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(05/21/98 9:00am)
On a campus known for its diversity, the commencement-weekend Baccalaureate Service Sunday afternoon was a fitting end to the University's academic year. The ceremony, attended by approximately 1,000 people in the Palestra, featured observations of several faiths and speeches from students and alumni alike. University Chaplain William Gipson opened the service, but the call to prayer -- sung by Sarra Tlili, a graduate student in Middle Eastern Studies -- came from the opening verse of the Muslim Koran and was delivered in Arabic. Other faiths were represented by several of this year's graduates. College senior Karen Klieger read a Jewish folktale, Engineering senior LaShanta Johnson presented a passage from the New Testament and College senior Rajeev Ramchandran read from the Bhagavad-Gita, one of the sacred texts of Hinduism. Graduating Wharton senior Andy Kline, president of the class of 1998, addressed his fellow graduates on the subject of "hope and expectations." "We sometimes get lost in others' expectations of us and our own expectations of success," he noted. "There's nothing wrong with that. But we must never lose sight of the bigger things in life, such as happiness, fulfillment and hope." University President Judith Rodin -- who began her term when members of the class of 1998 were freshmen -- levied praise on the graduates for their past work and future prospects. "When I look backwards I see four years of young men and women full of promise and potential," she said. "I see budding scholars. I see students concerned about our community. I see all of you -- students who are leaders in academics, the arts, athletics and community service." But it was University Trustee Andrea Mitchell, chief foreign affairs correspondent for NBC, who delivered the most direct challenge to the graduates in attendance. Drawing upon her experience as a female in a male-dominated news business, Mitchell told the students that growing up as she did was a "very different experience." "The challenge for you -- both men and women -- is to invent a better way," she said. "Be mediators, helping to channel ideas into constructive compromise. Hold onto your passion for justice." Despite the impassioned oratory of the speakers, the service suffered from several logistical difficulties. Like September's freshman convocation and April's Spring Fling concert, the Baccalaureate suffered from the Palestra's poor acoustics. Due to the excessive heat, many audience members were seen fanning themselves with their programs.
(04/29/98 9:00am)
Crippled by departures, the department seeks to vastly increase its ranks. More than 200 years ago, Benjamin Franklin wrote, "May the first principles of sound politicks be fix'd in the minds of youth." But today, despite having that statement as its creed, the University's Political Science Department finds itself short-staffed to teach the principles of sound politics to Penn students. The department came into the year already small in comparison to its peers. While the average top-10 political science department has 42 professors, Penn's is only half that size. Now, at semester's end, the department faces the loss of six faculty members. Political Science Professors Daniel Deudney and Marissa Golden, both non-tenured assistant professors, will leave after this term for the Johns Hopkins University and Bryn Mawr College, respectively. Additionally, four full professors have announced their plans to retire in the near future. Political Science Professors Frederick Frey, Chong-Sik Lee, Alvin Rubinstein and Donald Smith will each phase out their teaching responsibilities over the next one to three years, according to Department Chairperson Ian Lustick. As part of her five-year master plan, 1995's Agenda for Excellence, University President Judith Rodin singled out Political Science for increased hiring. Its parent School of Arts and Sciences, meanwhile, has been aiming to keep its total faculty size steady at 460. Under the American and Comparative Democratic and Legal Institutions initiative, the University has spent the last year trying to recruit a number of junior and senior faculty to the Political Science Department. But thus far, only State University of New York at Buffalo international relations scholar David Rousseau has signed on to join the Stiteler Hall-headquartered department. Faced with declining numbers and an aging faculty, the department is aiming to build from the ground up. But it must overcome several obstacles to finally become truly sound. Publish or perish? For Deudney and Golden, the decision to leave Penn centered on the University's rigorous tenure process. Last May, in his sixth year of teaching at the University, Deudney -- consistently rated as one of the most popular professors in the department -- was denied tenure by the Provost's Staff Committee after being endorsed by committees from SAS and the Political Science Department. Deudney and several administrators attributed the rejection to his lack of a published book. He is currently at work on six manuscripts. Since Deudney's tenure file did not change since last spring, the department decided not to appeal last year's Staff Committee decision, forcing him to leave Penn after this term. In March, he accepted a post with JHU in Baltimore, citing the school's superior standing in international relations and its proximity to Washington, D.C. Golden, who came to Penn in 1993 after earning her doctorate from the University of California at Berkeley, decided to leave Penn on her own. Although she would not have been up for a tenure review until next spring, the American politics scholar said she felt insecure about her prospects. "I came to be fond of Penn," she said last month. "[But] it was not clear what my future was here." Though Columbia University Press will publish her first book next spring, Golden said she was worried about meeting the University's research standards before her tenure decision. "Penn is quite up-front that it views itself as a research university," she said at the time. "They're not misleading about what their mission is." Golden added that she applied for the position at Bryn Mawr, the all-women, liberal arts college outside Philadelphia, mainly out of "concern" for her tenure prospects at Penn, a feeling she does not have about her new post. "Once the book is out, [Bryn Mawr officials] indicated that I'll be set," she said. SAS Dean Samuel Preston agreed that Golden, like others, is justified in her insecurity. "Junior faculty are aware that the standards for promotion to tenure at Penn are very high," he said. "They're very apprehensive about whether they're up to those standards." With less than 50 percent of assistant professors staying on at Penn in tenured posts, no one at Golden's level could be guaranteed tenure, College Dean Richard Beeman noted. Deudney and Golden were not the first junior faculty members to leave Penn for other programs. Three years ago, Russian politics scholar Steven Fish left for Berkeley, home of one of the nation's top departments. In 1996, Kerry Haynie, the department's first ever black professor, left for Rutgers University in New Jersey over what Lustick termed a disagreement over the pace of change in the department. Lustick, while granting that Golden's upcoming book would have been a "major factor" in her tenure review, maintained that these faculty departures demonstrated the effectiveness of the tenure system. "Like Marissa and Steven Fish, the problem is that we hire such great junior faculty that they are so attractive to other schools," he said. "Everybody in academe has their antennae out. That's the way to play the game." The numbers game With the retirements of Frey, Lee, Rubinstein and Smith and the imminent departures of Deudney and Golden, the department is in the process of a major rebuilding effort. Lustick estimated that in order to reach his goal of just short of 30 professors in the department, the University will have to hire three new political science professors in each of the next five years. "I have a plan for the growth of the department which is consistent with what the deans want me to do," he said. "We won't be able to achieve those goals without that pace." Based on current efforts at recruitment, there may between one and three new faculty members at Penn in the fall, Lustick added. He plans to ask the SAS deans later this month for authorization to fill three more faculty positions next year, at least two at the junior level. While Preston predicted that only 10 or 11 appointments would be made over the next five years, he made it clear that the department was in a mode of regrowth. "Recruitment of senior faculty is an extremely time-consuming business," he said. "[But] by the end of next year we will have made a substantial number of new senior faculty positions in Political Science." Meanwhile, Lustick said he views this period of retirements and recruitment as an opportunity to create a younger, higher-profile department. Faculty members in the aging and overwhelmingly-tenured department have held their doctorates for an average of 26 years. Several have been criticized for not contributing any new research in decades. "One of the things a department gets known for it how many of its faculty are publishing in high-profile journals in the profession," Lustick said. "That has not been happening for a number of our colleagues who have been in the department the longest." "It does affect the image of the department," he added, indicating that the hiring of junior and "young" senior faculty would increase the department's visibility. "It creates turnover and turmoil," Preston said. "But in the end it can create a stronger faculty." 'Light' at the end of the tunnel The University's highest-profile senior recruitment effort to date has focused on Paul Light, 45, one of the nation's foremost American politics scholars. "Paul's terrific," Golden said. "He's as good a scholar and as good a teacher as anyone in political science I know." Light, the subject of a large feature in The Washington Post last month, is currently a director for the Philadelphia-based Pew Charitable Trusts, one of the country's largest private philanthropies. An author of 10 books, Light previously taught at the University of Minnesota. "Dr. Light is someone we are working very hard to recruit and we will continue to do so," Interim Provost Michael Wachter said. "He would be a terrific asset to our community and we hope to succeed in bringing him to Penn." When contacted Monday, however, Light indicated that he has no current plans to leave his post at Pew, where he is in charge of distributing $16 million this year to programs working to improve government. "It's sort of an ongoing conversation I have from time to time with lots of places," he said of his meetings with department and administration officials at Penn. "I don't want anything to be misconstrued." Much of the discussion of Light's recruitment has fallen on the Fels Center of Government, the University's non-accredited graduate program run out of the Provost's Office. According to University President Judith Rodin, Light -- who taught at Fels this past semester -- would be attracted by the opportunity to run Fels, which has fallen on hard times administratively and financially since former director James Spady resigned in 1996. She added that he would likely not come to Penn unless the administration followed through on plans to "build it up." "Suddenly, we see the possibility of not only having someone who can run Fels, but could raise it to the stature of the University," Lustick said. Though he would not explain Light's denial of plans to join the Penn faculty, Lustick was confident in the prospects of recruiting him to both the Political Science Department and Fels. "I'm operating with a 95 percent confidence that we're going to have Paul here," he said.
