appreciation of South Asian culture. Last weekend, sitting through the SAS show, I found myself reflecting on the nature of student associations that connect people based upon a shared sense of "ethnic identity." Why does an organization like SAS become such a defining, important one for certain college students and not others? Why doesn't Penn have, say, a Scottish-American group for these first generation-ers? Is it an issue of having a "critical volume" of interested students? Or is there something else there? And, importantly, why do groups like SAS take such a strongly performative approach to understanding and expressing their ethnicities? The short answer is, I don't know. But I'm discovering that a good deal of theory exists in an attempt to address questions much like these. Asian American Studies scholar K.I. Leonard, for instance, argues that this generation of U.S.-socialized Indian Americans collectively demonstrates what is called a situational, or symbolic, ethnic identity through organizations like SAS. Research she has done suggests that Indian-American kids will initially gravitate toward American culture, but starting in late adolescence, begin increasingly to explore South Asian culture also. Through what Leonard loosely terms an "emotional return," Indian Americans reach out to one another through their shared experiences of, for instance, having "overinvolved, overworried, overprotective" parents. Certainly, it is dangerous to generalize. But it seems college -- although it may mark a new distancing, a new "freedom" from parental influence -- actually becomes a place for these students to rediscover/reorient themselves as, specifically, South Asian Americans. So why is this? It's thought that motivations formative of such ethnic clubs come from two separate sources. First, they come from the students themselves. Second, and critically, they stem from the institution itself. Arriving at a campus like Penn, South Asian students are made very aware of their "differences." In the words of scholar P. Agarwal, they achieve a "shocking realization of their ethnicity." Irrespective of how they see themselves, the college has already pre-defined them as being "Indian." Associating co-ethnically is made easy for these students. Money is channeled into ethnic clubs and associations for them by the school. Joining a group like SAS becomes a natural, accepted, encouraged choice. My friends have argued with me that this is all actually done toward a greater, separatist end for the institution. While there may be some truth to this, a voice keeps me from being angered by it. That voice is the one I heard Friday night at Irvine Auditorium. It is the voice of Ravi Bellur and of Amit Bhattacharjee addressing issues of racism through comedy. It is the voice of Robby Singh Sikka acting out an Indian immigrant father's gradual acceptance of his daughter's hybrid identity. It is the voice of exceptional students, not defying a system but rather, working within it to redefine for themselves, for us all, what it means to be American. Hilal Nakiboglu is a second-year doctoral student in Higher Education Management from Ankara, Turkey.
In an effort to improve town-gown relations, the School of Social Work and Graduate School of Fine Arts have teamed up to warehouse government-collected data about city statistics online so it can be at the disposal of the community and the University. Compiling and making public this information has a dual benefit, according to School of Social Work Professor Dennis Culhane. The system attempts to establish a way Penn and the city can establish a "mechanism to more systematically make available their data for research purposes," Culhane said. Philadelphia's government agencies and community groups can use the data to identify anything from where rates of teen pregnancy in the city are the highest to the locations of abandoned homes. As a result, daycare centers and prevention programs can be properly placed, and because the database identifies the owners of abandoned homes, potential buyers can contact current owners with offers to purchase. This was just one of the initiatives discussed by members of the University's Board of Trustees at a Neighborhood Initiatives Committee meeting yesterday. Administrators also reported that that the Penn-Assisted School, known officially as the Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander University of Pennsylvania Partnership School, has been faring well since its opening just last year. Its students are performing in the middle 50 percent range nationally, quite high for a Philadelphia public school, Graduate School of Education professor Susan Fuhrman said. "We certainly feel that we are attracting families with younger kids back to the neighborhood." However, Fuhrman and others are concerned about recent federal legislation -- namely, the No Child Left Behind Act -- that could bring low-achieving students from throughout the city to Penn-Alexander, rather than limiting its enrollment the school's current catchment area. "We didn't want Penn-Alexander to be a magnet for low-achieving students from around the city," Fuhrman said. "The subsidy was meant for a neighborhood school." Trustees and administrators also discussed a plan recently launched by the Division of Public Safety to improve safety around campus. Part of this, the "Share the Road" campaign, will ultimately eliminate bikers on Locust Walk and other pedestrian thoroughfares around Penn in an effort to make the campus safe for pedestrians, Vice President for Public Safety Maureen Rush said. Rush noted the decline in West Philadelphia crime since 1996, citing falling rates in all categories except bike theft. "They have flooded the street with police.... We are way ahead of the curve in terms of crime." Vice President for Facilities and Real Estate Omar Blaik touted the success of retailers in University City, citing the less than 10 percent vacancy rate in the community around Penn. The Bridge: Cinema de Lux "has contributed to a vibrancy of the 40th Street corridor that we haven't seen before," he said. "People told us that there was no business in Philadelphia, and now we've shown them that there is."
