From sumo wrestling to mechanical bull riding, the third annual GradFest was in full swing last Saturday. The day-long event for graduate students, organized by the Graduate and Professional Student Assembly, took place at Wynn Commons and in Houston Hall.
Twitter has become more than just a tool to follow the actions of popular celebrities. From Kelly Writers House staff to professors, many members of the Penn community are now using the social networking site for everything from writing poetry to advertising events.
The economic downturn has had a mixed effect on summer programs at Penn, with some experiencing growth and others seeing a decrease in applications. Penn hosts a wide variety of summer programs, including athletic programs and academic programs targeted at high school and college students.
President Barack Obama's administration has set high expectations with its promises of health care reforms. Currently, the administration has not laid out a specific health care plan, but Obama set a number of related goals during his campaign. The most prominent of these is expanding coverage to include the over 47 million uninsured Americans.
Starting this fall, the Penn Bookstore will offer a line of branded apparel manufactured under conditions that exceed current university requirements for apparel licensees. Acting on the recommendation of the Worker Rights Consortium, of which Penn is a member, the Bookstore will carry clothing manufactured by Knights Apparel.
Almost exactly two years after 2006 Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro's untimely death in January 2007, his brother Nicanor placed 10th at his debut race at Gulfstream Park near Hollywood, Fla., Saturday. But two years later, Barbaro still has a positive legacy, said Dean Richardson, the surgeon who treated the thoroughbred.
Compared with freshmen in the United States as a whole, Penn's class of 2012 is more ethnically and geographically diverse, according to the Office of Undergraduate Admissions' Web site. The Chronicle of Higher Education's recent poll, which surveyed first-year full-time students at four-year universities, depicted predominantly white, middle-class freshmen studying within roughly 100 miles of their hometowns.
When a small group of people has a disproportionate influence over others' decisions, as political commentators do in an election, the impact is often attributed to the ability to persuade others through language and emotion. However, Computer and Information Science professor Michael Kearns found similar results by studying positioning in social networks.
An event hosted this weekend by the Kairos Society, an entrepreneurial organization founded last year by Penn students, sought to show that entrepreneurship encompasses more than just making money. The society chose Bill White, president of the Intrepid Foundation, as its keynote speaker.
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