(04/24/98 9:00am)
The Wharton School and a private company will team up to offer classes across the country. The future is now. Penn will combine forces with Baltimore-based Caliber Learning Network Inc. to bring executive education classes to Caliber centers nationwide via digital satellite television connections and advanced computer networking, Interim Provost Michael Wachter announced yesterday. The deal, which Wachter said was the first of its kind for a school of Penn's stature, is expected to bring the University millions of dollars in additional revenue. Penn and Caliber will share the new monies, although officials declined to comment on the financial specifics of the agreement. The "Wharton Direct" classes, scheduled to begin this fall, will pair Wharton faculty members with Caliber's technology to allow working professionals to complete certificate programs without having to step foot on Penn's campus. Instead, they will attend classes in one of Caliber's 43 learning centers in the United States, such as those in New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago and Philadelphia. Caliber was formed 1 1/2 years ago as a joint venture between Washington, D.C.-based telecommunications giant MCI Communications Corp. and Sylvan Learning Systems Inc., a Baltimore-based educational services provider. University administrators and Caliber executives also indicated that they will offer pilot distributed-learning programs for high school students beginning this fall, and are also looking into the possibility of offering similar continuing-education programs with Penn's College of General Studies. Brady Locher, Caliber's vice president of marketing, estimated that between 300 and 350 professionals will participate in each of two sections of the "Working Knowledge Series," which is designed to teach the basics of finance, marketing and organizational strategy. The course -- scheduled to meet for 18 hours over six weeks --Eis the first of five Wharton plans to offer with Caliber, all of which will be based on the school's successful Aresty Institute for Executive Training. "We have not seen a major initiative in business education, and that's why we're interested in this," said Robert Mittelstaedt, Wharton's vice dean for executive education and external affairs. "We will be managing very closely not only what the content of the course is but how it is presented." After going through Wharton's regular, selective application process, professionals participating in the program will attend classes in one of the three classrooms located on each of Caliber's campuses. According to Locher, each classroom will be equipped with 12-15 computers, downlink satellite capabilities and 70-inch projection television screens. "This project will enable the classroom experience to come live, nationwide," Wachter said. Mittelstaedt said the course, "designed for people in the workplace," will cost $2,500 per student. He estimates that "99 percent" of the tuition costs will be borne by the companies for which the professionals now work, not the students themselves. Mittelstaedt said several companies, including Hewlett-Packard and AT&T;, have expressed considerable interest in enrolling their employees in Wharton Direct courses. Based on the projected number of students for the first six-week course, the program stands to earn nearly $2 million in revenue in its first season of operation. Rather than operating on the semester system, the program will offer a new session of all of the available courses each calendar season. Additionally, all of the available courses will be offered concurrently. Although Penn was recently forced to restructure its facilities-outsourcing deal with Dallas-based Trammell Crow Co. to avoid jeopardizing its tax-exempt Internal Revenue Service status, Wachter denied that the deal with the for-profit Caliber threatens the University's condition. "It took a fair amount to go through it," he said, stressing that the proposed agreement was cleared with the University's General Counsel. As part of the program, students in the same section of each course -- even if they are in different cities -- will see the same Wharton professor delivering the lecture. The participants will be able to ask questions of the professor during the lecture by e-mailing a "content specialist," a kind of teaching assistant. The content specialist will filter the inquiries based on how many students have similar questions. He will then prompt the professor to address those issues more in-depth, or direct the video feeds to allow the professor or student to interact directly in real-time. Students in different locations will also be able to collaborate with each other in discussions and on projects over Caliber's computer network. Locher said the courses will be broadcast from a "home site" on or near the Penn campus, although he stressed that the location for the site has not yet been finalized. "We have been working with the University administration to identify facilities in which to 'Caliberize' a studio," Locher said, explaining that advanced computer and satellite capabilities would have to be installed in the facility. Mittelstaedt said Wharton --Ewhich will be directly overseeing the program -- "recognizes that some faculty will have to adapt their teaching methods" to successfully teach the distributed learning courses. Although the for-profit University of Phoenix has offered both undergraduate and graduate degrees through adult education distance learning programs for more than 20 years, awarding more than 400,000 degrees, Penn officials insisted that the quality of the Wharton courses would be "qualitatively" different. "Essentially, we're being chosen by some of the best companies in the country, and then we're choosing their very best people," Wachter said, stressing the program's selectivity. Additionally, the Penn-Caliber partnership will only offer certificate programs for now, with only master's degree programs planned for the foreseeable future. Locher added that "Penn is reaching for the best students in the market; [the University of Phoenix] is looking for mass numbers." But while Wachter proclaimed that this initiative "marks the first collaboration of this type by a school of Penn's caliber," Johns Hopkins University, also located in Baltimore, reached an agreement with Caliber in February to bring their business-of-medicine program to Caliber centers across the country. Officials from Penn and Caliber also announced plans to use their technology to offer pre-college programs. Evening broadcasts in calculus and anthropology aimed at high school students are scheduled for the fall. For the future, the administration plans on expanding its continuing education programs with Caliber to include other schools in the University. "We have strength in the areas that are the most dynamic areas of distance learning," Wachter said. "Penn does expect to be the leader in distributed education among our peer institutions."
(04/23/98 9:00am)
But the School of Arts and Sciences is still $2.9 million in the red for fiscal year '98. For the fourth straight year, School of Arts and Sciences administrators will be seeing red when they look at the financial records of the largest of the University's 12 schools. For fiscal year 1998, which ends June 30 of this year, SAS will have a $2.9 million deficit, less than 2 percent of SAS' total budget of $220 million. And for fiscal year 1999, the school will be $4.5 million in the red, according to preliminary projections. But the 1998 figure is significantly less than the $4.7 million the school had initially budgeted to lose, SAS Vice Dean for Finance and Administration Michael Mandl said. "We've done better than the budget," he said. Mandl, who came to Penn from Duke University earlier this year, said he could not point to any one particular expense that caused the deficit. "It's essentially revenues not equalling expenses," he said. SAS Dean Samuel Preston, who took the school's helm in January, maintained that the school is doing all it can to avoid making spending cuts to meet the shortfall. "We are trying to manage the affairs of the school as efficiently as we can," he said. "When we've gone as far as we can down that road, we'll make the decision then whether to sacrifice educational quality or maintain a small deficit." SAS has been running a deficit since the 1996 fiscal year, when it was $1.9 million in the hole. Last year's deficit was only $700,000, significantly smaller than this year's sum. "It is slightly higher -- but then again, nothing higher than expected," Mandl said. Mandl said SAS' need to allocate increasing percentages of its revenues for undergraduate financial aid, as well as the school's large share of the funding for the $80 million Roy and Diana Vagelos Laboratories of the Institute for Advanced Science and Technology accounted for the larger deficit. "The reason you can point to -- this year versus last -- is the IAST coming on line," he said. "Help from the administration didn't cover full costs." He added that the creation of a $900,000 Center for Judaic Studies on campus next year would contribute to the deficit for the upcoming fiscal year, which begins on July 1. However, both Preston and Mandl pointed out that in past years the actual budget deficits were less than their original projections. The $1.8 million difference between the projected and final budget deficits was made up largely by two unexpected sources of revenue: $1 million in savings on salary and benefits for faculty members and staff and higher program revenue from the Office of International Programs. Though he referred to the current deficit as "a manageable number," College of Arts and Sciences Dean Richard Beeman said SAS is currently in a "mode of retrenchment." "What we really must do is make difficult choices in where we invest," he said. "We have to be sharp-minded, but occasionally hard-hearted." For administrators, many of the tough choices will come in faculty hiring and building construction, two of the budget's largest expenditures. After a sharp decline beginning in the mid-1970s, the number of SAS faculty members has recently remained steady at 460, a number administrators plan to maintain. "Our hope is that the faculty size will not be affected," Mandl said. Preston said each of the 25 academic departments will submit requests later this month for authorization to recruit new faculty members. SAS officials will make decisions at a retreat over the summer. He added that in order to keep SAS' total faculty at its current size, some departments will not receive permission to hire new faculty other than to fill spaces left by retirements or professors leaving for other schools. The English Department was one of several not granted permission to hire new faculty members last year, but department Chairperson Wendy Steiner said she hopes she will not see a repeat of the one-year moratorium. "If this were to continue, this would be very bad for English," she said. "I obviously hope they'll try to take something out of something else." Last year the Political Science Department -- now targeted by the University for a large number of faculty appointments over the next few years -- was denied two of its three authorization requests. Political Science Department Chairperson Ian Lustick said that while last year he was told that the budget deficit -- along with the absence of a permanent SAS dean -- resulted in the deans' decision. But he said he is not "getting the signals" about "serious financial constraints" this year and does not expect that to be an issue in the recruitment of new faculty in the fall. Administrators also recognized that some capital projects -- including buildings for various academic departments -- might suffer due to budgetary constraints. "We have more facilities needs than we can fill in the short term," Mandl said. "We're going to have to carefully prioritize here." Preston said "it is conceivable that we won't be able to make all of the investments we'd like," adding that fundraising for a new Psychology Department facility -- which has been under discussion since 1993 -- would not begin for at least a year. The new research facility in the works for the Biology Department should not suffer, however. Mandl estimates that one-third to one-half of the estimated $40 million cost will be funded with private donations, with the rest financed over a 20-year period. In the meantime, SAS officials have a number of plans to trim waste from their spending rolls. Preston said he is targeting "money that we are spending that is an advantage neither for teaching or for research." He cited plans to eliminate several $40,000 lectureships and shut down the Physics Department's Tandem Accelerator Laboratory -- which costs SAS $250,000 a year in maintenance alone -- as ways to streamline the budget. Beeman framed the issue as a matter of changing with the times. "It used to be that a school of arts and sciences used to say we can teach anything and invest in everything," he said. "Today, no school can be excellent in everything."
