Daily Pennsylvanian

Whether you’re a beer lover or simply beer-curious, Philly Beer Week has something for you — as long as you’re 21.

The annual tradition is organized by Philly Beer Week, Inc and involves over 500 events at more than 100 participating bars and restaurants across the city and surrounding suburbs.

Although this year’s festivities technically lasted from June 3 to 14, some spots plan to continue celebrating through June 26.

Events are held at breweries, museums, high-end restaurants and local taverns in order to promote the regional brewing scene.

“Beer week is meant to promote local microbreweries,” as opposed to the big homogeneous “macros” like Coors Light or Budweiser, said Devitt McShain, a bartender at Bridgewater’s Pub.

Affectionately known as the pub in 30th Street Station, Bridgewater’s held several Beer Week events.

“Beer week gives me a little appreciation for what I drink and what [brewers] do,” McShain said, adding that brewers really love what they do.

Raymond Lee, a physician at Hahnemann University Hospital and a self proclaimed beer aficionado, attended Philly Beer Week events with a friend.

For beer enthusiasts like Lee, it’s frustrating to find bartenders who are not knowledgeable about the beers they serve. “I love to go to places, look at the lists and ask the bartender [about the drinks],” he said. Lee added that he can usually tell if bartenders don’t know what they’re talking about.

John Ceccatti offered a different take on beer with a talk titled ‘Vital Ingredients: The Art and Science of Brewing’ at the Chemical Heritage Foundation. A CHF fellow, Ceccatti spoke about the history of brewing in the 19th century —”how yeast was identified as a living organism responsible for fermentation and that other micro-organisms can cause beer diseases that turn beer sour,” he explained.

According to some, those who missed Beer Week need not worry, as Philadelphia has a vibrant beer scene year round.

“Beer week? It’s always beer week here,” said Erik Richardson, of Khyber on 2nd Street, which is known for its large selection of brews.

“Philadelphia needs to be a restaurant-bar oriented city in order to attract tourists” he added. “I want Beer Week to do well.”

At his June 9 arraignment, Wharton alumnus Travis Roesler, arrested for the possession of over $1 million worth of marijuana on May 26, was officially indicted with five charges.

These charges included the manufacturing, dealing, or possession of illegal substances, causing catastrophe, and reckless endangerment. His preliminary hearing is set for June 30, at which time Roesler may choose to take a plea.

The judge also reduced Roesler’s bail from $300,000 to $200,000. The Philadelphia District Attorney’s office was unable to comment on the reasoning behind the bail reduction.

According to Lieutenant Robert Otto from the Philadelphia Police Narcotics Unit in a June 2 article of The Daily Pennsylvanian, 131 hydroponic marijuana plants were found, as well as two pounds of the plant packaged and ready for sale.

The police discovered the hydroponic grow room on the second floor of his 4112 Spruce St. apartment building, where Roesler also runs a fight-training business known as Babylon Studios. Roesler was present at about 7:00 p.m. when police entered his studio, and was subsequently arrested.

Roesler graduated from Wharton in 2006 and was formerly a defensive lineman for the Quakers. According to the Penn Football website, Roesler earned a letter in 2003.

Roesler’s attorney Russel DePersia did not return multiple requests for comment.

The dollar store faces some mean competition.

On June 10, fifteen vendors located on Baltimore Avenue between 42nd and 50th streets took part in the first of three Baltimore Avenue Dollar Strolls, offering select goods for just a buck.

The monthly deals, hosted by the University City District are scheduled to take place from 5:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. on the second Thursday of June, July and August (July 8 and August 12).

At Green Line Cafe on 42nd and Baltimore streets, patrons at the front of the line could be heard ordering “the dollar tea,” as the coffee shop sold tea and coffee at reduction from the typical $1.65.

Brett Feldman, a local father and 1998 Penn Law graduate, met his wife and two young children for $1 scoops of Ice Cream at Milk and Honey Market, normally $2.

After receiving UCD e-mails and postcards about the stroll Feldman said his family “had it on our calendar.”

A line wove around the aisles and out the front door of the gourmet shop at 45th Street and Baltimore avenue. The market specializes in locally grown and produced foods.

Christopher Eaton, one of Milk and Honey’s managers, said he had “never seen most of the people in the store before.”

