Daily Pennsylvanian

Sex Offense

July 16—Indecent exposure was reported at about 9:30 a.m. on the 3900 block of Delancey Street.

Assault

July 12 — Donnell Moore, 34, unaffiliated with the University and of the 1200 block of S. 32nd, was arrested at about 6:30 p.m. for allegedly striking a male Penn employee, 39, with an open hand.

Robbery

July 13—Two 15-year-old male juveniles were arrested shortly before midnight for allegedly forcibly removing personal items from a male Penn employee, 23, on the 4200 block of Spruce Street.

July 12—A female unaffiliated with the University reported at 4:00 p.m. that an unknown suspect displayed a knife and took various personal items from her person on the 3200 block of Ludlow Street.

Vandalism

July 13—A man unaffiliated with the University, 26, reported at about 6:30 p.m. that an unknown suspect vandalized an air conditioner on the 4200 block of Pine Street.

July 11—A male employee, 27, and a female employee, 33, reported at about 10:15 a.m. that someone vandalized their vehicles at Penn Tower Parking, located at 399 S. 34th St.

Theft

July 16—An unknown suspect was reported at about 8:15 p.m. to have removed a secured bicycle from the 4200 block of Sansom Street.

July 16—A male student, 29, reported at about 2:45 p.m. that someone took his unattended books and briefcase from a bench on the 3800 block of Locust Walk.

July 15— A female student, 20, reported at about 5:30 p.m. that a wheel from her secured bike was removed by an unknown suspect on the 3400 block of Market Street.

July 13—Someone was reported at about 6:00 p.m. to have taken an unspecified amount of case from a vending machine in Cohen Hall.

July 13—A man unaffiliated with the University, 88, reported at 5:15 p.m. that an unknown suspect took an unspecified amount of cash from his shirt pocket and fled on the unit block of S. 40th Street.

July 12— Someone was reported at about 11:00 a.m. to have removed merchandise without paying from American Apparel, located at 3651 Walnut St.

July 12 —Michael Eck, 37, unaffiliated with the University and of the 1400 block of Newkirk Street, was arrested at about 5:15 a.m. for allegedly entering the secured vehicle and removing the GPS device of a female Penn employee, 30, on the 200 block of S. 33rd Street.

All information provided by the Division of Public Safety.

— Victor Gamez

Greeks, drink up — Romans, you too.

Findings from a recent Penn laboratory study have confirmed that additives in ancient alcoholic beverages carry anticancer properties.

The study showed that certain compounds in alcohol exhibit activity against colon and lung cancer, according to a Penn press release.

The tests were conducted by researchers at Penn Medicine’s Abramson Cancer Center in collaboration with the University of Pennsylvania Museum’s Biomolecular Archaeology Laboratory, run by adjunct anthropology professor Patrick McGovern.

Ancient societies — particularly the Greeks and Romans — used alcohol to stop infection and cure diseases before synthetic medicines, McGovern explained.

Researchers focused on alcohol’s ability to dissolve herbal compounds, McGovern explained. The team analyzed residues found inside ancient pottery vessels which had accumulated compounds in their bases.

These compounds were tested in vitro against the cell lines of colon and lung cancers — and some induced tumor cell death.

The next steps will be to test the compounds in vivo with mice and, if positive results are found, move onto human testing.

Researchers in Germany are in Phase I human testing of the effects of similar compounds against cancer.

McGovern is particularly optimistic about the compound artemisinin, commonly known as wormwood, which the Penn study shows “is highly effective against lung and colon cancers, as good as most of the standard treatments that are available.”

Not everyone shares his optimism — including University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine Clinical Professor Kenneth Algazy.

“Until we see randomized trials using these agents vs. placebo or standard care in humans, I remain skeptical as to any of ancient biologic agents,” Algazy wrote in an email. “If they really were effective Methuselah would have lived 900 years,” referencing a Biblical figure who is said to have lived 969 years.

However, McGovern hopes to get more funding to test more ancient samples from other parts of the world, and points to the potential importance of the Neolithic period for human medicine.

“Humans obviously figured out a lot in that period about how to domesticate plants and animals,” he said. It was a time when humans only lived twenty to thirty years, and “were very interested in searching their environments for solutions.”

But he added, “over thousands of years sometimes the real value of some of the plants can be obscured by certain superstitions.”

Other contributors to the study — titled “Archaeological Oncology: Digging for Drug Discovery” — include medicine professor Melpo Christofidou-Solomidou, Psychiatry Professor Caryn Lerman and Wafik El-Deiry, former medicine professor.

On July 29 at 9:00 p.m., all Quakers, Philadelphians and the rest of the world can watch Penn alumna and Philly native Kristin Haskin Simms at work on season eight of Lifetime TV’s Project Runway.

Simms will be one of seventeen fashion-designers to appear on next Thursday’s season premier.

Though the 1993 College graduate has always loved to paint, she said, “I never thought that an arts education would be beneficial to me because I was always thinking practically.” Instead, she focused on how she would make a living and majored in English.

“I never in my wildest dreams wanted to be a fashion designer,” she said.

After graduating, Simms worked for Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association — a College Retirement Equities Fund in New York City. But when she “got sick of it” she began working for a graphic design firm as a temp.

Simms said her stint in graphic design showed her how to use art to make a living. After submitting a portfolio of freelance logos and paintings, she was admitted to the Rhode Island School of Design. In just three years, Simms graduated with a Master of Fine Arts in graphic design and was hired as a visiting professor at the University of Connecticut.

“I thought, I just graduated, what could I possibly teach anyone?” Simms said.

On weekends, Simms would travel close to 250-miles from Storrs, Connecticut to Philadelphia where she opened graphic design company Key Design. Her company has worked for several Philadelphia organizations including the Penn Bookstore.

One day, Simms was working on a postcard commemorating Martin Luther King Jr., and decided to print the design on a t-shirt. This was the first item of her fashion line, Strangefruit, which has since expanded to include other items of clothing and diverse textiles.

She also served as adjunct professor at Penn’s School of Design, Tyler University and Philadelphia University — where Jay McCarroll, Philly native and winner of season one of Project Runway, now teaches.

Simms was enjoying designing, and people were responding to it, so on a whim, she auditioned for season eight of Project Runway.