(04/22/98 9:00am)
The signs of the school year's end are apparent campus-wide. Final exams are rapidly approaching, College Green is blanketed with afternoon study groups and today, University Council will hold its last meeting of the academic year. Council, which began the year with the controversy over outsourcing, will also end the year on a point of contention -- the controversial, Penn administration-backed vending ordinance that is expected to be passed by Philadelphia City Council tomorrow. As a result of a petition signed by a quarter of Council members, the University will hold a special session after the meeting to "exercise its deliberative and advisory role" with regard to the bill, which would ban food trucks and carts from most streets and sidewalks on and around campus. Separately, the University has promised to build five food plazas around campus to hold 45 of the vendors displaced by the bill's enactment. More than 90 vendors currently operate at Penn. Three speakers will present their views to Council, including English graduate student Matt Ruben, spokesperson for the Penn Consumer Alliance -- one of the ad hoc groups created to oppose the ordinance. Ruben will be joined by a representative of the administration and of a local community group, though more details were not available. Council rules prohibit any vendors from speaking on the issue, Ruben said. At the last special session of Council in November, members voted against the University's plan to outsource facilities management to Trammell Crow Co. -- a recommendation ultimately rejected by the University's Board of Trustees, which approved the deal. Resigned to the fact that the vending ordinance was all but assured of passage, Ruben said he hoped that the bill's opponents could at least "draw some lessons from this year-long struggle." Members of the PCA and the University City Vendors Alliance had hoped for an open forum on the vending issue. Ruben said they accepted the Council hearing after the administration refused their initial request. Council will also be wrapping up the year with the final reports of several of its committees. The final report of the Ad Hoc Committee on Consultation -- released March 31 -- will be discussed. The committee, which met for the first time February 16, is chaired by Law Professor Howard Lesnick. The report calls for Council to implement changes in the consultation process to allow students, faculty members and staff to give input on the University administration's decisions. Student, faculty and staff groups in the past have complained about not being consulted on issues such as outsourcing and vending regulations. The Committee on Pluralism, chaired by English Professor Eric Cheyfitz, will discuss its report, released yesterday, dealing with the status of Asian Americans on campus. Its recommendations include the University's hiring of several Asian-American professors and support staff and the creation of an Asian-American Resource Center. Council's committees on recreation and intercollegiate athletics and on safety and security will also discuss their closing reports. Both the Council meeting and special session will be held in the Quadrangle's McClelland Hall. The meeting will begin at 4 p.m. and the special session will begin at 5:45 p.m.
(04/21/98 9:00am)
Members of the faculty get to judge their students with every exam, term paper and pop quiz, but rarely do the tables get turned. On Thursday, however, the University community will honor this year's eight Lindback Award winners -- chosen by a committee of students and previous award winners -- for excellence in teaching. Two faculty members will also be recognized with Provost's Awards. Each award comes with $3,000 in prize money. According to Terri Conn, executive assistant to the vice provost for University life, the independent Lindback Foundation has annually honored tenured faculty members for their teaching since 1961. Half of the eight awards are allotted to professors in the University's four health-related schools -- Nursing, Medical, Dental and Veterinary -- while four are given in the University's other undergraduate and graduate schools. In the health care fields, this year's winners are Nursing Professor Sarah Kagan and three physicians from the Medical School: Gastroenterology Professor Gary Lichtenstein, Pediatrics Professor Karin McGowan and Pathology Professor Steven Spitalnik. The Lindback winners from among the University's eight other schools are Law Professor Seth Kreimer, Operations and Information Management Professor Lorin Hitt, Materials Science Professor Peter Davies and Communications Professor Kathleen Hall Jamieson, dean of the Annenberg School for Communication. The two Provost's Awards are given by the provost to honor instructors who are not members of the standing faculty and teach at the University on a "part time or affiliated basis," Conn explained. The honorees this year are Nursing lecturer Patricia Dunphy and Lorene Cary, who teaches creative writing with the University's English Writing Program. Davies, who has been teaching at Penn since 1983, saw the award as recognition for his sympathetic teaching style. "I know that the things I teach are extremely difficult for my students," he said of his chemistry and thermodynamics classes. "I strive desperately to try to make it simple for them." "It's primarily showing the students you care," he noted. Spitalnik said the award also recognized his department's emphasis on teaching. "You hear all this stuff about how this is a research institution and that students don't matter," he said. "These awards try to emphasize that teaching really does matter." Spitalnik added that he plans on investing his prize money into a fund for his 18-year-old son, a freshman at Princeton University. Conn emphasized that the student body played a large role in determining the Lindback recipients from the "large number of nominees." "Almost all of our candidates were nominated by students," she said. "What we were looking for were letters from students talking about not just activities in the classroom but a long-term impact on their lives." The Lindback Foundation gives awards not just at Penn, but at other schools in the Delaware Valley, including Temple, Bryn Mawr, Villanova and Juniata.