Gerry Johnson of Germantown made the trek south to make up for the lack of food in his refrigerator and fill his stomach with $1 raw food from Attica Ola’s Spirit First Foods at 4505 Baltimore Avenue.

Stephen Fisher, a co-founder of Studio 34 at 4505 Baltimore and post-doctoral fellow in the biology department at Penn, was enthusiastic about UCD’s efforts to make what he and other vendors call “the avenue” a destination akin to South Street.

The studio, which offers yoga and pilates classes and hosts various community events, used the stroll to introduce new customers into their twice-weekly “pay what you can” yoga classes.

Fisher said that in comparison to most weeks the 6 p.m. class was “two to three times bigger and [had] a lot of newcomers.”

In line for Ethopian finger foods at Dahlak Restaurant, on 47th Street, rising Engineering senior Cameron Smith-Rapoport, explained what brought him to the stroll.

“I have been trying to move West more, get out of the typical Penn options,” he said.

Rising Engineering junior Greyson Gregory agreed, but noted that while the event is “good for the summer” he doesn’t think adventuring west “will have much appeal” come the school year.

From a small table outside their 4740 Baltimore Avenue converted church theater Curio Theatre Company sold tickets to attend preview runs of any one of their next season’s productions. Theater lovers who wait until fall to buy tickets will pay $10 to $15 to see Oleanna, Great Expectations or Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.

Also taking part in the stroll were restaurant and bar Queen of Sheba with cans of beer; the Baltimore Avenue Pet Shoppe with toys and treats for cats and dogs; the Vientiane Cafe with bib chicken and tofu skewers; The Gold Standard Cafe with sandwiches and pastries; Elena’s Soul Lounge with soul yams; gift shop Vix Emporium with note cards and hand printed West Philly patches; Dock Street Brewery with pizza and logo pint glasses; Satellite Cafe with cookies; and Younglove’s with clothing and records.

A year ago this week, two revolutionary movements swept the ultraconservative Muslim nation of Iran. The first, known as “The Persian Awakening,” saw tens of thousands of Iranian reformers rally their country to a virtual stand-still out of anger surrounding the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadjinejad. The second, christened the “Twitter Revolution,” saw the popular web client provide an important means of communication between protestors, showing that Twitter was good for more than celebrity imitators and Sarah Palin.

Guess which revolution garnered more excitement in the Western press.

By the peak of anti-Ahmadjinejad demonstrations, the word “Twitter” had become synonymous with Iranian electoral politics. According to some newscasts, half the Iranian population were registered and active tweeters, spreading democracy 140-characters at a time. While such visions were far from accurate, they quickly became the accepted truth. They also constituted a disturbing case in which Twitter – not the protest itself – became and remained a central focus of media attention. And although the Persian Awakening is now dead and buried, this lesson of misplaced priorities remains deeply relevant to our generation of tech-savvy young adults.

Twitter was never far from news of the ongoing crisis. Even watershed events like the death of a young protestor named Neda (“divine message”) were often couched in terms of their effect on the Twitterverse. Any attempts by the ruling regime to suppress sites like Twitter were given as much attention as the protests themselves. The Western narrative now saw tweeting and microupdates as the Iranian reformists’ ultimate weapon. As TIME Magazine boldly declared, “Tyranny … is a monologue. But as long as Twitter is up and running, there’s no such thing.”

The passage of time has afforded a more sober perspective on Twitter’s role in the reform movement. It is now suggested that there were less than 1,000 active Iranian users at any one time, and that the overwhelming majority of Iran-related tweets were actually broadcast by Westerners who changed their location to “Tehran.” Furthermore, the content of these messages remained chaotic and unverifiable. A tweet about an ongoing rally which claimed 700,000 participants, for instance, actually boasted less than 7,000.

To be fair, Twitter has its uses. It joined Facebook as another powerful tool for coordination and communication. Even if its vast sea of protest-based tweets were not all accurate, they served to confuse crackdowns by the ultraconservative government. The problem was not that reformers and sympathizers used Twitter; rather, our media’s fixation with the Twitter Revolution ended up marginalizing the real revolution.

