News Archives

SEPTA in need of new ideas, more funding

Vukan Vuchic has spent his career studying transit systems the world over, and in that time has seen the best and the worst in public transportation—from Houston and Tokyo to Munich and New York. One thing he’s never seen, however, is a city the size of Philadelphia cut transit services quite as drastically as SEPTA recently threatened to. For a system that already is obsolete, he says, any more cutbacks would be disastrous—and likely spell doom for transit in the Philadelphia region.

Nobel laureate urges peace

Speaking in a rich, musical voice, Wole Soyinka urged the standing room-only crowd to preserve human rights, especially for those who cannot fight for their own protection. “Impunity always breeds greater impunity. …The gates of hell fly open when the strong overwhelm the weak and innocent,”said Soyinka, a novelist, poet and dramatist, and the first African to win the Nobel Prize in 1986 for Literature.

Ask Benny: Where’s the bodybuilding contest?

Dear Benny, In previous years I attended a Bodybuilding 101 contest here at Penn. Is there one scheduled for this year? If so, where & when? If not, what happened to it? —Pumped Up Dear Muscle Maven, The contest you’re referring to is the Mr. and Ms. Penn bodybuilding competition, a popular campus tradition since 1994.

Rethinking the ‘gospel’

Stay in school and get ahead. Go to college to get a good job. Be sure to learn some practical skills for the “new economy.” All of these are components of what Marvin Lazerson, the Howard P. and Judith R. Berkowitz Professor at the Graduate School of Education, refers to as the “gospel” of education: the theory that education can fix social and economic ills, improve social status and prepare students for the workplace.

“I’d seen the exit-poll numbers … and thought Kerry had won. The subsequent articles trying to explain what had happened made no sense to me." ”

—Steven Freeman, visiting scholar at Penn, on the reason he began researching exit-polling after the presidential election. (Seattle Times, November 25)

At Work With...Robert Chaney

Analyzing Freud

Freud could have used an analyst. That’s according to University of Chicago philosopher and psychoanalyst Jonathan Lear, who spoke at Logan Hall Nov. 17 as part of the Penn Humanities Forum on Sleep and Dreams.

Hitting the books

As Board Chairman Emeritus of Pearl S. Buck International and author of the acclaimed book, “Pearl S. Buck: A Cultural Biography” (Cambridge, 1996), Interim Provost Peter Conn is the natural person to ask about Buck and her work. Apparently, Oprah Winfrey thinks so, too. Conn, who is also the Andrea Mitchell Term Professor of English, is acting as principal literary consultant to “Oprah’s Book Club”as the TV magnate and her viewers read the Buck classic, “The Good Earth.”

Penn Playbook: Drexel win a hoops turning point?

After what could only be described as a turbulent start to its 2004 season, the Penn men’s basketball team found its footing in a late November matchup with West Philly rival Drexel. And it seemed, at least as of this printing, that the win may have marked an early turning point to the Quakers’ season.

Come into my house

If you’re interested in the history of footwear, you’ll find a good selection—from Egyptian burial sandals to the ’70s platforms Sally Struthers wore in “All in the Family”—at Philadelphia’s Shoe Museum. If history’s your thing, be sure to stop by the Declaration (Graff) House, a replica of the residence where Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence. And if you’re an art lover eager to see one of the area’s finest collections of contemporary art, the Pennsylvania Convention Center has the goods.