(04/20/98 9:00am)
But only approximately 1,500 people attended the show, which was moved indoors because of the threat or rain. Though Stephanie Klupinski went to Friday night's Spring Fling concert not knowing anything about headliner Maceo Parker, she is definitely more familiar now with the talents of the funk legend. Tenor saxophone in hand, Parker put most of the concertgoers into a dancing mood with a blend of jazz, funk and soul that varied from the mellow to the frenetic. "Maceo really blew everyone away," said Klupinski, a College senior. "I'm just upset more people didn't go." Engineering freshman Likang Chin joined most of her fellow concertgoers in praising the 90-minute-long performance of Parker and his back-up performers. "He didn't sing a lot but had good instrumentals," she said. "The sound was awesome." Amid tight security in the Palestra -- where the concert was moved after forecasts of bad weather doomed the outdoor Hill Field venue -- the concert went off relatively incident-free, pleasing organizers from the Social Planning and Events Committee. "Everyone seemed to have a great time," said Allison Rosen, co-chairperson of SPEC's Concerts Committee . "It's hard when you're in a gym, but that's all we had." An official count of the number of tickets sold was unavailable last night, Rosen said. Many people in attendance estimated that around 1,500 people were there, far fewer than the 4,000 tickets concert organizers were hoping to sell for the event. The first 1,000 to enter the event were given wristbands entitling them to watch the concert from the Palestra floor. But while many attendees praised Parker, most complained that the arena's acoustics were poor throughout most of the show. Opening for Parker were the Five Fingers of Funk, punk-ska mainstay Fishbone and the New York-based Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. "If there is one thing that brings all of these bands together, it is that they are all great showmen," said Joel Epstein, the other co-chairperson of SPEC Concerts. "I like seeing bands that are into the act, jumping around [and] sweating." Student reaction to the opening acts could be best described as mixed. The Five Fingers of Funk, a hip-hop and funk ensemble from Portland, Ore., opened a little after 7 p.m. to a small audience. Only a couple of hundred ticketholders were present for their horn-driven set. College freshman Angie Liou described their performance as "disappointing." "They were trying real bad to give a good show," she said. "There were so few people at the beginning, [and they] weren't into it yet." Klupinski, however, said she thought the Fingers' performance was "a lot more intimate," though she conceded that most people talked or found their seats instead of dancing along. The arrival of Fishbone at 7:45 p.m., however, saw the lights dimmer, the crowd larger, the bass deeper and the applause louder. With a boisterous mix of metal, punk, funk and ska, they entertained the crowd with driving beats and wild stage antics. Within the first 10 minutes, lead vocalist Angelo Moore stripped to his pants and suspenders and -- with a noticeable lack of underwear -- dove off the stage into the waiting arms of the tightly-packed crowd below. About a dozen audience members body-surfed in Moore's fashion, resulting in a few minor injuries. Liou said Fishbone "definitely did a much better job" than the Fingers. She credited a spoken-word poem written by the group with grabbing the audience's attention from the beginning. After Moore mistakenly introduced Parker as the next act, the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion took its place on the stage. Spencer, a founding member of the 1980s band Pussy Galore, loudly explained his guitar-driven hard-edged musical sound to the audience near the end of his set. "The blues is number one," he said. "But I don't play no blues. I play rock 'n roll." Klupinski, who said she came to see Spencer for the third time, said she was unimpressed with the performance. "I thought that this was the weakest time I've seen them," she said, adding that the acoustics in the arena made listening difficult. Shortly before 10:30 p.m., Parker and his posse took the stage. Though one of his band members said at one point, "Penn State, are you ready to party?" the performance was otherwise flawless. Parker -- who made his name playing with James Brown and George Clinton -- was joined on stage by six back-up musicians, as well as his son Corey, who lent a hip-hop air to the performance. Parker, known for his tenor sax playing, showed his versatility by singing, dancing, scatting and, on one number, performing a jazzy piece -- on the flute. "He's such a great live performer," Rosen said. "It just promotes awareness of something that people otherwise wouldn't have seen." As a result of the security measures in place, there was only minor use of alcohol and drugs on the Palestra floor. One student who Rosen said was "a little too drunk" from before the show was taken away by stretcher, though she and Epstein emphasized that there were no major medical incidents. The annual concert has traditionally been held outdoors, but Thursday morning organizers decided, for the second straight year, to hold it indoors. Last year's inclement conditions -- including early-morning snowfall -- pushed the concert, then headlined by A Tribe Called Quest, into the confines of Irvine Auditorium. The concert had to be held in the Palestra this year because of Irvine's closing for renovations as part of the Perelman Quadrangle project. The Fling concert was last held in the Palestra in 1994, when Cypress Hill headlined. Daily Pennsylvanian staff writer Andrew McLaughlin contributed to this article.
(04/17/98 9:00am)
Like last year, forecasts of bad weather forced Fling organizers to relocate the concert from Hill Field. Make it Mother Nature two, Spring Fling zero. Concert organizers with the Social Planning and Events Committee decided yesterday morning to move the concert indoors to its rain location, the Palestra, based on weather reports predicting inclement weather this evening. Last year's concert was also moved indoors due to bad weather. Last night's weather forecasts called for cloud cover and scattered showers, with a high of 70 degrees. "We collected about 20 different forecasts," SPEC Concerts Committee Co-Chairperson Allison Rosen said. "All of them pointed towards a big storm coming our way." College senior Joel Epstein, the committee's other co-chairperson, said the likelihood of fair weather was "iffy at best," and that the "possibility" of inclement weather was enough to get the concert moved. Rosen, a Wharton senior, described the situation as a dilemma between having a definite indoor show and a "risk in the rain." "The artists wouldn't want to play in the rain," Rosen said, adding that clouds, wind or even a light drizzle would put a damper on the concert. This year's show is being headlined by tenor saxophone legend Maceo Parker and backed up by the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, the punk-rock band Fishbone and the Five Fingers of Funk, a 10-performer ensemble from Portland, Ore. The capacity at the Palestra, however, will not be less than that of Hill Field. Alhough more than 8,000 people can crowd into the outdoor venue, the artists' contracts capped the number of $12 tickets at 4,000 -- far less than the arena's capacity of 8,700. "It really didn't matter to us," Rosen said. Last year's decision to move the Fling concert -- then headlined by A Tribe Called Quest -- was made the day of the show. Irvine Auditorium, the rain location for that concert, is closed this year due to renovations for the $69 million Perelman Quadrangle. This year, organizers had to decide whether to move the concert more than a day in advance because the Palestra, unlike Irvine, does not have a stage already constructed. Crews built the stage for the concert on the Palestra floor last night, according to Rosen. The show will be the first Fling concert to be held in the Palestra since Cypress Hill performed there in 1994. The concert is scheduled to begin at 7 p.m. Ticket holders will be admitted beginning at 6:30 p.m., with the first 1,000 being given wristbands entitling them to floor seating. The Five Fingers of Funk will open the show, followed by Fishbone and Spencer, Rosen said. Parker will go on at about 10:30 p.m., and the show is expected to end at midnight. Security guards at the event intend to deter people from bringing alcoholic beverages inside the arena, checking to make sure that no bottles or bags enter the arena, Rosen said. But she was skeptical about the success of such efforts, noting that "people can find ways to do what they want."
(04/13/98 9:00am)
The donation from one of Taiwan's leading financial families is among Wharton's largest. Thanks to a large donation from a family of Wharton School benefactors, the new facility for the Wharton graduate program is one step closer to fruition. Wharton announced Friday a $10 million gift from Taiwanese businessman Chen Fu Koo and his two sons, Chester and Leslie Koo. The money will be used to fund planning and construction for the 300,000-square-foot building on the current Book Store site at 38th Street and Locust Walk. Construction on the building -- whose cost is estimated at $100 million -- is expected to begin this fall, after the Book Store moves to a new, larger space in the Sansom Common complex under construction on the 3600 block of Walnut Street. Jeffrey Sheehan, Wharton associate dean for international relations, estimated that the Koo family's gift is "among the largest half-dozen ever" received by the school. Real estate titan Samuel Zell and corporate executive Jon Huntsman have also made $10 million donations to Wharton within the last 18 months. Chen Fu Koo, 81, is head of The Koo's Group, a Taiwanese financial and industrial conglomerate that includes the Taiwan Cement Corporation, the China Trust Commercial Bank and the China Life Insurance Company. He was one of the creators of the Taiwan Stock Exchange and currently serves as president of the Pacific Basin Economic Council. Koo, also an experienced diplomat, has represented Taiwan at meetings of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum and in the Cross-Straits talks with mainland China, where he has often been the lone Taiwanese representative. Koo is not a Wharton alumnus. "To the extent that tensions are being diffused [between Taiwan and China], it is a product of his work," Sheehan said. Despite the large gift, the new building will not bear the Koos' name. Sheehan said naming the facility would require a gift of $40 million -- which no one has yet contributed to the project -- and that the Koo family would be recognized with a named area "proportional" to the size of their gift. The eldest Koo was awarded the Wharton School's Dean's Medal in 1991 and an honorary doctor of laws degree from the University in 1992. Chester and Leslie Koo, who each head subsidiaries of The Koo's Group, received their master's degrees in business administration from Wharton in 1979 and 1981, respectively. Sheehan estimated that between 15 and 20 members of the Koo family and executives in The Koo's Group have passed through Wharton's MBA and advanced-management programs. In a statement, Wharton Dean Thomas Gerrity praised the Koo family for their "continuing commitment and support? over the years." The Koos have funded two endowed professorships, three annual $25,000 scholarships for Taiwanese students and a Wharton executive-education program with previous donations to the school. Sheehan said he initially approached Chester Koo several years ago when the new building was made a "strategic priority" for Wharton. "This is a classic case of a school and a family really having a strong relationship," Sheehan said. "They are model citizens of the University." The proposed Wharton building will primarily house classroom space, replacing current facilities in Vance Hall. A 1992 consulting-firm report concluded that building a new facility would be more economical than renovating existing structures. Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates, a New York-based architectural firm -- whose other clients include IBM, Goldman Sachs and Oxford and Stanford universities -- will be designing the building.