But when she was in college, “I had no idea what I wanted to do,” Simms said.

Did she at least dress well in college? “O.M.G.,” she said, laughing. “That’s all I have to say.”

Her college roommate disagreed.

Leila Graham-Willis, 1993 Wharton graduate, roomed with Simms for three years in what was then known as High Rise North, now Rodin College House.

“She had much better fashion sense than I,” Graham-Willis says. “She was always, ‘wear this, try that.’”

Simms’s favorite place to shop when at Penn was Urban Outfitters. Now, her favorite clothing store in Philadelphia is, “hands down,” Joan Shepp on 16th and Walnut streets.

What’s in the future for Simms? “Laying on the beach,” she said, explaining that she is currently on a family vacation.

The cast of Project Runway wrapped up shooting on Monday, July 19th. Simms described the experience as “one of the strangest things I’ve ever done.”

However, Strangefruit has a fall line, and Simms is working on a spring collection. She has also started making handbags, perhaps in an attempt to avoid the “media craze” and take it “one day at a time.”

Students spending the summer in Philadelphia can take advantage of Philly’s food culture for cheap during University City Dining Days.

The two-week long event ending on July 29 features $15, $25 and $30 three-course fixed-price menus. This marks the first time the annual event has lasted two-weeks, and 29 local restaurants are participating — including Blarney Stone, New Deck, Vietnam Cafe, Marigold’s Kitchen, Distrito, Rx, Pod and Penne.

The Radian’s recently opened City Tap House offers a $30 menu, which manager Gordon Dinerman said is about a $20 discount on food.

In the midst of a recession, eating out is a big deal, said 30th Street Station’s Bridgewater’s Pub server Angela Chieves — and the price reductions in usually expensive menus is an opportunity “you can’t beat.”

Leslie Spellman, the owner of Bridgewater’s Pub, added that Dining Days bring important business from non-regular patrons — generally “if you don’t live here, then you don’t come,” she said.

The University City District started Dining Day weeks in 2005, but expanded to two weeks this year after UCD surveys showed 99 percent of customers saying they would visit more restaurants if the event were a week longer.

New Deck Tavern, located at 3408 Sansom St, is participating in Dining Days for the first time and offers a 3-course meal for $15 — and the promotion has been “very good for business,” Bar Manager Eden Travers said.

“I think just people are starting to get used to the [two week schedule],” Travers said. “As the week went on we got a lot more calls for reservations.”

“We’re always trying to do promotions that are geared to getting the students out to experience the diversity of restaurants,” UCD Director of Marketing and Communications Lori Brennan.

Most participating restaurants see a dramatic increase in business and “our hope is that they’re making money,” Brennan explained.

Temple University rising junior Kim Ross tried a $25 meal — which included a spring roll, pad thai and a fried banana for desert — at Vientiane Cafe at 4728 Baltimore. The deal was “amazing” according to Ross, who said she would “most definitely” recommend Dining Days and that she’d definitely attend Dinning Days again.

But as the event has always been popular, Brennan strongly suggested that diners make reservations in advance and to “do some research” in advance to decide where they want to go. Menus and a list of all participating restaurants can be found at universitycity.org/diningdays.

Tamara De Ment contributed reporting to this article.

Evangelists' arrest shows a double standard

To the Editor:

The arrest of Michael Marcavage and Ken Fleck by Penn police (“Preachers to take U. to court,” 7/15/10) because they were preaching to Muslims is outrageous and shows a double standard that pervades our society when it comes to Christians and Muslims. Recently I was walking through Brooklyn when the Muslim call to prayer was blasted at me from a mosque. Did police pour into the mosque to arrest the Muezzin that was calling me to prayer. Of course not. No policeman does anything to stop Muslims from calling infidel people like me to prayer, but if a Christian hands out a Bible, he gets surrounded by police and imprisoned. Why this double standard?

Gamaliel Isaac

The author is a 1997 Penn alumnus and works in radiology at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.

In 2005, the city floated plans to renovate its wireless network with its Wireless Philadelphia proposal, a well-intentioned idea that failed in execution. The plan was to establish the nation’s first high-speed, low-cost wireless fidelity (Wi-Fi) network throughout a large city for use by government agencies, residents and tourists alike. Unfortunately, Wireless Philadelphia’s disastrous attempt at municipal broadband — a plan almost too utopian in vision — has derailed the project for the foreseeable future.

Wireless Philadelphia was one example of a growing international trend of initiatives to create what is known as municipal broadband. (Broadband is a term used to describe a network connection that can support very high rates of data transfer; municipal broadband is the involvement of the city itself in creating the broadband network to support the needs of its constituents.) In his final years in office, former Mayor John Street created a non-profit organization named Wireless Philadelphia to manage the municipal broadband initiative, which in turn outsourced the construction and management of the Wi-Fi network to Atlanta-based internet service provider Earthlink.

Earthlink would spend $22 million to build the network, and then sell access to it for a rate of about $20 per month — with a special rate of about $10 per month for up to 25,000 low-income households — and provide 22 free Wi-Fi hotspots throughout the city. (Although Penn students are served by the University’s wireless network, these free hotpots would have come in handy on the go.) But this public-private partnership was ultimately doomed. In August 2007, Earthlink — facing severe financial difficulties — began to rethink its partnerships and decided to terminate its broadband agreements, citing the exorbitant costs of constructing the network infrastructure. In Philadelphia alone, EarthLink was losing $200,000 every month; having built $16.8 million worth of the network (almost 80 percent), the company wanted out of its contract and abandoned the broadband initiative. Wireless Philadelphia became so synonymous with failure that the nonprofit organization rebranded itself as the Digital Impact Group in May 2009.

A major reason for the failure of the Wireless Philadelphia initiative was the foolishly heady optimism of its business plan. It predicted that a total of 85,000 subscribers (equaling 13 percent of city homes) would sign up for the broadband initiative by the end of the first year, with this number rising to 151,000 (22 percent) after five years, calling these forecasts “conservative.” In fact, a 2006 paper by Balhoff & Rowe, LLC, a telecommunications consulting group, criticized the business plan for being more of a work of cheerleading for municipal Wi-Fi than a thorough economic study: “There is no real analysis of critical business or financial issues, including segmentation of market needs, the competitive landscape, likely trends in pricing and technology substitutions, specific economic benefits, or risks.” The business plan’s predictions were quickly disproven when the network was implemented; EarthLink managed to obtain only 5,000 subscribers by mid-2008.