I awoke Saturday morning to news of the Columbia space shuttle explosion. Disbelieving, I made my way through a dozen television channels in search of sense and explanation. I watched repeatedly as that long white streak sliced cloudless western skies in half. I listened to the hushed murmur of newscasters in the background, interrupted only by footage of the president's sobering statement that "the Columbia is lost," and his subsequent emotional salute to the seven who perished on board. Like many, I wasn't aware of the mission until its tragic end. Increasingly, space travel has come to be seen as a comfortably predictable, almost ordinary occurrence. Unless involving a zany millionaire, a boy band wonder or a chimpanzee, traveling beyond the skies today is barely newsworthy. Columbia's flight, NASA's 113th shuttle mission, has changed this. It has reminded us of the dangers inherent in space exploration and travel. It has told us again how vulnerable we are and how uncertain our science can be. Importantly, though, it has also given us a chance to marvel at the courage and grit of the astronaut. Learning of the seven lives extinguished above Texas last weekend, one astronaut's story touched me deeply. It is a story of extraordinary inspiration, pioneering spirit and the power of hope. Kalpana Chawla, one of two women on the mission, was a dreamer. As a girl, she was known to race old military planes on her bicycle while they took off near her home. Growing up, she'd climb onto the roof of her modest house in a conservative north Indian farming state to sleep under the stars. She dreamed of flying. Chawla was the youngest of four children. Nurturing a fascination and love for space, she decided early on to pursue a career in aerospace. Yet when she announced that she wanted to study engineering at a nearby college, she was met with deep resistance. In a nation where today, sadly, 60 percent of women are illiterate, Chawla's capabilities were undermined and somewhat dismissed. Her own family was initially reluctant to indulge the bright-eyed Chawla, and the teen subsequently struggled in earning their consent to study in a nearby city. "In our families, in Indian families, it is not normal to give freedom to a girl like this," explained Setia, her cousin. Chawla's uncles tried to keep her in their sleepy hometown of Karnal. Relentless, she eventually won her mother's support and was permitted to go. Yet the struggle did not end there. In a 1998 interview with the News India-Times, Chawla explained, "Only because I was a girl, people gave a hard time to my mother because she sent me to school in another town. How would you feel if people don't approve of what you are doing or your mother is doing for you?" Once in college, even Chawla's professors repeatedly advised her against her chosen field, initially discouraging her admittance to the male-dominated major. Yet she persevered, graduating at the top of her class with her sights set on advanced study in the United States. After completing both an M.S. and a Ph.D., Chawla did the unprecedented. She applied to NASA -- and was accepted. She was to make her mark on the pages of history in 1997 as the first Indian-American woman in space. In an interview a few years ago, her mother Sanyogita explained that she was "probably expecting a boy as [her] last child. But out came Kalpana, who has achieved more than a boy could." Despite her modest background and limited levels of support, Chawla then managed to press against the boundaries of conformity and expectation. Through her short life, she has reminded us of how powerful conviction and hope can be. She has reminded us to dream big. Kalpana Chawla is a heroine in the truest sense, and in her hometown last Sunday, she was mourned as one. Shortly before what was to be her last flight, Chawla described her exhilaration: "Just looking at Earth, looking at the stars during the night part of Earth; just looking at our planet roll by and the speed at which it goes by and the awe that it inspires; just so many such good thoughts come to your mind when you see all that. Doing it again is like living a dream, a good dream once again." Like her six fellow crew members, Chawla's legacy will be one of selfless service to humanity. She will be remembered for her pioneering example and richness in courage. Let us hope that Chawla and her partners in fate will continue to live that dream, that "good dream" for all of eternity. Hilal Nakiboglu is a second-year doctoral student in Higher Education Management from Ankara, Turkey.