(04/10/98 9:00am)
Before going on stage at Penn Monday, Conan O'Brien talked about his show and his future. Five times a week, late-night talk show host Conan O'Brien speaks to millions of Americans through his popular television program, Late Night with Conan O'Brien. Monday night, O'Brien entertained a sold-out crowd of 900 students in the Annenberg Center's Zellerbach Auditorium. Using humor, video clips and personal recollections, O'Brien provided his audience with a guided tour of his career, from his rocky start to his current success. Shortly before beginning his speech, O'Brien, 34, sat down with the The Daily Pennsylvanian for a 25-minute interview in Annenberg's Green Room. A 1985 graduate of Harvard University -- where he was the first student in 75 years to serve two terms as president of the famed Harvard Lampoon humor magazine -- O'Brien won an Emmy Award writing for NBC's Saturday Night Live and served as a writer and producer for Fox's The Simpsons before replacing David Letterman as host of Late Night. Always a comedian, O'Brien spoke to the DP about life in the Ivy League, his future in comedy, the secret life of sidekick Andy Richter and the experience of having kittens nurse at his bare nipples. College life DP: How is it being back at an Ivy League school? O'Brien: Well, I've been here for about eight minutes. All right, I'll say this: You guys have a much better auditorium than Harvard. It kicks Harvard's ass. DP: What was it like being a student at Harvard in the 1980s? O'Brien: A-ha was the big group. Remember them?? Accutane [a drug for severe acne] had not been invented yet, which destroyed my life. I wasn't the most attractive person in college. I certainly look better now than I did then, and if anything, I wish I could go back to college now and start dating. It would be a much more fulfilling experience. DP: What did you think of Penn while you were a student at one of our rival institutions? O'Brien: The problem with Harvard is that when people find out you went to Harvard, they automatically assume you are an asshole. Same with Yale. At Brown, they assume you wanted the pass-fail curriculum. Penn is one of the Ivy League schools -- it's kind of like only Penn and Princeton -- where they're not sure. There's kind of a mystique. DP: You were a history major at Harvard, correct? O'Brien: History and literature, it was a combined major. Yes, a combined major. I'm sorry, did that frighten you? History and literature of America is what I studied. It was an honors major. And I wrote a thesis -- would you like to know what it was titled? It was "Literary Progeria in the Works of Flannery O'Connor and William Faulkner." It was, like, 75 pages, I babbled and I somehow got an A. It's still on file somewhere at Harvard. Alternate career plans? DP: What would you have done if not comedy? O'Brien: Well, it's hard to say, I used to toy with the idea of being in politics. That idea used to kind of intrigue me. I like the idea of being out in front of crowds. I always wanted to do any job where you're out in front of crowds -- you're out in front of people. I was kind of intrigued with the idea of politics, and then it seemed dreadfully dull. Comedy seemed like the one thing where you get out in front of crowds but still is constantly changing. It's fun. DP: Do you have any political aspirations now? O'Brien: Yes, I'd like to emulate [former President Ronald] Reagan's career in that I'd like to lose my mind. What I'd really like to do is keep doing what I'm doing as long as possible. I could never run for political office. My opponents' campaign commercials would be ready-made: "Look, Conan's running for Congress."? And they would show this montage of me in a diaper, and dancing with Andy, and me licking my ass and me falling naked through space and landing on Fran Drescher. Just every humiliating thing I've ever done on television -- we actually did a bit once where kittens nursed at my naked nipples and I made an "ooh" face. And so, they would just show that and I would be through. 'Late Night': Before and after DP: You've been signed by NBC through 2002. Any thoughts on where the show is going? O'Brien: I would like it to become a game show as quickly as possible. I really would, because right now it's comedy and it seems to be working fairly well, but Andy has a very natural kind of game show pose. We try really hard to make the show as funny as possible. We stay up all night trying to make people happy. But then I look at Bob Barker on The Price is Right and he gives people stuff and they're thrilled -- they're out-of-their-minds excited. And I thought, "That's the way." Is Bob Barker up all night? Is he worried? He's not worried -- he sleeps very well. DP: You also made a name for yourself working on Saturday Night Live and The Simpsons. How is the creative process different now that you have your own show? O'Brien: Saturday Night Live is closer to what I do now because there is a lot of kinetic energy and there are a lot of people running around. The Simpsons is a very pure writing lab. It's a room not unlike this [with] couches. From a writing point of view, it was very much like being in a Lawrence Livermore lab of comedy. A lot of very good work was done, but I always need to be around people. [The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is a government science-and-technology lab in California.] DP: How long do you see your show running? Do you expect a three-decade run like Johnny Carson? O'Brien: I doubt it, no. Carson was on the air for years before anyone could mount a really good challenge. Now there's cable and there's all these different kinds of shows. And literally we're going to get the point where everyone in this room has their own show and we're going to be competing against each other. The sidekick DP: What is Andy Richter like in real life? O'Brien: Andy would shock you. He's not quite what you think he is from TV. He's not a frat guy. He probably would not want to join a frat and probably would not be allowed to join a frat. He's more of a "put-on-a-red-silk-smoking-jacket-and-make-himself-a-really-weird-martini-no-one's-ever-heard-of" kind of guy. That's the real Andy Richter. He's very well-read, and when some guys go "Hey Andy, let's throw back some beers," they don't [understand], no, that's not him. DP: There have been rumors every so often that Andy would leave the show. O'Brien: Andy's leaving the show? That's very upsetting. I don't pay him enough for him to be able to leave just yet. Someday he probably would, or maybe we'd decide to stop doing it or something. That's going to happen at some point -- it's inevitable. I mean, he could. He's a guy who likes a life of leisure. He could be one of those people who retires when he's, like, 38. His audience DP: Almost 900 tickets for your show sold out in about an hour's time. How would you explain your popularity among college students? O'Brien: My people got on the phone and ordered 400 tickets and desperately gave them away. One thing that I've always been grateful for is this show did not have an easy time in the beginning and the mainstream press was savage. People were really mean about me and they were even meaner about Andy. We just kept doing our show and doing things like "Conan Babies" and the "Lips" and totally different stuff -- like "In the Year 2000" -- things that didn't look right, they actually looked a little unprofessional. But we got through a whole season of two-thirds-full audiences, you know, "Don't shoot the back." College kids, younger people, don't like to be told what to like and what not to like. Everyone said, "Letterman's a genius, he's leaving NBC, NBC [is] stupid, Letterman's a god, whatever they find is going to suck." I'll be the first to admit the show was not nearly as good as it is now in the beginning. It wasn't as smooth, it wasn't as organic, because a good TV show is an organic thing. A good TV show is something that has some kind of a life to it. And it changes and grows. People got to know me, they got to know Andy, they got to know Max even. And they got to know our sketches, they start to know who we are and they understand where I'm coming from. We were always honest about our shortcomings -- we never pretended. Younger people are more accepting of that. And they also like to find their own thing. And that's the way it should be. The speech DP: The last major speakers Connaissance organized in Zellerbach Auditorium were James Earl Jones and Hillary Clinton. Do you think that you're in good company? O'Brien: I was supposed to be the voice of CNN, but they decided that a high, effeminate voice was not the way to go. Maybe a low, masculine voice. So, I think they blew it, because I think [in a falsetto voice] "This is CNN" would have been great. What did Hillary Rodham Clinton talk about? So, I'll probably get more laughs? It's going to be close. You let me know when I've officially passed her in number of laughs. Closing thoughts O'Brien: I'm glad we talked. I have all of these racial theories, but I'm told I'm not allowed to talk about them. What about that thing about Israel, no? I'm always doing that on the feed. We shoot our rehearsal and it goes all over the building, and people see it everywhere. People see it in the executive offices. So rehearsal is really fun because there's nothing [Richter and I] won't do or say. We just started fucking around in rehearsal. "You know, I have these racial theories, but you know what, I think medically they can be proven." We're just waiting for the phone to ring.
(04/08/98 9:00am)
The group, which rejected an offer to play Penn the same weekend, wants to extend its European tour. When Princeton University won out over Penn to sign The Mighty Mighty Bosstones as the headliner for a major spring event, it seemed to many as if the New Jersey school's April 17 Spring Concert would outdo Penn's own Spring Fling, scheduled for the same weekend. Princeton's plans, however, are now seriously in jeopardy. The Bosstones, currently on a successful European tour, have decided to postpone or cancel several U.S. concert dates later this month to extend their overseas trip. Kevin Daley of Monterey Peninsula Artists, the band's college booking agent, would say only that "overseas commitments" are preventing the Bosstones from playing at Princeton April 17 and Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., the next day. Another agent at Monterey, Jonathan Levine, informed Princeton earlier this month of the change in plans, according to an article in yesterday's Daily Princetonian, Princeton's student newspaper. The Bosstones have been touring in Europe since late March. The group is scheduled to appear on a top-rated television show in Britain, and that "appearance must take precedence over all other commitments during that time," Levine said. Adam Abramowitz, a freshman member of Skidmore's student Senate, confirmed that the Bosstones had canceled their agreement to headline the school's Spring Fling. "Chances are they won't be with us," Abramowitz said. According to the Princeton paper, Levine told the Princeton concert planners that the band would be available on April 21, 27 and 30. The first two dates are weekdays and the third falls during the school's reading days before final exams. Princeton organizers have not yet decided whether to reschedule the concert for a date when the band will be available or to keep the original date, according to Daily Princetonian reporter Griff White, who has been covering the situation for the paper. Allison Rosen, co-director of the Social Planning and Events Committee's Spring Fling Committee, said she was not surprised by the turn of events. The Committee had tried unsuccessfully to bring the Bosstones to Penn for Fling. "I knew that was going to happen," the Wharton senior said, explaining that the group only planned to return from Europe the day before Fling. She added that it would be difficult, but not impossible, to reschedule a large concert on such short notice.