One year ago, dozens of Iranians lost their lives fighting what they saw as a corrupt election and oppressive regime. Indeed, during a few days of what Al Jazeera English described as “the biggest unrest since the 1979 revolution,” Iran teetered on the edge of real democratic reform. Yet today, we likely remember the Iranian protests more for their vindication of the latest digital wonder fresh from Silicon Valley. Whether because of a burning desire to steep our latest toys in terms of their social benefit or just old-fashioned Western bias, our media memorialized the reform movement for all the wrong reasons. While this mistake was made, it does not have to be repeated.

Even over the course of a rising seniors’ time at Penn, services like Twitter and Facebook have evolved dramatically. Given that innovation shows no sign of slowing, we must take care to temper our enthusiasm for new technologies by staying aware of the reasons they are used in the first place. After all, as tens of thousands of beaten and forgotten Iranian reformers can attest, one Twitter Revolution was enough.

Emerson Brooking is a rising College senior from Turnerville, Ga., and a member of the Undergraduate Assembly. His e-mail address is brooking@sas.upenn.edu.

Jury selection for Penn’s second chance at a federal lawsuit case began on June 14.

Previously withheld evidence is expected to be presented in the trial, which heads into its third day today. According to court documents Penn believes the evidence may have been tampered with in the original trial.

On Oct. 18, 2005, ex-student Frank Reynolds filed a suit against Penn for breach of contract, claiming that the University would not give him a Wharton degree after having promised him affiliation with Wharton upon completion of the Executive Masters in Technology Management program. A federal jury for the United States District Court for Pennsylvania’s eastern district awarded Reynolds $435,678 on Oct. 6, 2009.

But on Jan. 27, presiding Judge Thomas O’Neill ordered a new trial, citing possible alteration of evidence submitted by Reynolds. On June 2, O’Neill denied a request from Reynolds to exclude this evidence from the trial.

Comparisons of Penn’s and Reynolds’ copies of documents such as PowerPoint slides turned up inconsistencies, including a Wharton logo in one slide that didn’t exist until after Reynolds would have gotten the slide. Subsequent inspections of data sources led Penn to believe the evidence was altered.

However, when former classmate Anurag Harsh dropped a similar lawsuit that used the same evidence, Reynolds was granted a motion to exclude the evidence before the original trial as it may have reflected poorly on his case.

“Upon reconsideration, I find that the introduction of the allegedly altered documents would not create a side issue. Instead, that evidence is directly relevant to the jury’s determination of Reynolds’s credibility,” O’Neill wrote in his Jan. 27 order granting the new trial.

Reynolds alleged in his complaint that he was led to believe he would receive a degree from Wharton before the University told EMTM students that they would be considered graduates of the School of Engineering and Applied Science.

Dwight Jaggard, director of the EMTM program, stated for a Feb. 11 article of The Daily Pennsylvanian that since its start in 1988, students of the program “receive a masters degree in engineering (MSE degree) and a certificate signed by the deans of Penn Engineering and the Wharton School.”

Ron Ozio, director for media relations at Penn, declined to comment on the pending litigation.

Robbery
June 7 — A man unaffiliated with the University reported at about 5:45 a.m. that a known offender forcibly removed property from him.

Fraud
June 10 — A woman unaffiliated with the University, 27, reported at about 5:45 p.m. that an unknown suspect made fraudulent charges to her financial account.

Trespass
June 12 — Hamed Soukouna, 23, unaffiliated with the University and of the 7600 block of Malvern Avenue, was arrested at about 9:00 p.m. for allegedly being at Distrito, located at 3945 Chestnut St., without authorization.

Theft
June 10 — Tracy McGougan, 48, unaffiliated with the University and of the 5000 block of Jackson Street, was arrested at about 11:15 p.m. for allegedly attempting to remove merchandise from Fresh Grocer without paying.

June 10 — A man unaffiliated with the University, 34, reported at about 8:30 p.m. that someone removed his unsecured bicycle from outside of Cavanaughs, located at 119 S. 39th St.

June 10 — An unspecified amount of cash was reported at about 4:45 p.m. to have been taken from an office in The Bridge: Cinema de Lux, located at 4012 Walnut St.

June 10 — Marcellus Stevnson, 44, unaffiliated with the University and of the 5000 block of Frankford Avenue, was arrested at about 11:30 a.m. for allegedly attempting to remove merchandise from Campus Copy Center, located at 3907 Walnut St.

June 10 — A male employee at a Penn parking lot, located on 34th and Chestnut Streets, 51, reported at about 1:00 a.m. that an unknown suspect entered his secured vehicle and removed various property.