In July 2008, Allan Frank became Philadelphia’s new Chief Information Officer, and he came to the position with a plan called Digital Philadelphia, which sought to improve the city’s technological capabilities while avoiding the mistakes of Wireless Philadelphia. In December 2009, Frank purchased EarthLink’s leftover network materials for the low price of $2 million, paid for by a mix of federal homeland security grants and the city’s public safety budget. Frank decided not to continue Wireless Philadelphia’s initiative to provide low-cost Wi-Fi to the entire city; instead, he set his sights lower and decided to use the existing materials to update the city’s government network, which is used by various agencies. This undertaking would admittedly improve public safety, make the government more efficient and lower operating costs, but it is a major step down from Wireless Philadelphia’s dream of pervasive municipal broadband for all residents to enjoy.

Prameet Kumar is a rising Wharton junior born in India but raised in New York. His e-mail address is prameet@wharton.upenn.edu.

Penn women’s rowing’s dynamic duo is getting set to hit the international stage.

Twin sisters Elizabeth and Rebecca Donald emerged victorious in double sculls at the under-23 World Championships Trials in West Windsor, N.J., in June, earning them a spot in the 2010 World Rowing Under-23 Championships, to be held in Brest, Belarus from July 22-25.

Although each of the Falmouth, Mass., natives’ rowing careers at Penn has been filled with success, this will be the first time they compete on an international level.

“It really is great to see a thing like this,” Penn women’s rowing coach Mike Lane said. “For [the twins] to be representing not only our school, but our nation as well, it must be a great honor for them.”

The Donalds, who could not be reached for comment as they left Boston for Europe a week ago, won their 2,000-meter trial race with a time of 7:16.7, edging USRowing U23 Selection Camp’s Victoria Opitz and Hilary Andrus, who clocked in at 7:24.1.

The sisters became the first Craftsbury Small Boat Training Center crew to advance to the World Rowing Under-23 Championships.

“These two rowers are capable of anything they set out to do,” Lane said. “They work hard to keep improving, no matter how much they’ve already accomplished.”

Prior to their July 15 departure for Belarus, the twins spent several weeks in Craftsbury, Vt., for extra training. A Craftsbury press release said that they hoped to begin with weight lifting and fundamental aspects of rowing before increasing the pace of their workouts to match the level of competition at their championship regatta.

The sisters’ collegiate coach had high praise for their work ethic.

“I’m proud to say that these women are members of our own team,” Lane said. “It’s great for everyone in our program to have them setting such a high example.”

Last year, the Donalds won two titles at the USRowing Club Nationals to make their first leap onto the national scene. For the following school year, Elizabeth was named a captain of Penn’s varsity eight boat, where the twins have raced since they arrived on campus three years ago.

The sisters have led their varsity eight boat to two fifth-place finishes at EAWRC Sprints in the last three seasons. Before their arrival, the school had not posted such a high finish since 1982.

The Collegiate Rowing Coaches Association has named Elizabeth to the first-team all-region twice in her three years at Penn, while Rebecca has been named to the second-team all-region in each of her three years.

But nothing can compare to an international event like the one they are about to compete in.

“The experience that they pick up from something like this is great for the rest of our team as well as themselves,” Lane said. “It can be shared among crew members, and used for later competitions.”

If college students woke up tomorrow morning to find the drinking age had been lowered to 18, the resulting weeklong party would be the most impressive in the nation’s history, followed by an equally impressive revolution in responsible drinking. I say this with confidence because this is the trajectory I have followed during my summer in Beijing, where the drinking age is 18. Now that the novelty of easy alcohol wore off, I have quickly fallen into more responsible drinking habits.

In the months before I set out for China, I regaled friends and family with tales of the alcohol filled bacchanalia that would result when I could legally buy and drink alcohol. I imagined nights and weekends of bars and clubs, of stores from which alcohol would flow in an endless river into my apartment and where no parent, teacher or RA would be around to spoil my fun. Well, you know what they say about dreams. I arrived in China to find my fanciful vision absolutely true.

China’s drinking age is 18, but I have never once been asked to provide ID. Not at bars, not at clubs and not at supermarkets stocked with the potent beverage Bai Jiu, known appropriately as China Fury. I have an apartment all to myself, a nearby job that facilitates late wake ups and a Beijing guidebook that lists the best bars from across the city. Not that bars are necessary given that beer can be purchased from street vendors for less than $1. The only limit is financial, and thanks to China’s artificially low exchange rate, that is no limit at all.

Tense with anticipation on my first weekend in Beijing — coincidentally the weekend of both a World Cup match and my birthday — I proceeded to drink until I resembled a poster child for keeping the drinking age at 21. But a funny thing happened the second weekend. After a day touring around Beijing, I went to a bar but drank far less. The third weekend, I ordered one beer: a high end Belgian dark to complement a pizza. By the fourth weekend, drinking had become largely reserved for meals. The river of alcohol I imagined in my apartment consists of a single bottle of red wine that I drink from only sporadically.

Somewhere in my head I hear my parents telling me to lighten up. I can hear my friends shouting across the world, “Dude, what happened? Why are you so lame?” What happened is that drinking has ceased to be an event for me. Alcohol has become just one element of an evening out rather than the purpose of the whole night because it is so easy to acquire. For teens in the United States, drinking is an adventure. It requires covert meetings, fake IDs and a whole lot of deception and planning. With so much effort involved, drinking becomes the event, rather than just a supporting element.

But in China, the actual drink now seems trivial next to figuring out what to do once the drink is in hand, and since my drinks are legal, I have options I don’t have in the United States. Rather than chugging in dorms or frat houses, I bemoan the quality of Chinese guides with a traveler in a bar or learn about scholarships from a friend at work, all with a drink in front of me. No one gives the drinking at these events much thought because we didn’t spend a week scheming as to how we would drink undetected.

Now I watch as society pressures me to drink in moderation, rather than excess. Throwing up or blacking out may be common at college parties, but is nearly unimaginable during an office dinner.