(04/08/98 9:00am)
Over 3,500 students have already tried to register for the non-credit courses. Though advance registration for the fall semester ended Sunday, students looking to expand their educational horizons need look no further than the Web site of the Student Committee on Undergraduate Education. Offerings for the fifth semester of SCUE's popular preceptorial program include subject matter such as art and literature, the stock market, explorations of the Philadelphia area and the drawing of live nude models. SCUE's slate of 18 preceptorials -- not-for-credit mini-courses taught in seminar-sized classes by University faculty members and staff -- numbers 10 more than were offered this semester, according to SCUE Chairperson Rachael Goldfarb. On-line registration will end at midnight Monday. "We made a significant push to increase the number of preceptorials because there were so many people who wanted to get in but couldn't," the College junior said. Last fall, students made nearly 1,500 registration requests through SCUE's Web site in the first few days of the registration period for this semester's preceptorials. In the eight days of the current registration period, by contrast, SCUE has received 3,513 such requests, an average of 195 for each of the preceptorials. Most of the courses are capped at 15 students each. Sarah Federman, the SCUE member in charge of the preceptorial program, said she was excited by the enthusiastic response. "It's great," the College senior said. "It proves Penn students aren't anti-intellectual." Some of the University's top faculty members -- including Art History Professor David Brownlee, English Professor Peter Conn and Finance Professor Jeremy Siegel -- will be teaching the diverse array of courses. Conn, whose "Philadelphia Writers and Writing" course will feature authors such as Pulitzer Prize-winner Buzz Bissinger, said he was looking forward to teaching his upcoming preceptorial. "Anything that contributes to multiplying the cultural, intellectual and academic opportunities available to Penn undergraduates should be encouraged," he said. Religious Studies Professor Stephen Dunning said he expects a "diverse group of people," such as students interested in both religion and science, to enroll for his "Making Sense of the Creation Story: Genesis 1-3" preceptorial. Other courses will feature Brownlee giving a tour of Philadelphia's architecture, Urban Studies Professor George Thomas taking a group of 10 students to the beach and University Archives Director Mark Frazier Lloyd questioning why 1960s activism never caught on at Penn. "Health Care, Health Systems and HMOs -- Why is Medicine Changing?" will be taught by Medical School Professor Stanley Goldfarb, none other than the father of SCUE's chairperson. "My dad rarely says 'no,' " explained the younger Goldfarb. Other preceptorials will feature nude model drawing with Fine Arts Professor Julie Schneider, a discussion of feminism with Religious Studies Professor Ann Matter and the evolution of the human diet in Anthropology Professor Alan Mann's "If We Are What We Eat, Why Aren't Cows Green?" Also, College of General Studies Associate Director David Fox will introduce students to the opera in "Why Does the Fat Lady Sing?" and Astronomy Professor Mark Devlin will discuss the Big Bang and the first 100,000 years of time in "Exploring the Origins of the Universe." Siegel, whose "The Stock Enigma" is the most popular course to date based on the number of registrations, looks forward to a class not populated by MBA candidates. "I love being able to teach undergraduates," he said, explaining that he now teaches virtually only graduate-level classes. SCUE members said they were pleased by the diverse course offerings. "It's every class that I wish I could've taken while at Penn," said Federman, who graduates in May. The programs will be entirely free to students, with SCUE paying for everything, including books, food and subway tokens. The preceptorials program has a budget of about $10,000. Students will be notified of their enrollment by the end of the month, Goldfarb said.
(04/07/98 9:00am)
The 'Late Night' star used humor to talk about the lessons he has learned. Introduced as "NBC's International Man of Mystery," late-night talk show host Conan O'Brien joked, danced and reminisced last night before a packed house at the Annenberg Center's Zellerbach Auditorium. With no show to tape -- NBC airs reruns Monday nights -- the comedic writer and host of Late Night with Conan O'Brien entertained the audience of about 900 University students for two hours and 20 minutes, nearly an hour more than had been scheduled. O'Brien, 34, began his speech by praising Penn and his Ivy League alma mater, Harvard University, where he graduated from in 1985. "Penn is a great school," he said. "Let me also say that Harvard is a great school -- to poop on." Most of O'Brien's speech focused on the depths he reached and the risks he took before rising through the entertainment-industry ranks. "I always got in over my head and put myself in positions that were really scary," the Massachusetts-born entertainer said. "Let me tell you -- that works." As many students shouted what he called "inane questions" throughout the night, O'Brien spoke of his days as a history and literature major at Harvard, where he was twice president of the Harvard Lampoon, the famed humor magazine. "It changed my life," he said. "For the first time, comedy had some kind of value." The first few years out of college were rough for O'Brien, with a failed stage show, periods of temporary work and short-lived TV stints on The Wilton North Report and Not Necessarily the News. But those appearances, O'Brien noted, paved the way for a writing position at NBC's Saturday Night Live -- where he won an Emmy Award in 1989 -- and as a writer and producer for Fox's The Simpsons. O'Brien described the creative process at The Simpsons as an "intensive writing lab." He added that while it was a good position, he did not want to keep writing for sitcoms. When David Letterman left NBC in 1993 for CBS, O'Brien -- then a virtual unknown -- was surprised to be asked to take over. "I wasn't a longshot to take David Letterman's job -- I was a complete impossibility," he said. "You'd have to be a completely demented fool to think, 'I'll do it'." O'Brien also commented on the difficult start Late Night had, with an inexperienced crew aiming to push the limits of television. He also spoke about critics' harsh reaction to the show, saying many were "mean about me and even meaner about [sidekick] Andy [Richter]." Topics in the question-and-answer session following the speech included Howard Stern, marijuana use and one student's chances of receiving a summer internship. College sophomore Risa Sang-Urai asked for a hug -- a request that was granted. O'Brien kept the mood light with impressions of Stern and Tonight Show host Jay Leno. He also interspersed video clips of his early industry failures, a never-before-seen audition tape for his current late-night position and clips from SNL, The Simpsons and Late Night. Through humor and self-deprecation, O'Brien consistently tried to convey to the audience that risk-taking is a necessary part of the upward path. "Don't fear failure -- embrace it," he said. "I had to go out and look really bad before I could look really good." The $3 tickets for O'Brien's speech -- the first he has given on a college campus -- sold out in an hour last week, with tickets being scalped for as high as $10 each, students said. But many indicated that it was worth it. "He put through a very good moral, but used a lot of humor to get it across," Engineering freshman Jeffrey Levisman said. "It gave me perspective." Daily Pennsylvanian staff writer Seth Grossman contributed to this article.
(04/06/98 9:00am)
Voter turnout for the referdum on student activity funding was unusually high. The group that runs student government elections is under fire for throwing out the results of a controversial referendum on which 33 percent of undergraduates -- an unusually high turnout -- voted last week, with a majority approving the measure. Last Thursday, the Nominations and Elections Committee invalidated the referendum, which was aimed at reversing the Undergraduate Assembly's decision to set aside $30,000 for funding of InterFraternity Council events, on the basis that a Student Activities Council campaign used distortions and half-truths to bias students' votes in favor of the measure. Yesterday, however, NEC Chairperson Chris LaVigne, a College senior, said the actions of the nine-member SAC executive board did not actually violate any specific section of the Fair Practices Code for Referenda, the rules which govern referenda. Instead, he said that Section VII, Clause H of the document -- which allows for referenda to be invalidated if a violation occurs that "unnecessarily biased the referenda and/or was a gross violation of the FPCR and/or the rules" -- functions as an "elastic clause" by which many actions can be considered violations. In addition, one of the referendum's authors, College senior Elizabeth Scanlon, said the motion's sponsors are considering introducing another referendum to be voted on in a separate election. The referendum would either be the same as the old one or would ask students to vote to overturn the NEC's decision, a move that would only be possible if the motion had passed in last week's elections. Sources close to Penn's student government told The Daily Pennsylvanian that the referendum passed, though the NEC has refused to confirm this to the DP or to Scanlon. Scanlon, former chairperson of the Performing Arts Council, said she does not believe it will be possible to reintroduce the same referendum and keep the election completely bias-free, since "bias is a part of life." But she said the motion's sponsors fear that "student government at Penn is going to hit rock bottom before real progress is made." The decision to invalidate the measure was made at a confidential meeting during which two-thirds of the NEC's 25 members voted by secret ballot to uphold the IFC charge lodged against SAC. New NEC members are appointed by current members of the body, which elects its own steering committee. The group runs all student government elections and appoints students to serve on University committees. In its initial charge, the IFC identified an e-mail sent by SAC executive board member and College junior Amy Raphael to the International Relations majors' group listserv which stated that the organization would lose all of its funding if the money granted for IFC use was not under SAC control. SAC Chairperson and referendum co-author Sang Cha said the e-mail reflected the opinion of its author and not that of SAC. "The people who'll be in charge of the NEC should better distinguish what is an individual's action and what is a group's action," Cha said. Cha, a Wharton junior, added that he does not "think that the FPCR applies to this situation." IFC President Josh Belinfante said he supported the NEC's decision. "When you have the students admitting that they lied, you have the NEC and the student body looking foolish," the College junior said. But one NEC member who asked to remain anonymous said not all NEC members agreed with the ruling. The source voted against throwing out the referendum "because I feel it's something that the student body voted for." Daily Pennsylvanian staff reporter Binyamin Appelbaum contributed to this article.