June 9 — An unattended laptop was reportedly taken by someone at about 11:45 a.m. from the Penn Facilities Department at 3101 Chestnut St. without paying.

June 8 — Tonia Thomas, 38, unaffiliated with the University and of the 4700 block of Chestnut Street, was arrested at about 5:45 p.m. for allegedly attempting to remove merchandise from Fresh Grocer, located at 4001 Walnut St., without paying.

June 7 — A female juvenile, 14, and Marus Fundenburg, 18, unaffiliated with the University and of the 600 block of N. 35th Street, were arrested at about 8:45 p.m. for allegedly attempting to remove merchandise without paying at CVS, located at 3925 Walnut St.

All information provided by the Division of Public Safety.

On Wednesday, June 16, local parents could update their baby gear without spending a fortune.

The Penn Women’s Center hosted “Super Swap”, an event at which parents could exchange new and gently used children’s clothing, footwear, books, and toys. The swap was held in the first-floor room of Locust House, which houses the PWC.

For a minimum of five dollars and an optional donation of items, participants could take as many items as they wanted.

Most of the available items were clothes.

Jennifer Forbes-Nicotera, an administrative coordinator at the Center for Clinical Epidemiology & Biostatistics and a member of one of the parent’s groups at the Penn Women’s Center, said that she “always gets a couple good things” at Super Swap events.

This time, she was looking for better-fitting clothes for her younger son, who could not fit into clothes that her older son used to wear.

“I think they’ve done a great job and hopefully they’ll do it again,” Sara Cullen, a mother and PhD candidate in the School of Social Policy said.

Money from the event benefitted the New Parents @ Penn Group and The Working Parents Association, both of which are sponsored by the Penn Women’s Center.

Both Penn parents groups meet regularly to host events — for example, the WPA had a fire safety event and New Parents @ Penn had a CPR event.

Super Swap events have occurred, usually at least twice a year for about 2 1/2 years according to Zoe Beckerman of the WPA. It was one of the first events of New Parents @ Penn and the WPA, according to Beckerman.

Leftover items from the event will be donated to local charities. One candidate is Cradles to Crayons, which will distribute the items among other charities, Beckerman said.

Super Swap has remained essentially unchanged since its beginning.

According to Beckerman, one of the only changes is that participants no longer need to be associated with Penn.

Thanks to some calls from the Undergraduate Assembly, living on-campus is now $60 cheaper per year. Starting this fall, landline phones are optional for those living in a college house.

In the past, all students living in on-campus housing were automatically charged $30 per semester for the use of a landline phone in each room, regardless of whether the phone was used.

As of last semester, about 4,200 landline phones were installed for 7,100 residential students, according to Information Systems and Computing Networking and Telecommunications Associate Vice President Mike Palladino.

However, by fall semester of 2010, nearly 100 percent of students will have cell phones, Palladino wrote in an e-mail.

Despite the almost exclusive use of cell phones by college students in recent years, residential phones remained on campus for their use in emergency situations.

Over 1,000 calls to Penn Police were made from campus landlines last year, from which Public Safety was able to identify the exact location — yet, 75 to 80 percent of students never use their landline phone privileges at all, according to Palladino.

In three years of living in dorms, rising College senior and Undergraduate Assembly member Emerson Brooking never once even plugged in his Penn-provided phone.

After a meeting with Palladino in December, Brooking, a former columnist for The Daily Pennsylvanian, said he collected information about student’s phone use.

“Students, as transitory residents, don’t have a lot of time to become acclimated to these services or find out how they work,” Brooking said.

He added, “I was able to learn a lot just by asking the right questions.”

Brooking used the information to work with ISC and the Department of Public Safety to put an end to the required fee.

“Sixty dollars is real savings for students,” Brooking said. “This was a student victory.”

However, for students who opt-in all local and emergency calls will still be free.

The fee will also continue to give each student a Traveling Authorization Code, a personalized number that can be used to unlock any campus phone for long distance calling.

Now that ISC will no longer “buy in bulk,” students who opt to pay for access to a landline phone — of whom Brooking predicts there will not be many — will pay $16.50 a month according to Palladino.

He explained that the ISC does not make a profit but breaks even from the charges to students.

While the admissions process for most students ends in April when they commit to matriculating at a particular college, a handful continue waiting through May and the summer to finalize their college plans.