Sam Bieler is a rising College junior from Ridgewood, N.J. He is a member of the Nominations and Elections Committee. His e-mail address is sbieler@sas.upenn.edu.

Love it or leave it, the Ivy League’s policy on scholarships and recruiting is, well, dynamic. Here’s a list of pros and cons to a massive incoming freshman class like the one Penn announced yesterday.

PROS —

Cast a wide net. With no worrying about roster size or scholarship dollars, the program has no excuse not to get as much talent on the roster as possible. If you can secure eight recruits, maybe four or five will turn out alright over their four-year careers. That’s better than two good players coming out of a four-man recruiting class.

The Cornell effect. How did Cornell play its way to the NCAA’s Sweet Sixteen this year? With a lot of players — 19 to be exact. And during that run, the media couldn’t get enough of the Cinderella’s seniors, all nine of them, who lived together in one house (think The Real World: Ithaca). That team and class chemistry is vital. “It’s a built-in group of friends that you’re gonna have for your whole four years,” Class of 2011 member Jack Eggleston said of recruiting classes.

Survival of the fittest. A little friendly competition will go a long way in terms of motivating these freshmen. They’ll have to have both a stellar work ethic and talent to get minutes this year. It will also push the older players, and keep them from getting complacent.

Eggleston said, “I’m helping them but seeing them in there working hard is making me push even harder, and I hope that’s how it is with everybody else as well. That’s how we’re going to get better.”

Body count. The Red and Blue have had their share of injuries over the past few years. Many have simply passed this off as bad luck (a story for another day). But whatever the cause of Penn’s health issues, there will be reserves at every position this year.

CONS —

Quality over quantity. I’m a foodie. I’d much rather have a nice 8 oz. cut of sirloin than a pound and a half of chuck meat. Instead of filling roster spots with potential talent, go out and find some recruits who are guaranteed to make a difference on the team from day one. I guess it depends on how hungry Penn is.

Playing time. No matter how much they tell you that it’s great just to be a part of the team, every college basketball player needs minutes like Penn grads need jobs. College sports are a huge time commitment, if you don’t get to play a few minutes here and there, you start to wonder whether you ever will. I remember chatting with rising senior Dan Monckton after his first opportunity to start last season, and that was just what he told me.

Development. This relates to the minutes issue. I can see only two scenarios next year: a few freshmen get a decent chunk of the minutes, or they all share and play very few. As much as practicing or playing on the JV team helps develop players, in-game varsity experience is irreplaceable, and no matter how Jerome Allen shakes it, the freshmen (and older players too) will lose out on that valuable gameplay experience. To quote my man Ben Franklin, “Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other.”

After a dismal 2009-10 season, in what area does the Penn men's basketball team need the most help from next year's newcomers?

“We were a 6-22 team last year,” forward Jack Eggleston said. “We need help everywhere.”

In the Class of 2014 recruits, which were officially announced yesterday, it appears Eggleston got his wish. The class features eight high school standouts, four forwards and four guards.

Half of the incoming freshmen — Fran Dougherty, Casey James, Dau Jok and Steve Rennard — have also been playing alongside Eggleston in the DelCo Summer League for team Trad Jazz and have impressed their soon-to-be senior leader.

“It’s a good group of kids,” Eggleston said. “They work hard in the gym [and] they play hard when we get out there on the floor.”

According to James, strong academics and a storied tradition remain the two biggest attractions of the Penn program. After the Quakers’ rebuilding period, it appears a third item can be added to that list: head coach Jerome Allen.

“When I found out coach Allen was the head coach, that made me want to come even more because he has such great history here,” said James, a two-time All-South Coast League selection at Capistrano Valley High School (Calif.).

Back in February, James’ classmate Marin Kukoc voiced similar sentiments and in March, Jok even suggested that half of the recruits would have decommitted had Allen not been hired.

But while seven of the eight members of the class had been anticipated for months, the group includes an unexpected member in Miramonte High School (Calif.) product Chris Hatfield.

Matadors basketball coach Dave Brown called the six-foot-five, 205-pound Hatfield an “undersized” Division I post player. As a result, few D-I schools showed interest in him, and Hatfield eventually chose Penn over several academically strong D-III schools, including California Polytechnic State University and Swarthmore College.

According to Brown, Hatfield has reached an agreement with the coaches at Penn to be placed on the JV team at the start of next season. But, Brown said, don’t write him off because of that.

“Especially his senior year (18.5 points, 6.7 rebounds per game), he showed that he can score against players much bigger than he is,” Brown said.

Though Hatfield will have to work on his perimeter game to earn playing time at Penn, “he has more inside moves than most Division I college players,” Brown added.

As far as the roles of the other incoming freshmen are concerned, Eggleston said that they will be determined once the team finds out how several of its upperclassmen have recovered from injuries (the coaches could not be reached for comment). And Eggleston’s recruiting class is a testament to how quickly things can change.

The rising senior recalled a day after the Class of 2011 had been announced when he was eating lunch with his five classmates, discussing who would “make it” with the team.

Three of those other five then-freshmen? Harrison Gaines, now at California-Riverside, Remy Cofield, who left the Penn team and Tyler Bernardini, still a junior after redshirting last season.

So three years later, “we’re down to three,” Eggleston said.

A dose of reality on a day that’s all about hope and potential.

Robbery

June 6 — A male student, 21, reported at about 11:30 p.m. that after allowing two unknown suspects into his residence at 3900 Walnut St., both suspects forcibly took an unspecified amount of cash and a cell phone before they fled in an unknown direction.

Fraud

June 9 — Someone was reported at about 6:30 p.m. to have made a fraudulent transaction at TD Bank, located at 3735 Walnut St.

June 7 — A female employee of the University reported at about 5:45 p.m. that an unknown suspect made fraudulent charges to her credit card on the 3600 block of Locust Walk.

Theft

June 9 — A male student, 34, reported at about 4:45 p.m. that someone took his wallet from an unsecured locker in the Franklin Building.

June 8 — A man unaffiliated with the University, 50, reported at about 7:30 p.m. that an unknown suspect took an unspecified amount of cash from his locked dresser drawer at the Penn Rehab Center, located at 3609 Chestnut St.

June 8 — A woman unaffiliated with the University, 37, reported at 9:15 a.m. that someone removed her wallet from her purse on the 3500 block of Market Street.