(04/03/98 10:00am)
Economics 1 and 2 will be a combination of big lectures and recitations. University students planning their courses for next semester during advance registration might have noticed something a little different while flipping through the pages of their course registers -- a completely revamped way of organizing the introductory economics courses. Economics 1 and 2, the "principles" courses that introduce 2,300 undergraduates annually to microeconomics and macroeconomics, respectively, have traditionally been taught in small lectures of 30 to 60 students. But they won't be anymore. Instead, according to Economics Department Chairperson Mark Rosenzweig, the courses will assume a new format where each student will have two large faculty lectures and one small, graduate student-led recitation per week -- the format used at most other peer institutions. "For the majority of the students, this will be a vast improvement," he said. But some students and faculty said the system may not actually be an improvement because it will force students, many of whom are freshmen, into significantly larger classes. Under the current system, which has existed since the 1960s, students have increasingly been taught by non-University faculty, professors hired from outside Penn who are less expensive than regular professors. Last year, 13 visiting faculty members taught 34 of the 48 sections of the two introductory courses, educating more than 72 percent of the total number of students enrolled. Additionally, when evaluated by students, Penn professors scored higher than visiting professors in the Student Committee on Undergraduate Education's "Quality of Instructor" ratings, according to Rosenzweig. While students gave an average score of 2.85 out of 4 for all Economics 1 and 2 professors, Penn faculty averaged 3.25 and non-Penn faculty only 2.73. "You came to Penn based on the fame of the faculty," Rosenzweig said. "We found this ultimately to be unacceptable." As a result of the change, each of the two introductory courses will have three sections of lectures offered in the fall, with about 200 students enrolled in each. The accompanying recitations will be capped at 25 students each. Additionally, each of the lectures will be "team-taught" by Penn faculty, meaning that each professor will lecture on the one-third of each course's curriculum that best matches his area of research. "The lectures will be of a much higher caliber with the senior faculty teaching the courses," said Economics Professor Herbert Levine, who will be supervising the trial run of the new course set-up. In the fall, Economics Professors Steven Matthews, Raphael Rob and Randy Wright will teach Economics 1, while Levine, Roberto Mariano and Richard Rogerson will divide up the duties for Economics 2. Under the system, each professor will cover the same material in all three lecture sections at the same time in the semester, leading six 50-minute lectures per week. Levine said this amounts to "teaching more than you've ever taught in your life" for one-third of the year. Although the department is often criticized for the number of graduate-student teaching assistants who do not speak English well, Economics Professor George Mailath, the director of graduate studies in the department, maintains that that will not be a problem. But SCUE Chairperson Rachael Goldfarb argued that students would not be helped by the revamped course structure, saying that "no one wants to take a huge, impersonal lecture." "It's a trade-off," the College junior said. "You have the Penn faculty, but you have them teaching these enormous classes." College senior James Miller, a member of the Undergraduate Economics Society, added that "the TAs sometimes don't know what they're talking about." And not all Economics faculty members were excited about the new plan. "I'd rather have this [current system] myself," said Economics Professor Arleigh Hess, who currently teaches a section of Economics 1. "It's a free and easy way of connecting with the students." But Rosenzweig maintained that the teaching methods had to be changed. "We're talking about class sizes that are not small to begin with [and are] being taught by people who are not Penn faculty," he said. "We regard this as an improvement."
(04/02/98 10:00am)
Students at the University already have "Writing About?" courses, Writing Across the University courses, in-house writing advising, the Writing Center, Electronic Writing Advising and the Kelly Writers House. Now, make way for "collaborative writing groups." English Professors Al Filreis and Peshe Kuriloff have won a $448,000 grant from the New York-based Mellon Foundation for this new program, which falls under the Foundation's "Cost Effective Uses of Technology in Teaching" initiative. As part of the program, students will be able to participate in non-graded, not-for-credit writing groups for a full year to satisfy the University writing requirement, rather than taking one or two of the existing semester-long, writing-intensive courses. Each group will consist of 15 students and a graduate student instructor and will meet over e-mail listservs and in small group discussions. "This will break down the constraints of time and space of ordinary classes," said Kuriloff, who resigned last month as head of the University's WATU program. "It's less an instructor giving out assignments and making demands of students and a lot more collaboration." Filreis, the director of the University's Writing Program, emphasized that the writing groups will rely on work from other classes -- such as term papers, essays and lab reports -- to create interaction between the program's participants. The groups will have no formal assignments. "It folds into the life of your courses," he said. "That's why I say it's the truest form of 'writing across the university'." The writing groups will be residentially based, with next year's three groups being based in Hill House, King's Court/English House and one other college house that has not yet been determined, according to Kuriloff, the program's director. The program will expand to six groups for the 1999-2000 academic year and will encompass eight groups in the third and final year of the program. The funding from Mellon will only cover the first three years of the new initiative, which will then be evaluated and either disbanded or folded into the Writing Program. The money -- which was put into University accounts last week -- will be used primarily to pay for the graduate students' fellowships. Kuriloff said two of next year's graduate student "facilitators" -- English graduate student Carolyn Jacobson and Political Science graduate student Scott Silverstone -- have signed on so far. A third, from a non-English field in the humanities, will be named shortly. Mellon Foundation Secretary Richard Ekman praised the program, which is one of only four or five of its kind funded by Mellon so far, as an "imaginative use of information technology." "The ability for instantaneous communication between students and teachers and among students is enormous," he said. "There is an advantage over traditional methods of teaching." According to Filreis, one of the main benefits of the program is the constant level of communication between the students and teachers. "We think that basic academic support can happen in the 'between spaces' between and among classes," he said. "We want to see if we can take advantage of all the time not spent in courses."
(04/01/98 10:00am)
In e-mails to Greeks, the InterFraternity Council president sought votes for a Greek agenda. In the world of Greek involvement in Penn student government politics, history just may be repeating itself. A year ago, then-InterFraternity Council President and now-College senior Matt Baker sent an e-mail to fraternity chapters urging members to vote for Greek candidates for the Undergraduate Assembly in the name of getting UA funding for IFC parties. This year, Baker's successor and fellow Alpha Chi Rho brother Josh Belinfante has issued a similar directive to Greek organizations -- calling on them to elect Greeks to the UA and reject the one referendum on the ballot, all in an effort to preserve funding allotted to the IFC by the UA one month ago. In an e-mail obtained by The Daily Pennsylvanian, Belinfante provided fraternity presidents with a list of the 31 UA candidates who are members of fraternities -- but none of the sorority members or non-Greeks running for office. More than 60 percent of all candidates are in Greek organizations. "We need their support next year to allow us to have access to the $30,000 that was appropriated this year," he wrote. "It is vitally important that your brothers get out and vote." In another e-mail, Belinfante called upon all Greeks to vote against a referendum on the ballot mandating that $30,000 of the UA's $34,000 discretionary fund be used for Student Activities Council-approved functions. If approved, the referendum would overturn the UA's decision to spend up to $30,000 this year "in the spirit of funding Greek events" such as non-alcoholic social gatherings. The call-to-arms comes in the face of increasing support for the referendum from leaders of SAC-funded groups, who have attempted to mobilize their members through similar e-mail campaigns. Belinfante defended his decision to call on Greeks to elect their fraternity brothers, explaining that he sees "no problem in an organization helping its own members." Outgoing UA Chairperson and College junior Noah Bilenker, a Phi Kappa Psi brother, defended the lobbying as an integral part of the political process, saying that "organizations will endorse their members anyway." Panhellenic Council President Janelle Brodsky, a College and Engineering junior, also forwarded a list of Greek candidates to the presidents of the eight Panhel sororities. "Part of my job is to get information out to girls in the Greek system," the Pi Beta Phi sister said, adding that Greek status "should not be a reason to vote for a candidate." Many Greek leaders passed Belinfante's e-mail to chapter listservs. The message labels the arguments of referendum supporters as "false, disingenuous and childish." "Unfortunately, SAC has decided to use scare tactics and play politics with the UA initiative," Belinfante wrote in one e-mail. Belinfante indicated that his group may bring charges with the Nominations and Elections Committee against members of SAC for violating the Fair Practices Code, the rules governing student government elections. He said they gave inaccurate information to the student body in an attempt to force passage of the referendum. SAC Chairperson and Wharton junior Sang Cha, however, disputed Belinfante's frequent claim that SAC could tap into its six-figure reserve fund to make up for the lost funding. According to Cha, the reserve fund also belongs to the class boards and the Social Planning and Events Committee, and SAC cannot draw on the principal of the invested money.