Of the 3,000 students who were waitlisted at Penn this year, 1,800 chose to stay on the waitlist. As of June 14, only 40 have been admitted, according to Dean of Admissions Eric Furda.

This number is markedly lower than the 100 admitted for the class of 2013 and the all-time high of 180 admitted for the class of 2012. In total, Penn has accepted 3,870 students for the incoming class.

In a year when yields did not change dramatically but waitlists expanded, peer institutions saw the same waitlist pattern as Penn.

Harvard University only expects to admit 65 to 75 students from the waitlist, while Dartmouth College may not accept any additional students due to an increased yield, according to the New York Times. Penn’s 63 percent yield rate, or percentage of students choosing to attend, has not changed from last year’s.

Craig Allen, the director of college advising at the Hill School in Pottstown, Pa., said there was not “a great deal of waitlist activity” with his senior class this year. He explained that schools may still act cautiously because of the economic downturn, and Penn is susceptible to the trickle-down effect from waitlists at places like Harvard, which leads to reshuffling even throughout the summer.

In general, “I just didn’t see a lot of interest in the waitlist this year. I saw a lot of kids blow off the waitlist, because they knew it was a shot but they didn’t think it was a good shot,” Allen said. He attributed this to the drawn-out college process taking more of a psychological toll on students than it did when admissions were less competitive, even a decade ago.

Furda said the 3,000-person waitlist is not a fixed number for Penn — the size of the list is re-evaluated every year. Last year, 3,500 students were placed on the waitlist.

“We want to be judicious and prudent,” Furda said, “but also give the sense to the students and the schools that were it not for the limited space, you would be admitted.”

Tom Walsh, director of college guidance at the Roxbury Latin School in Roxbury, Mass., wrote in an e-mail that “a couple of places surprised me by not needing to go to their [waitlist] this year — indicating remarkable enrollment and/or stupendous luck ... or some combination of both.”

Both Walsh and Steve Singer, director of college counseling at the Horace Mann School in the Bronx, N.Y., reported that a similar number of students from their respective schools were waitlisted and then accepted off the waitlist as last year.

Several waitlisted students, who asked to remain anonymous because their admissions decisions are still up in the air, said they are growing more anxious because waitlist activity tends to wind down by June. One student described being “excited about” and “invested in” the college he has already committed to and said that in early May he was more hopeful about being accepted to Penn than he is now.

The students who are accepted off the waitlist at this point, Singer noted, “are probably the ones who pay full tuition” because “given a tough economy, more colleges have to think that way.”

As in previous years, between 50 and 60 students chose to defer admission to Penn, and the yield rate for the 195 admitted transfer students is “right on target,” according to Furda. He expects to “monitor through the final days of June and then close the book on 2014.”

In fall 2009, 52.8 percent of all students enrolled at Penn were women. This slight female majority doesn’t make Penn the exception. In fact, not only are women in the slight majority at universities, they also now constitute over 50 percent of the U.S. workforce.

But a recent study by Bain and Company reports that relatively few women are awarded leadership positions at large companies. With only 3 percent of female CEO’s at Fortune 500 companies and the fact that a majority of stay-at-home parents are female, students might wonder whether time and money invested in higher education is misspent for some women.

However, we caution Penn women from becoming discouraged by this study. Many women pursue more flexible careers, like opting to become entrepreneurs. Women also may drop to part-time over the course of their career. It would be misguided to assume that the majority of women who receive college degrees do not use them to their full potential when they choose not to pursue senior positions in the workforce, which are often only awarded to employees who follow a more traditional career path. A college degree affords women more options, and women who choose lifestyles with better work-life balance over high-ranking executive positions are making as good of a return on their educational investment as any CEO.

While Penn is quick to acknowledge the many inventions of Ben Franklin, it is slower to acknowledge its own, save perhaps for ENIAC, which is a pity since they are really quite extraordinary.

Case in point: the Free Library of Philadelphia.

The Free Library came to be thanks to the efforts of former Penn Provost William Pepper, who in 1891 talked his colleagues, wealthy relatives and friends in government into donating the money for what would be, in his words, “the people’s library, absolutely free to all.” The key to its success was that it was not only a public library — totally supported by the government — but rather a free library supported by the City as well as by its wealthier citizens and foundations. Indeed today, with 54 branches visited over 6.5 million times last year, supporting close to a quarter of a million children and about as many adults in programs deployed across the city, the Free Library of Philadelphia is one of the world’s great library systems.