June 7 — A male student reported at about 6:00 p.m. that an unknown suspect removed his secured bike on the 3700 block of Market Street.

June 6 — Phillip Dawes, 28, unaffiliated with the University and of the 5300 block of Walnust Street, was arrested at about 9:30 p.m. for allegedly taking items without paying from Fresh Grocer, located at 4001 Walnut St.

June 6 — A woman unaffiliated with the University, 34, reported at about 5:30 p.m. that someone removed an unspecified amount of cash and other items from her unlocked car in Penn Parking Lot 26, located on 32nd and Walnut streets.

June 6 — A male employee of the University, 48, reported at about 11:00 a.m. that an unknown suspect removed tools from his work truck on the 3100 block of Walnut Street.

June 6 — A man unaffiliated with the University, 43, reported at about 7:45 a.m. that someone took equipment from the 3200 block of South Street.

June 5 — A man unaffiliated with the University, 26, reported at about 8:30 p.m. that an unknown suspect took his secured bike on 36th and Chestnut streets.

June 5 — A man unaffiliated with the University, 44, reported at 6:00 p.m. that someone took his unsecure bike from the front of CVS, located at 3409 Walnut Street.

June 5 — A man unaffiliated with the University, 28, reported at about 1:45 p.m. that an unknown suspect grabbed his cell phone and fled on 40th and Market streets.

One of the most worrying trends I have observed at Penn is the tendency of its student denizens to take everything seriously. (I will skip lightly here over my brief yet torrid love affair with student government as Undergraduate Assembly chairman.) Yet more ridiculous examples (maybe) abound. Few readers of this paper will have difficulty recalling a student group election that seemed to them as important as the election of the President of the United States. We’ve all had that class project that seemed to presage the end of a career before it began. And – I may be pushing the envelope here – more than a few of us have played in a sports championship that seemed more important than life, liberty or the pursuit of happiness.

As lovers of sport championships everywhere know, the latest World Cup ended with two winners: one was the conventional winner, Spain. The other, of course, was Paul the Octopus.
Paul, for those of you who have been neglecting your cephalopod studies, is an octopus in a German aquarium who made, by selecting mussels in appropriately labeled boxes, seven correct guesses as to which teams would win in Germany’s matches this World Cup, and then correctly guessed the winner of the grand finale (yes, he went eight for eight). Paul became an overnight sensation, in part because he was more accurate than almost all pundits, and in part because, unlike a human, he was incapable of saying something stupid, rude or offensive (if only this were true of politicians).

These attributes alone cannot wholly account for Paul’s popularity, however. Much more of his speedy entry into the zeitgeist can be accounted for by the beautiful, innocent whimsy of his situation. With his doleful eyes, totally uncomprehending of the importance attached to his “decision,” Paul selected and devoured his weekly prophetic mollusc indifferent to the hushed whispers of the surrounding reporters and the snapping of thousands of photographs, cool like an eight-armed President Barack Obama. It was, in a word, ridiculous – and because it was ridiculous, it was delightful.

Paul the Octopus stands – or rather swims – for not just taking trivial things trivially, or even more tritely for “taking things in perspective,” but for approaching them with a sense of whimsy and a delight in the absurd. All too often we spend the entirety of our year consumed in what we feel is serious, important or tragic.

Never is this more clear than in the summer. Once a time that allowed students to decompress from the stress and constant work of the year, the summer has now not only become as busy as the academic year but for many, it also carries higher-stakes. We impose on ourselves twice as much stress as is healthy during the year only to escalate it to four times that amount in our 18-hour-a-day summer jobs. We believe that if we do not massively over-perform -- whether in research, investment banking or whatever other field -- our chances of future employment (and possibly life itself) diminish significantly.

It is clear that the stakes in a competitive job market are necessarily high; the tragedy is that with those high stakes have come a fanatical devotion on the part of almost everyone to seriousness unbecoming to our age. The dull suits of corporate culture ought not to be the daily diet of the young.

So let us become absurd. A little bit absurd. Let our student group elections be filled with joke candidates, let our class projects contain amusingly hidden anagrams and let our sports teams win, but if they must lose, do so with style and good humor. And on our last day in our summer job, let us complement the corporate dress code with an outrageous hat.

After all, if an octopus can win at life by doing nothing but picking eight correct teams through his selection of dinner, we’ve got it made.

Alec Webley is a rising College senior from Melbourne, Australia. He is the former Undergraduate Assembly chairman. His e-mail address is awebley@sas.upenn.edu.

Last year, President Barack Obama established a new bioethics commission to replace the one President George W. Bush created in 2001. Obama designed the commission with the mission of understanding the implications of the ever-growing field of synthetic biology. To meet this goal, he filled the commission with leaders of academic institutions and other advocates of medical research. He asked that they consult with experts in fields ranging from the scientific and medical to the faith-based and business-related before coming to any conclusions.

Although Bush’s commission was likewise filled with academic leaders, it was often criticized for taking a philosophical focus and failing to consider the analysis of facts before entering into discussions. And Bush’s commission was not unique in the way of bioethics commissions. In existence since 1974, these commissions have tended to employ a team of biologists and ethicists in order to develop the official philosophy of the Presidential administration at the time. They discussed the ethics of cloning or conducting research on humans.

But Obama’s commission seems to be a different sub-species of the same animal. At the first meeting last week, the group heard from experts in biotechnology about scientists’ recent success in creating a cell with synthetic genetics. After the facts were introduced, the commission raised various questions. Such as, what are the possible negative effects?

When public opinion on the issue was questioned, the discussion remained intellectual and analytical, never deteriorating into political arguments. The direction of the discussion last week indicates that this commission will maintain an objective focus, ultimately giving the commission the potential to truly benefit medicine without being hindered by ulterior motives.

As one of two people under the age of 40 at my workplace this summer, I find I am most impressive to some of my coworkers because I can type at a speed faster than 40 words per minute. In fact, it seems that our whole generation of 18- to 29-year-olds is fascinating to the older set simply because we thrive on digital technology. We’re experts on social networking and unresponsive iPods. We might as well have buttons on our forearms that make us recite entries from Wikipedia.