(03/31/98 10:00am)
After spending all of last week trying unsuccessfully to figure out who Maceo Parker is, University administrators have forced the Social Planning and Events Committee to give up control of Spring Fling or risk a complete loss of funding. Following a seven-hour closed-door meeting with the student leaders in charge of SPEC, University President Judith Rodin and Executive Vice President John Fry announced that Electric Factory Concerts -- one of Philadelphia's largest concert promoters -- would assume complete control of organizing the main concert for next year's Fling. The line-up for the April 17 concert -- consisting of saxophonist Parker, the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, the punk-rock band Fishbone and the Five Fingers of Funk -- has been roundly criticized for not having a single big-name headliner or a wide diversity of musical genres. "I just can't believe all this jazz and funk they're throwing at us this year," Fry said in a written statement. "I was hoping they'd get Mel TormZ or Ol' Blue Eyes to headline." Rodin also expressed her frank disappointment with the program. "Temple University had Jewel and Drexel got the Wallflowers," she said. "My son told me that we should've been able to get at least Third Eye Blind." It was not clear exactly what the terms of the agreement with the Electric Factory were last night, though a spokesperson for the company said students should expect a "modest increase in ticket prices for next year" -- estimated to be between $20 and $25 above the current $15 charged to ticket holders. SPEC leaders expressed disappointment with the University's decision to take away SPEC's autonomy in booking Fling bands. "Hey, we like pretending to be grown-up concert promoters," SPEC Concert Committee Co-Chairperson Joel Epstein said. "They're being mean to us." "I'm calling my mommy!" the College junior added. Electric Factory "talent buyer" Drew Pompilio -- who first told The Daily Pennsylvanian about SPEC's attempt to sign the Mighty Mighty Bosstones for Fling -- agreed with the University's decision. "Hey, when those damn kids couldn't even get Vanilla Ice or the Bangles to play Penn, we knew it was time to get them out of the process," he said. "Now sit back and let the professionals do their work." The last several Flings have been marred by unsuccessful attempts to bring big name acts -- including Beck, Bob Dylan, Barry Manilow and the New Kids on the Block -- to the annual drunken gathering on Hill Field. Rodin said securing larger acts for Fling is consistent with the ideals of her frequently invoked "Agenda for Excellence." "As I've always said, 'Get some decent music for our kids to smoke up to and watch those U.S. News rankings soar'," she explained. The one point of agreement between the administration and SPEC is that it makes no difference who performs as long as everyone shells out cash for their overpriced tickets. "Those Hill House freshmen will be so stoned they won't know what's going on," SPEC Chairperson and College senior Sean Steinmarc said. "We could be pumping in fucking Mozart and they'd think it was Phish." College senior John La Bombard agreed, noting that he didn't care what the music was so long as it "didn't hit my penis."
(03/25/98 10:00am)
The late-night talk show host is Connaissance's 1998 spring speaker. Take Conan O'Brien and Penn. "If they mated," hypothetically, in the late-night host's most popular recurring comedy bit, what would the child look like? Probably something like the talk show host's upcoming speech on campus, which promises to be "informational and entertaining," with never-before-seen, "surprise" footage from O'Brien's television career, according to the student group who booked him. O'Brien, 34, the host of NBC's Late Night with Conan O'Brien, will be on campus as Connaissance's 1998 spring speaker, according to members of the group, an arm of the Social Planning and Events Committee. O'Brien, who follows in the footsteps of recent speakers such as actor Danny Glover, director Oliver Stone and musician Billy Joel, will speak Monday, April 6, in the Annenberg Center's Zellerbach Auditorium at 8 p.m. Connaissance Co-Chairperson Jonathan Freedberg said he was pleased that his group succeeded in bringing a big name to campus. "He was actually at the top of our list [in the planning process]," the Wharton and Engineering junior said. "And we got him." O'Brien plans to discuss his rise to stardom in a one-hour presentation, taking audience questions for a half hour following his prepared speech. Freedberg expects a large student turnout for this event. "Conan is a very big name," he said. "All the reaction I've heard has been very positive." The event will be O'Brien's first collegiate lecture. Freedberg said he was "very excited" that O'Brien chose to speak at Penn first. Connaissance Co-Chairperson Dara Gruen credited early planning for the group's signing of O'Brien. "We were the first people to approach him about doing a college tour," the College junior said. "Once he does Penn, he's going to take his show to other schools." She added that O'Brien plans to use this speech as a "blueprint" for future speaking engagements. O'Brien, a Brookline, Mass. native, began his comedy career at Harvard University, where he was president of the Harvard Lampoon, the campus humor magazine. He wrote for NBC's Saturday Night Live from 1988 to 1991, winning a writing Emmy in 1989. He would later be a writer and supervising producer for The Simpsons. O'Brien was named to replace David Letterman as host of Late Night in 1993. As a result of the show's increasing popularity among younger viewers -- due in part to segments such as "If They Mated" and "In the Year 2000" -- NBC has extended his contract through 2002. The 975 general-admission tickets will cost $3 each and will be available on Locust Walk starting this Monday. Freedberg predicted that the show could be sold out within three days.
(03/24/98 10:00am)
The hip-hop artist will perform over the weekend of the annual Penn Relays track and field meet. The whole entire University is about to get "dangerous," as Busta Rhymes will headline the fourth annual Penn Relays concert April 25. Though the Social Planning and Events Committee has been criticized recently for its selection of four relatively small acts to play the annual Spring Fling concert, it signed hip-hop artist Rhymes -- a significantly better-known performer -- to play the concert in Annenberg's Zellerbach Theatre the weekend after Fling. Members of SPEC to Unite Racial Minorities -- the SPEC subsidiary organizing the concert -- confirmed last night that the Brooklyn-born and Long Island-reared rap artist would be bringing his explosive musical talents to Penn. "He's a very good live performer," SPECTRUM co-director and Wharton senior Titania Richard said. "I think that the Penn students will be very pleased." First held in 1995, the Penn Relays concert -- held in honor of the international track and field event at Franklin Field -- has consistently attracted some of the top names in hip-hop and rap, including Method Man, the Fugees, Redman and KRS-One. The charismatic Rhymes first came to prominence in 1990 as part of the influential Leaders of the New School. He gained mass appeal when he went solo in 1996 with the platinum The Coming, which featured the hit single "Woo Hah!! (Got You All In Check)." He has also found commercial and critical success with his most recent offering, When Disaster Strikes. "Dangerous," a single from the album, was recently in Billboard's top 10. Rhymes is also no stranger to controversy. His parent label, Warner Music, pulled the single "It's All Good" from the U.S. version of When Disaster Strikes for its highly suggestive sexual lyrics. The song was available on the European release of the album. At the time, Rhymes suggested that Warner was torn between "representing hip-hop on the one side and Walt Disney on the other." The future of the Penn Relays concert was in doubt last year when Irvine Auditorium -- the 1,800-seat venue where SPECTRUM has staged the performance for the past three years -- began undergoing renovations as part of the $69 million Perelman Quadrangle project. Zellerbach, the new site for the concert, has a seating capacity of only 900. With Irvine's closing, it has hosted a number of high-profile events in the past year, including speeches by Hillary Clinton and James Earl Jones and performances by the University Wind Ensemble and the cast of Sesame Street. By contrast, the Spring Fling concert on Hill Field, scheduled for April 17, has a capacity of 8,000 and has in years past sold about 4,000 tickets. Richard expressed disappointment at the fact that Irvine's closing will cause the concert to "lose about a thousand seats." This year's Fling lineup -- headlined by acid jazz tenor saxophonist Maceo Parker -- has been criticized by many Penn students for failing to attract a top-name band. In recent years, acts such as the Violent Femmes, Cypress Hill and George Clinton and the P-Funk All Stars have headlined Fling. Richard said the group is trying to turn the Relays concert into a tradition similar to Fling. "We want to have the same respect as Fling but we are not trying to outdo them," Co-Director Richard Hooper said. Other acts for the concert, which usually consists of several smaller bands in addition to the headliner, will be announced within the next week or so, Richard said. Ticket prices and the date they will go on sale were not immediately available.