Today, the City funds some $30 million of the library's $50-million annual budget, which means the Free Library is vulnerable to the whims of city finances. So when Mayor Michael Nutter cut $8 million from the library's budget in 2008, it would have meant sweeping cuts in library schedules and the near closing of 11 branches were it not for a timely surge of popular support. This year the cuts continue, with another $2.5-million reduction that will force branches to close for one business day a week. Each year, it seems, the library is on the losing end of the savage (if necessary) cuts planned in City Hall, and the cuts show no signs of stopping. That said, the City is in a perilous financial situation, and given the range of vital things it funds, there is no good place for the axe to fall. In times like these, the library needs its private benefactors more than ever.

The City can ill afford to lose its libraries, especially the City today. In the age of the internet, information is everything, and the Free Library frees information, in all of its forms, for everyone. At Penn, the internet is as available as the air we breathe (and about as essential, we feel, to our survival - that's why they called it AirPennNet). In Greater Philadelphia, some estimates suggest that close to half of all households do not have internet access. Accordingly, the Free Library’s computers were used over one million times this past year – all for free. Consider books. Remember them? Seven million of them were borrowed from the Free Library in 2009 - all for free.

And the Free Library does still more in the service of its community. Its branches are veritable community centers, hosting job fairs, helping local organizations get grant money, holding free classes and most importantly, hosting countless events to give children across the city books and encourage then to read them. And all this on a budget that is smaller than that of the University’s library system, serving 1/30 of the population with the same size budget.

The City’s budget will rise and fall – and its priorities will change – as the political and economic winds blow. In a bleak recession, few can fairly say that the libraries ought to be preserved above all else. The axe must fall somewhere. But even if the City stops supporting the library, it need not put an end to its operations or cut its schedules. Not if private citizens and institutions are willing to step up to the plate.

The Free Library's fiscal 2009 statement reported that its philanthropic arm took in a little under $3 million in donations this past year. Penn took in hundreds of millions. Next time you think to support Penn, consider supporting one of Penn's great inventions - either through money or with your time as a volunteer. Help make the Free Library recession proof. There are few other contributions quite as worthwhile.

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.

Despite increasing numbers of women in the educational pipeline and workplace, the gender gap at the top of the corporate ladder remains wider than ever.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 71.5 percent of all 2008 U.S. high school graduates are women. However, in 2009 only 3 percent of Fortune 500 companies had a female CEO.

Consulting firm Bain & Company, in association with the Harvard Business Review, conducted a worldwide survey in January 2010 to find out what exactly happens to those 69.5 percent of women after high school graduation.

The initial motivating factor for the survey was the Gender Gap Report presented at this year’s World Economic Forum, said Bain partner Julie Coffman, chair of Bain’s Global Women’s Leadership Council and one of the study’s lead researchers.

“We wanted to know why there was such a lack in progress,” she said.

In the appropriately titled survey “The Great Disappearing Act: Gender Parity in the Workplace,” researchers interviewed over 1,800 people, about 75 percent of whom were female.

Despite differences in numbers, men were amply represented in the study, Coffman said.

“Our goal was to get a cross-section of the business world,” she said. The sample included people of different levels of experience, locations, demographics and industries.

With a diverse sample, it is possible to gain more “insight into how organizations can approach this” problem, she said.

The results of the survey show that women as well as men aspire to be senior leaders in their organizations (82 percent of women compared to 91 percent of men), so the matter does not lie in women’s lack of ambition.

The answer to the riddle of the vanishing women is three-pronged, according to the study.

Bain & Company attributes their disappearance to: a perception gap between genders on the current state of gender parity; a deep-rooted societal belief that women are better caregivers; and business’ lack of sustained commitment to increasing gender parity.

While both men and women agree that gender parity is a desired goal in a workplace, a significantly smaller number of men than women—48 to 80 percent —feel that achieving such parity is a critical business initiative.

However, not all men feel the issue is insignificant, said College sophomore Daniel Goldstern, a summer analyst at Morgan Stanley.

“A company should take an active effort in trying to include women” in the workplace, Goldstern said.

