Lisa Zhu | Time to pay it forward
(05/04/09 9:00am)
The conventional formula for a senior goodbye piece (whether it takes the form of a DP column or a commencement speech) goes something like this:
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Lisa Zhu | A wish list for the city
(04/23/09 9:00am)
I'm no Fresh Prince, but come May 18, I too will be saying goodbye to the city in whose shadow I've been living for the past 20 years. Since my parents to Philadelphia in the late 1980s, parts of the city have changed a great deal: The Comcast Center tower has nestled itself next to the Mellon Bank building and the Liberty Place skyscrapers. Independence Mall got a fancy National Constitution Center. And Penn continues to expand, amoeba-like, toward the Schuykill in its own version of manifest destiny.
Lisa Zhu | Betting on a bad idea
(04/16/09 9:00am)
The most recent turn of events in the never-ending Philadelphia casino saga - a new location for the proposed Foxwoods casino - has the city going all in on the developer's demands. At a Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board meeting last week, Foxwoods revealed that they were now planning to move into the former Strawbridge & Clothier building at 8th & Market streets. This latest site - three blocks east of the original, announced in November - represents little improvement over the old one. If anything, it might be worse for the neighborhood and Philadelphia.
Lisa Zhu | Creative collaboration
(04/09/09 9:00am)
Many Penn students (read: haters) tend to harbor a certain disregard for our peer institutions, as exemplified by basketball fans' over-enthusiastic trash-talking at basketball games and the obligatory groan-plus-rolling-of-the-eyes reaction whenever anyone mentions the word Princeton.
Lisa Zhu | Reforming school reform
(04/02/09 9:00am)
For longtime Philly resident Tamara Ali, William Penn High School changed her life. A 2000 graduate of the North Philadelphia school, Ali participated in its communications and journalism program, which at the time was one of the best in the city.
Lisa Zhu | Get ready for a fight
(03/26/09 9:00am)
In late January, Mayor Michael Nutter announced that the City was contemplating raising taxes in order to close the $1.4-billion budget deficit Philadelphia faces over the next five years. A week ago, he and his team officially unveiled a projected budget and five-year plan intended to close the gap and mitigate the effects of the recession. And true to his word, tax hikes are a key component in the proposal.
Lisa Zhu | Maybe not an egg-cellent idea
(03/05/09 10:00am)
"Student loans got you down? Need to make some quick money to pay for that spring break trip? Have no fear, Egg Donations 'R Us is here! Earn up to $15,000 for your time, all expenses paid! (SAT scores of 1400-plus preferred, men need not apply.)" OK, so this isn't a real egg-donation ad from The Daily Pennsylvanian. But flip a few pages back to the Classifieds section, and you'll no doubt see a couple of real requests for egg donors, almost all of which promise some form of lucrative compensation.
Lisa Zhu | Banking on a good system
(02/26/09 10:00am)
Last week, as I waited on the corner of N. 8th and Lehigh for the No. 47 SEPTA bus that would take me back to Center City, I was struck by the depressing, sporadic gaps of land every few houses. The entire street was pockmarked with vacant lots on which scrubby brown grass competed for space with broken glass, crushed beer cans and discarded candy wrappers. A decade ago, instead of these desolate, litter-strewn plots, this North Philadelphia neighborhood had its fair share of abandoned houses. And while the decrepit buildings have been torn down, the current state of the lots is hardly an improvement.
Lisa Zhu | Treating mental side effects as well
(02/19/09 10:00am)
A week after Penn's outbreak of meningitis, things seem to have finally calmed down. Social gatherings have resumed as usual, the collective paranoia over sharing drinks and food has diminished and the three patients are well on their road to recovery. With the incident almost behind us, now may be a good time to review some of the major takeaways from this latest health scare.
Lisa Zhu | Spreading a little good will
(02/12/09 10:00am)
If you're a junior or senior currently scrambling for a job, you might as well pack up your bags right now and see what the economy looks like on Mars. But if you're an inmate in the Philadelphia Prison System scheduled for release in the next few months, you may actually be in luck.