But Millennial workers like us aren’t satisfied with merely their own proficiency with technology. We might love our laptops, but we certainly don’t love staring at Excel spreadsheets or slapping data on cookie-cutter slideshows. And employers have taken notice, via a recent proliferation of books, articles and presentations educating them on the inner workings of our ambitious minds and explaining away the annoying sense of entitlement found in some of their employees.

In “Managing the Millennials: Discover the Core Competencies for Managing Today’s Workforce,” authors Chip Espinoza, Mick Ukleja and Craig Rusch seem to take the words right out of our mouths: “They work to live — not live to work. It does not mean that they are lazy. It does not mean that they do not want to work. They want work that is meaningful.”

It’s true, we’re always searching for the meaningful. Just look at our community service record. We’re not content with just being students, poring over labs and churning out papers. As Civic House Director David Grossman wrote email, nearly one-third of Penn undergraduates are currently involved in ongoing civic engagement activities, in accordance with the generational upward trend over the past twenty years.

However, the realities of the Great Recession aren’t working in our favor, and our hunger for self-realization has often been criticized as cockiness and laziness. The recent New York Times article, “American Dream Is Elusive for New Generation,” highlighted 24-year-old Scott Nicholson, who has been living off his parents and grandparents upon graduation and has remained unemployed for the past two years. The most scoff-worthy point of the article: he turned down a $40,000 salary with an insurance company because of his aspirations to get a high-paying corporate offer instead.

The same lofty dreams of other young American adults has contributed to the 23 percent who are not seeking employment at all, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But with a record 5.5 percent unemployment rate for even those who are college-educated, do we still have the luxury to pursue the jobs we deem meaningful to us?

From what Career Services Senior Associate Director Kelly Cleary has observed, some of those “boomerang” graduates in Scott’s situation do.

“For many students, moving back home means they can pursue a job or post-grad internship in a field that they are genuinely interested in but may have lower starting salaries such as a service gap year or entry-level positions with non-profits, or even private sector industries like public relations or advertising,” she wrote in an e-mail.

Those who don’t feel comfortable depending on their parents take the first opportunity out of the situation, be it temporary work or a job in a non-preferred industry, Cleary added. Oh, the horror, says the “follow your dreams” mentality in us. Aren’t these jobs going to be meaningless? Not if you consider the experience, and more importantly, the insight it will add.

As much as our employers try to understand us, we have to understand that we can’t always be engaged. We can’t always be put to tasks that are meaningful to us. It’s up to us, the notoriously innovative and optimistic Millennials, to make the most of every internship and job. In this economy, who knows where our next keystroke will take us?

Sarah Ryu is a rising College junior from Duluth, Ga. who currently lives in Harrington Park, N.J. Her e-mail address is sarahryu@sas.upenn.edu.

The work day has ended. Research, lesson plans and business ventures have been put to bed for the night. Clad in assorted shorts and t-shirts, a surprising group takes the field at Meiklejohn Stadium.

For as long as some players can remember summer has meant softball. The group — made up of players of varying ages, genders and skill levels — play as a part of Penn Recereation’s Summer Softball League which is geared toward faculty and staff members.

Monday’s early evening playoff game took place in the outfield. A large pipe with a tarp over it served as the bench and a single fan leaned over a low chain link fence.

Players on the bench cheered, “Come on Wharton Defense!”

The atmosphere, in spirt and scenery, resembled the little leagues more than college ball. Yet the players show skill and the game moved quickly.

Wharton One Hit Wonders (4-3) captain Scott Romeika — also the Director of Academic Affairs and Advising in the undergraduate division of Wharton — hit a walk-off home run in the final inning, bringing the score to 1-0 and beating out the office of Enviromental Health and Radiation Safety’s EHRS Regulators (4-4) for a spot in the semi-finals, which began yesterday.

Among Associate Director of Structured Sport Michael Reno’s many roles is organizing the annual league.

“[The players] are very dedicated and loyal, compared to the undergrads,” Reno said.

Occasionally students take the field, but generally they serve as umpires or scorekeepers.

Reno explained that unlike undergraduates who just show up and play, the faculty and staff are “very detail oriented with the rules.”

While this requires extra communications work on his part, Reno says the enthusiasm makes the extra time worthwhile.

However, Reno called the league “semi-competitive” but you “don’t have to be a softball player” to join.

Reno said he keeps the league exciting by hosting all-star games, home run derbies and on occasion having his intern serve as announcer.

Jordan Tegtmeyer of the Habitual Line Steppers (5-3), who works in business services as the Associate Director of Finance and Administration, explained that his team enjoys changing their name each year. He recalls team names such as the West Philly Rangers — with Chuck Norris as their mascot — Dwight’s Army of Champions and the Happy Hour Heros.

His team is made up of staff members from across the university, which he said he enjoys because it brings together people who would not normally work together.

The players, most of whom have played softball before, are “living in their glory days,” Reno explained, adding, the league is “kind of a last hoorah.”

WASHINGTON, D.C. — On July 8, Penn President Amy Gutmann answered a request from President Barack Obama by heading a commission of philosophy, law and government experts to discuss bioethical issues in up-and-coming sciences.

About 70 audience members attended the Presidential Bioethics Commision’s first public meeting, on July 8 and 9 in the Washington D.C. Ritz-Carlton hotel. The commission heard experts on ethics and bio-technology. “We will develop recommendations as the President charged us, and I quote ‘about any actions the federal government should take to ensure America reaps the benefits of this developing field of science, while minimizing identified risks,’” Gutmann said in her introductory remarks.

The meeting focused on the creation of a self-replicating, living cell with a completely synthetic genome.

J. Craig Venter — founder of the J. Craig Venter Institute where the cell was created — explained, “We started remaking the software of life and activating that in cells.”

However, some experts argued Venter’s progress is not as ground-breaking as it has been made out to be. Princeton molecular biology professor and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator Bonnie Bassler cited the replication and synthesis of a virus in 1967, saying that though the genome being discussed is “significantly larger,” the accomplishment is “strikingly similar.”

“What the work does not do is provide information or insight about the nature of life,” Bassler said, adding that Venter and is team “did not create. They cloned.”

Another speaker, ETC Group Program Manager Jim Thomas, strongly cautioned the group to look at the uses of past scientific advances, and that synthetic biology may create a “bioeconomy” with negative impacts.