(See below for corrections.) "Shh!" he blows into the microphone. "Listen to the words." The chattering stops and music fills the room. And even as a crack fiend, mama/You always was a black queen, mama/I finally understand/For a woman it ain't easy tryin' to raise a man. Michael Eric Dyson is poised at the podium, eyes closed, head bobbing to the words of late rapper Tupac Shakur's "Dear Mama." New to Penn's faculty this year, Dyson's class on the life and lyrics of Tupac Shakur this semester is a highly popular course in the African American Studies department, drawing around 200 students into the lecture room at Logan Hall for three hours on Tuesday afternoons. The course looks at Tupac as a religious, historical and social figure. It examines "his music, his philosophy, the contradictory factors of his life, the conflict he engaged in... and the uses to which his memory has been put now that he's dead and a member of that great pantheon of figures that are claimed to still be alive, like Elvis or JFK," says Dyson, who is not only a fan of Shakur's music but has written a book on him entitled Holler If You Hear Me: Searching for Tupac Shakur. Like Shakur, Dyson, 44, is popular for his controversiality and outspokenness. "I'm a 'tweener," Dyson says of his position in the African American community. "I'm not old enough to be part of the Civil Rights Movement but too old to be part of hip hop." He sees himself as a "bridge figure" between the two generations, "trying to connect civil rights identity to hip hop culture and to forge a connection between older and younger Americans, especially black Americans." Dyson's daily life is dizzyingly packed. In addition to his class, he appears on a local radio show and preaches around the country at colleges and other venues about black and religious issues. He also writes -- his latest book, Open Mike: Reflections on Philosophy, Race, Sex, Culture and Religion just came out in December. Dyson describes himself as a "paid pest" -- the "Socratic gadfly at work." His goal, he says, is to "try to prick the conscience of myself... and of others to see if we can't fashion a better world." But before the exclusive interviews, nationwide speeches, signing and promotions for his eight books and professorships at a slew of prestigious universities, Dyson's life was a vastly different picture. • Dyson grew up in the inner city of Detroit, Mich., in the 1960s, the second of five boys. His mother was a teacher's aid in Detroit public schools and his father worked in a factory -- neither went to college. "They were just two hardworking black people trying to protect their children from the society in which we lived," Dyson says. From a young age, it was clear that Dyson possessed a gift for rhetoric. Through his Baptist church, he began acting and giving speeches, winning his first oratory contest when he was 11 years old. At the age of 16, Dyson got a scholarship to a top-ranked Michigan boarding school. But what seemed like a fortunate experience quickly turned into a nightmare -- Dyson, who had previously lived in what he describes as a "segregated world," was confronted with being one of 10 black students in an elite white school of over a thousand. "It was very jarring to me, like a sense of Hitchcockian Vertigo," Dyson says, adding that he would often return to his dorm to find his door adorned with racial slurs. Eventually, Dyson was kicked out of the school and returned to Detroit. From then on, things only seemed to get worse. Though he eventually earned his high school degree, Dyson was on welfare and a teen father at 18. He was in a gang, hustled, worked in a factory and got fired from his clerk job at Chrysler a month before his son was due -- "There were several days we didn't eat," he says. During this turbulent time, however, Dyson also discovered a passion for preaching and became a licensed and ordained minister. And at 21, Dyson decided that a change needed to be made.
(See below for corrections.) "Shh!" he blows into the microphone. "Listen to the words." The chattering stops and music fills the room. And even as a crack fiend, mama/You always was a black queen, mama/I finally understand/For a woman it ain't easy tryin' to raise a man. Michael Eric Dyson is poised at the podium, eyes closed, head bobbing to the words of late rapper Tupac Shakur's "Dear Mama." New to Penn's faculty this year, Dyson's class on the life and lyrics of Tupac Shakur this semester is a highly popular course in the African American Studies department, drawing around 200 students into the lecture room at Logan Hall for three hours on Tuesday afternoons. The course looks at Tupac as a religious, historical and social figure. It examines "his music, his philosophy, the contradictory factors of his life, the conflict he engaged in... and the uses to which his memory has been put now that he's dead and a member of that great pantheon of figures that are claimed to still be alive, like Elvis or JFK," says Dyson, who is not only a fan of Shakur's music but has written a book on him entitled Holler If You Hear Me: Searching for Tupac Shakur. Like Shakur, Dyson, 44, is popular for his controversiality and outspokenness. "I'm a 'tweener," Dyson says of his position in the African American community. "I'm not old enough to be part of the Civil Rights Movement but too old to be part of hip hop." He sees himself as a "bridge figure" between the two generations, "trying to connect civil rights identity to hip hop culture and to forge a connection between older and younger Americans, especially black Americans." Dyson's daily life is dizzyingly packed. In addition to his class, he appears on a local radio show and preaches around the country at colleges and other venues about black and religious issues. He also writes -- his latest book, Open Mike: Reflections on Philosophy, Race, Sex, Culture and Religion just came out in December. Dyson describes himself as a "paid pest" -- the "Socratic gadfly at work." His goal, he says, is to "try to prick the conscience of myself... and of others to see if we can't fashion a better world." But before the exclusive interviews, nationwide speeches, signing and promotions for his eight books and professorships at a slew of prestigious universities, Dyson's life was a vastly different picture. • Dyson grew up in the inner city of Detroit, Mich., in the 1960s, the second of five boys. His mother was a teacher's aid in Detroit public schools and his father worked in a factory -- neither went to college. "They were just two hardworking black people trying to protect their children from the society in which we lived," Dyson says. From a young age, it was clear that Dyson possessed a gift for rhetoric. Through his Baptist church, he began acting and giving speeches, winning his first oratory contest when he was 11 years old. At the age of 16, Dyson got a scholarship to a top-ranked Michigan boarding school. But what seemed like a fortunate experience quickly turned into a nightmare -- Dyson, who had previously lived in what he describes as a "segregated world," was confronted with being one of 10 black students in an elite white school of over a thousand. "It was very jarring to me, like a sense of Hitchcockian Vertigo," Dyson says, adding that he would often return to his dorm to find his door adorned with racial slurs. Eventually, Dyson was kicked out of the school and returned to Detroit. From then on, things only seemed to get worse. Though he eventually earned his high school degree, Dyson was on welfare and a teen father at 18. He was in a gang, hustled, worked in a factory and got fired from his clerk job at Chrysler a month before his son was due -- "There were several days we didn't eat," he says. During this turbulent time, however, Dyson also discovered a passion for preaching and became a licensed and ordained minister. And at 21, Dyson decided that a change needed to be made.