Lisa Zhu | Better while separated
(02/05/09 10:00am)
Recently, Georgia state Senator Seth Harp caused an uproar in the community of higher education by proposing that two of the state's historically black colleges be merged with predominantly white ones. Specifically, his resolution stipulates that Savannah State University and Albany State University (both historically black public schools) be merged with the predominantly white colleges, Armstrong Atlantic State University and Darton College, respectively.
Lisa Zhu | A 'last' straw for ignorance
(01/29/09 10:00am)
Last Saturday, I went down to the Wachovia Center to attend the extras casting call for M. Night Shyamalan's upcoming film, The Last Airbender. Based off a popular Nickelodeon cartoon series with a cult following, the movie depicts a fantasy world divided into four regions, each dominated by a particular element: Fire, Water, Earth and Air. Creators of the show have said that the series, drawn in a style similar to Japanese anime, contain elements inspired by ancient East Asian, South Asian and Inuit civilizations.
Lisa Zhu |Taxing our futures
(01/22/09 10:00am)
Last week, Mayor Nutter announced that city government officials had underestimated the size of Philadelphia's budget deficit by $1 billion, raising the total funds shortage to $2 billion. Faced with this unpleasant economic situation, it's easy to immediately cry "recession." But Philly's fiscal gap cannot be solely blamed on the financial crisis.
Lisa Zhu | Saving green by going green
(01/15/09 10:00am)
As the U.S. economy continues to spiral downwards, it's become more and more clear that even our impenetrable "Penn bubble" can't keep out a national recession. In December, President Gutmann issued an update on the university's plans for coping with the financial crisis, assuring that Penn will not be "implementing broad-scale layoffs, hiring freezes or across-the-board budget reductions."
Lisa Zhu | The benefits of the cost
(12/04/08 10:00am)
Since last year, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped by almost 40 percent, while President Amy Gutmann's salary went up by that percentage. Gutmann's $1.1 million compensation trailed even higher figures paid to academic executives like Columbia's Lee Bollinger ($1.4 million) and NYU's John Sexton ($1.3 million), according to The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Lisa Zhu | Taking on tenure
(11/20/08 10:00am)
As 2008 slowly winds to a close, few Americans are optimistic about their year-end bonuses. But if you're a teacher in a Washington, D.C. public school, there may be good news. In the policy recently proposed by school district Chancellor Michelle Rhee, teachers could earn raises of up to $40,000 - in exchange for giving up tenure for a year. Although this policy could succeed in reducing the number of incompetent instructors, firing bad teachers may not be enough to fully address the challenges facing inner-city educational systems.
Lisa Zhu | Philly's greener future
(11/13/08 10:00am)
As part of the effort to reinvigorate America's economy and achieve energy independence, Obama proposes investing $150 billion over the next 10 years in alternative fuel technology. Obama claims this policy measure will create five million new "green-collar" jobs.
Lisa Zhu | A little more R-E-S-P-E-C-T
(11/06/08 10:00am)
"I'm lovin' it!"
Lisa Zhu | Getting past the blame game
(10/30/08 9:00am)
Just last month, it seemed like you couldn't walk 10 feet without being asked if you were registered to vote by someone with a clipboard. I'm not talking about the student groups with tables and T-shirts on Locust Walk - I'm talking about the ACORN canvassers from the local community who blanketed the entire city. At best, they were an indicator of America's reawakened passion for civic engagement; at worst, they were just annoying. Who knew these innocent-seeming clipboard-carriers would be accused by Republican presidential candidate John McCain "of perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history?"
Lisa Zhu | Destroying democracy
(10/23/08 9:00am)
With so much media attention focused on the upcoming presidential election, it's easy to forget that Congress is also turning over. That's just as well, since rampant gerrymandering has severely reduced the competitiveness of many congressional elections in Pennsylvania, leaving voters with few real choices or decision-making influence.