“I think in the process … [the bioeconomy] will require a mass reorganization, a grabbing of land and stripping away of plant matter and nutrients that could affect every part of the planet and some of the lives of the poorest people on the planet,” Thomas said.

Later, in response to a question, Thomas said there remain questions on the feasibility of the public having the means to approve new technologies.

Regarding the argument. Gutmann said, “We don’t have a Democratic way of assent to it, but neither do we have a Democratic way of banning” the technology.

Recently graduated Engineering student Steven McGill was among the audience. After receiving an e-mail about the meeting, he travelled to Washington D.C. from New York City.

“I was surprised at the quality of the commission,” McGill said. “A lot of times you’ll have these conferences or commissions and get a lot of repetitive things. But for me everything here was very enlightening.”

He added that though he does not know what recommendations the commission will make to Obama, the group shows promise. “In terms of educating the people who were present — they were very successful.”

Colleen Lyons, a 2006 graduate of the School of Medicine and Professor of Clinical Research Ethics at Drexel University’s, agreed that the commission was informative.

“This has added an extra week to my course,” Lyons said, explaining how she intends to include an overview of “the science, its promises and the ethical issues involved.”

She also described the commission as very sophisticated. “There was very isolated hubris. There’s a sense of humility in where we are in this science,” said Lyons.

Gutmann closed the meeting saying, “The number and diversity of members of the public who have turned out is truly heartening for anyone, like myself, who believes that education first and foremost is at the heart of a lot of the issues that we face in our democracy,” Gutmann said.

Two evangelical Christian missionaries plan to file a federal suit against the University of Pennsylvania for what the missionaries said was an infringement upon their right to proselytize.

The case will be in response to the July 3 arrest of Michael Marcavage and Ken Fleck for disorderly conduct and obstruction of a highway by Penn Police. The men were preaching outside of the Masjid al Jamia mosque at 4228 Walnut Street. Both men pled not guilty. They will be tried in a Philadelphia municipal court on Aug. 10.

Division of Public Safety spokeswoman Stef Cella declined to comment because the criminal case remains active.

According to Marcavage, the arrests were unexpected considering that he and fellow evangelicals have preached in that same area many times before with no trouble.

According to Marcavage, a Penn bike policeman patrolling the area demanded that the men stop preaching in front of the mosque. When the men refused, Marcavage said, more Penn Police arrived on the scene on what he described as “a rampage.” He began filming the scene on his camera to use as evidence.

He claimed that Officer Nicole Michel assaulted him and forcibly shut off his camera. Marcavage called 911 because “the officer was out of control,” and began filming once more, at which point the police confiscated the device.

After being released from police custody, Marcavage said the camera was returned to him, with the footage of the event allegedly “destroyed” and replaced by a black recording dated to when Marcavage had already been apprehended.

“It clearly showed a frivolous arrest, and assault by an office, and a clear violation of civil rights,” Marcavage said.

“I am deeply concerned about the police making that video disappear,” Marcavage continued.

Marcavage is filing a federal injunction to protect the footage in order to utilize it in his civil suit against the University. He also said the footage has been subpoenaed by the judge involved in the criminal proceedings against him and Fleck.

According to Philadelphia criminal lawyer Patrick Artur, if police really did tamper with evidence, they did not have the right to do so.

“If [Macarvage and Fleck] can show that the excalputory evidence was destroyed by police,” they can expect a favorable verdict in the criminal case, Artur said, explaining that the people do have a right to preach in public.

However, given that Marcavage and Fleck were charged with disorderly conduct, Artur said the incident “ just seems to be one of these small things that escalated” into something larger.

SP News Editor Victor Gamez contributed reporting to this article.

NCAA rules say that Penn cannot win a national football championship this year.

That’s OK with freshman quarterback Ryan Becker — he already has one championship in his resume, at St. Thomas Aquinas High School in Fort Lauderdale, Fl.

He also has something else that the rest of this year’s football recruiting class does not: a year of college football under his belt at Florida State University.

It may be difficult to understand why any athlete would go from scholarship money to $200,000 in loans, from the glitz and glamour of an athletic powerhouse to the often underrated Ivy League — which doesn’t participate in postseason football — and from relatively low expectations in the classroom to U.S. News and World Report’s No. 4 ranked university in the nation.

For Becker, though, Penn was always his first choice.

After leading his high school team to a national title and 15-0 record his senior season, his college options were wide open.

“There was always a school on campus to watch somebody, just because we had that caliber team,” Becker said. “But the Ivy League was the best fit for me.”

He continued to work with financial aid offices at Penn in hopes of joining the Quakers.

“My goal the whole time was to play at Penn,” he said.

But when it seemed that Penn was not a financial option, he chose to stay within driving distance, enroll at Florida State and walk on to the football team.

The move paid off when the fleet-footed quarterback began to impress on the practice field. At one point last season, Becker was the Seminoles’ backup signal caller, though he never played a down.

When he had a second opportunity to join the Quakers, however, he and his family found a way to make the move fit financially.

And after just two weeks in University City, Becker’s experience is living up to his expectations, including tougher classes, for which he is prepared.

While Penn coach Al Bagnoli cannot require as much workout time from his players as coaches at FSU can, what the Red and Blue lack in quantity of time, they make up for in quality of practice effort.

“We make up for the work by doing it right,” Becker said.

Though Becker had to wait a year to attend his first-choice school, to him, the move was well worth the wait.

“I got to learn how to balance football with a college courseload,” he said. “I’ve matured a lot.”

But the balance between transfer and freshman on the team can be a delicate one. Becker explained that he is treated a little differently than the other players in his recruiting class, but the upperclassmen still put him in his place when he needs it.

And his teammates will vouch for that.

“Everybody’s pretty friendly on the team,” senior Dave Macknet said. “[We try] to help out any way we can, hang out with him when we can [and] help him adjust.”

Becker joins Macknet, a senior who transferred from La Salle, as the Red and Blue’s two transfer students on the football field.

But the list of success stories for Penn transfers is longer, including Ivy champion quarterback Kyle Olson, W. Hoops captain Sarah Bucar and All-American wrestler Scott Giffin.