Here's the problem with music today: it sucks. No really, think about it. When was the last time you heard something really innovative? When was the last time you flipped on the radio and thought, "Wow, I couldn't do that." What concerns me most about today's music is the death of the album. There have always been one-hit records, albums with only one or two songs that sell it, but they have never dominated the music scene like they do now. I read somewhere that Jennifer Lopez, she of the insured buttocks, required 11 people to write her new hit about how she's still from the block (not, of course, to be confused with her last hit about how she's still real. My one semester of psych tells me she might be overcompensating for something...). Keep in mind that this tune had about seven different words in it, and they all rhyme with block. We must also not confuse this with another successful female musician, Avril Lavigne (careful -- she's Canadian), who is being hailed nationwide by grateful mothers as the anti-Britney because she has the decency to only show off half of her stomach in public. What's that I hear? Could it be generations of real musicians rolling in their graves? And even some of the ones who are still rocking are questionable -- Pete Townshend was recently arrested in connection with child pornography. He says he was doing "research." I will never listen to "The Kids Are Alright" the same way again. Oh, how the mighty have fallen. It is unsurprising that this current standard whereby multiple writers, producers, engineers, mixers and backup musicians collaborate on every CD seems to garner overproduced garbage. Gone are the days when Black Sabbath walked (or more likely, staggered) into a Birmingham recording studio to lay down its self-titled debut in 12 hours for $800. Even the underground, anti-mainstream movements are weak. Instead of looking for creativity, fans derive legitimacy by classifying everything further and further into more vague subgenres. This leads to all sorts of interesting things, like fights about whether or not Jimmy Eat World can still be emo if it's on Top 40 radio. But then again, if I were really an emo kid, I wouldn't fight about it so much as mumble my opinion and then cry when someone disagreed with me. Even the venerable hip-hop industry has been corporatized. The last time I heard something "fresh," I had to go find Massive Attack's remix of Mos Def from his Urban Thermodynamics days. Whatever happened to the idea of music with a social conscience? Early rock and roll may have been dominated by fast cars and surfboards, but it evolved, musically and lyrically. When do we get past the "I'm more fly/hard/legit/rich than you are" stage? Of course, in every dark age, there are exceptions. U2 got me through the '80s, because while everyone was grooving on trash-synth, it was putting out real albums. So was Metallica. The opening chords of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" are widely thought to have heralded the end of hair rock, which people seem strangely nostalgic for. Britpop came and went ever so briefly, and then hip-hop and the subsequent God-awful rock/rap hybrid acts afforded white kids in the suburbs less guilt over tuning in. While I find most of what passes for hip-hop these days pretty weak, the Roots are always a cut above the rest. Common's pretty good. But barring a musical rejuvenation, there aren't enough quality acts to truly allow hip-hop to define the next decade. So what does the future hold? As much as I hate the idea, it could be this "trance" music. I know about its existence because it happens to be an obsession of every roommate I've ever had. For those of you unaware, trance is a type of techno, a series of interminable computer-generated noises that continue for un-Godly lengths of time. This whirling nightmare of pretention is appreciated by the "rave" culture, so I guess if I went out and consumed massive amounts of Ecstasy and Red Bull and stayed awake for three days, I might appreciate it more. But I refuse to let this revolution happen. And if you feel the same way, I implore you -- buy a second-hand guitar; chances are, you'll go far. Start a band. It's fun. The opposite sex will like you better. And believe me, it's not as hard as you think it is. Also, watch High Fidelity over and over again. Do it for your sake or do it for mine. Because if I have to endure another J-Lo tune about maintaining street credibility throughout a series of celebrity boyfriends, expensive cars and a $20-million ass, I may just lose my mind for real this time. Eliot Sherman is a sophomore from Philadelphia, Pa.
Solutions by The State News
