Sandy Smith

Ramon Marmolejos (C/W’01) emigrated from the Dominican Republic to the multicultural mecca of New York City with his parents when he was five. But he didn’t get plugged into Dominican and Latino culture until he came to Penn.

The heavy hitters in Penn’s earth and environmental science department — including the heaviest hitter of all, Professor and Chairman Bob Giegengack — turned out March 23 to hear a freshman talk about dinosaurs over a catered lunch.

If you are black and looking for a place to rent, you may be out of luck the moment you leave a message on the leasing agent’s telephone.

The speed demons of emergency medical transport are in a funk.

It’s almost like something out of one of those old Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland movies. A couple of students meet for lunch, talk for a while, and then one of them says, “Hey! Let’s put on Shakespeare!”

For most white Americans, World War II was a battle against Nazism and fascism. But for pilot Eugene J. Richardson Jr., maintenance crew chief Eddie Moore and their comrades in the all-black 99th Fighter Squadron — the Tuskegee Airmen — it was also a bitter fight against racism.

Now that scientists have produced a map of the human genome, the University is launching a new institute to exploit the research opportunities the map presents. The new Penn Genomics Institute will bring together experts in medicine, biology, engineering and computer science to conduct interdisciplinary research.

The words pour out in rivers when John DiIulio Jr. (C’80) starts talking about his latest big project, running the new White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.

Blackness is political. It’s social. It’s not just wearing baggy clothes and listening to hip-hop. It’s eating soul food. It’s not the same thing as being African-American. It’s simply too big to define. All of these points and more were raised by the roughly 50 students who showed up for a discussion of “Degrees of Blackness” at DuBois College House Feb. 19.

The U.S. health care system is in turmoil. And the people who run it and shape it are looking for good advice on how to manage the upheaval.