Given the track record of some of the Red and Blue’s most recent transfers, it only seems fitting that Becker will experience similar success.

That is if he can cope with having no national championship trophy to strive for.

Penn wrestling coach Rob Eiter is making a move into the spotlight on Tuesday — in Budapest, Hungary of all places.

That’s where Eiter will coach Team USA in the 2010 FILA World Junior Championships, which conclude July 25. While the former Olympian called wrestling in America “a hidden sport,” this international event will garner plenty of attention.

“Wrestling’s a very well-respected sport overseas,” said Eiter, who has typically taken one trip overseas per year since he was 18. “You feel proud to be over there representing the U.S. in the World Championships. Walking around, people know who you are and they really admire you as a coach or an athlete.”

This will mark the fifth time Eiter has coached for USA Wrestling in some capacity. He led the women’s team to its first and only first-place finish at the 1999 Women’s World Championships, and also took first place with the women’s team at the 2001 Pan-American Games. Most recently, he served as head coach of the U.S. Junior Women’s team in 2007 and 2008.

Beginning Tuesday, the Quakers’ head man will lead a team of men 20 years-old and younger — one high-schooler, two rising college freshmen and five current NCAA grapplers.

The wrestlers will have to adjust to new techniques and rules that are “completely different” from those seen in the U.S., Eiter said. Olympic styles Greco-Roman, which forbids holds below the waist, and freestyle are used in international competition.

“We’re a very aggressive country when we compete at the college level and that transitions over to the international style,” Eiter explained. “But right now, the European style is very different; it’s a very relaxed style.”

With new rules in place that split matches into three two-minute periods rather than one long five-minute run, Americans can no longer wear international opponents out with aggressive attacks.

But despite seeing a different style overseas, Eiter is keeping his job at Penn in mind.

“I get to go over and watch some of the best coaches in the world, the Russians and the Iranians,” he said. “You always want to be learning new things and it’s just an opportunity for me to do that and bring it back to Penn and the guys on the Penn team.”

“Even if it’s one little technique, it’s well-worth the trip,” he added.

Philly state of mind. When the 2010-11 schedule was released a week ago, a welcome sight greeted Eiter and the Penn wrestling team: the 2011 NCAA Championships will be held at the Wachovia Center in Philadelphia for the first time ever.

“It’s huge. Everybody is looking at Philly and everybody relates Penn to Philly,” Eiter said. “We’re gonna have a lot of alumni come back that normally wouldn’t come back since it’s a special event.”

With the collegiate and high school wrestling communities focused on Philadelphia for three days, March 17-19, Eiter believes the Quakers need to seize the rare opportunity.

“It’s important that we go out and continue to do well and continue to put guys up on that podium,” he said (Penn sent six wrestlers to the national championships this past year), “and kind of re-energize some of our alumni and hopefully garner some more fans.”

I didn’t watch more than five minutes of this year’s World Cup.

There, I said it.

It wasn’t because the United States got knocked out in the round of 16, or in protest of the shaky (and apparently biased, according to a Penn study) officiating or because of those damn vuvuzelas.

I changed the channel every time the World Cup came on simply because I don’t like the sport of soccer.

So why, now that the dust has settled and Spain has emerged victorious, do I think USA Soccer should be concerned about my aversion to the Super Bowl of their sport? After all, why should non-soccer fans be expected to watch soccer?

The answer lies in the fact that the never-ending debate — will soccer ever make it in the U.S.? — lingers on, even after a successful World Cup. The truth is, in order for the sport to take off in America, it needs people like me to hop on board.

As a born-and-raised Philadelphian, I live for sports. If passion for sports wasn’t in my blood at birth, it quickly developed after I watched this town go crazy for the World Series-bound Phillies as a three-year-old.

I follow the MLB, NBA and NFL religiously — not just the Philly teams, but the leagues as a whole — and even get my fix of college basketball and football.

Yet I’ve always thought of soccer as the sport where orange slices are given out at halftime, the one most kids quit by the time they’re twelve. Soccer fandom just doesn’t come naturally to American sports fans, even the most passionate among them, the Philadelphians.

So I was initially shocked when Penn men’s soccer coach Rudy Fuller told me on Tuesday that this area is part of “one of the top five soccer regions in the country.”

After thinking about it, though, it made sense to me. There are plenty of soccer fans in this country, but they make up more of an underground clique — like fans of an indie band — than a large following. And that’s precisely the problem with soccer in America; luckily, it’s one that can be fixed.

The World Cup was a good start. Sure, I didn’t care about the event one bit, but I couldn’t help but hear about it from ESPN, Twitter and Facebook, where I noticed that people seemed to be more interested than usual.

“I had people stopping me on the street, at the coffee shop — people that I didn’t know,” Fuller said. “I just happened to be wearing a soccer shirt [and they] would pull me aside and engage in soccer conversation.”

Fuller pointed to ESPN and the national media’s increased coverage as the key sign that “we’re on the cusp of [soccer] really becoming a major sport here in the country.” But Fuller is also part of that clique of Americans and Philadelphians that are crazy about soccer.

I, on the other hand, am on the outside looking in. And, in my view, Philadelphia holds the key to making ‘futbol’ relevant in this country.

It’s one thing to get people to jump on the bandwagon once every four years. A simple dose of national pride will do that. But to create and maintain a large soccer fan base, Major League Soccer needs to at least reach the level of the NHL in popularity. “The MLS is clearly an integral piece of the puzzle,” Fuller said.

And where better for MLS fever to start than in the city that booed Santa Claus? With the Union currently in its inaugural season — getting set to take on football powerhouse Manchester United Wednesday — there is a buzz over soccer throughout the city.

If the Union can produce wins, hard-nosed play, excitement and maybe a rivalry with L.A. or New York, the MLS would have all the ingredients that Philadelphians love in their sports teams.

If our passion for the Union grows to one-tenth of our passion for our other teams, the City of Brotherly Love will set a shining example for major markets throughout the U.S.

Soccer doesn’t need soccer fans to be excited. It needs sports fans to be excited. Until the sport becomes so intriguing that fans like myself can’t help but incorporate it into our daily lives, it will never be more than a niche sport in the U.S.

BRIAN KOTLOFF, a rising College junior from Elkins Park, Pa., is the SP Sports Editor.