On the other end of the spectrum, women are not strict proponents of gender initiatives, according to Danielle DiBlasio, an account executive at Sally Fischer Public Relations.

“I think companies should just hire the most qualified candidates,” DiBlasio said.

“Though companies that find that mostly males apply for jobs should go out and try to recruit women,” she said.

Women are also constrained by the perception that they are better caregivers than men, a belief that increases their tendencies put their partners’ careers ahead of theirs.

According to the Bain study, women are more likely to relocate, turn down attractive job opportunities and pursue flexible work paths in order to accommodate a partner’s career.

“I don’t think it’s necessarily true” that women tend to sacrifice their careers for this reason, said SFPR account executive Suzy Massari.

Massari attributed the statistics of the survey to the salary differences between men and women—a woman makes 69 cents for every dollar that a man makes.

The best way to approach the problem of gender disparity is to tackle it as one would tackle a business problem, said Coffman.

American corporations do not have “comprehensive and integrated solutions” and do not “treat this as a business imperative,” she said.

There are both quantitative and qualitative solutions to the problem, according to Coffman.

The quantitative solution is for companies to use metrics and do in-depth analysis of their employee recruitment, retention and promotion rates in order to pinpoint the problem.

The qualitative solution is for organizations to talk to their constituents to find out where they feel the company needs improvement

Finally, Coffman said, we must also go to the root of the cause: women who feel as though they must choose between a family life and a career.

To those women, Coffman gives the following advice: “Stay engaged. Stay involved. There are ways to make it work.”

Assault

June 6 — A woman unaffiliated with the university reported at about 7:15 p.m. that she was assaulted by known suspects on the 3800 block of Sansom Street.

June 6 — A Penn Public Safety Officer reported several shots from a firearm at about 2:45 a.m. on the 4000 block of Market Street. No injuries were reported.

May 31 — Jakita Cash, 31, unaffiliated with the University and of the 3900 block of Market Street, was arrested for allegedly assaulting a woman unaffiliated with the University, 23, in a domestic dispute at University City Townhomes at about 9:00 p.m.

Narcotic

May 31 — Frank Sabatina, 26, unaffiliated with the University and of the 2900 block of Richmond Street, was arrested for allegedly possesing marijuana at about 9:30 p.m. on the 3900 block of Spruce Street.

Burglary

June 3 — A man unaffiliated with the University, 48, reported at about 12:30 p.m. that an unknown suspect attempted to take property from his residence on the 3900 block of Baltimore Avenue.

June 2 — An unspecified amount of cash was reported at about 11:00 a.m. to have been taken from a safe at the Penn Presbyterian Medical Center.

June 1 — A male student, 19, reported at about 12:30 p.m. that someone removed property from an unsecured residence on the 4000 block of Baltimore Avenue.

May 31 — Geoffrey Satalof, 28, unaffiliated with the University and of the 2000 block of Wisteria Lane in Lafayette Hill and Cedric Wiggins, 22, unaffiliated with the University and of the 300 block of S. 43rd Street, were arrested at 11:15 p.m. for allegedly taking property from Strikes Bowling Lounge, located at 4040 Locust St.

Theft

June 5 — Candice Copes, 22, unaffiliated with the University and of the 4900 block of Brown Street, and Latish Rice, 24, unaffiliated with the University and of the 5600 block of Larchwood Avenue, were arrested at about 4:45 p.m. for taking items without paying at American Apparel, located at 3661 Walnut St.

June 5 — A tip jar was removed at about 1:20 p.m. by an unknown suspect at Starbucks, located at 3421 Chestnut St.

June 4 — Unknown suspects were reported at about noon to have removed merchandise without paying from American Apparel.

June 4 — Someone was reported at about 10:00 a.m. to have removed a refridgerator from the Inn at Penn.

June 3 — A female employee of Fresh Grocer, 30, reported at about 10:30 a.m. that an unknown suspect removed items from an unattended shopping cart.

June 2 — A male student, 21, reported at about 7:15 p.m. that someone removed various parts from his secured bicycle.

June 2 — Euvonia Ellerby, 42, unaffiliated with the university and of the 4900 block of Kingsessing Way, was arrested at 4:45 for removing items from the Penn bookstore, located on 36th and Walnut Streets.

June 2 — A female student, 22, reported at about 1:15 p.m. that her bicycle, secured with a rope chain, was removed by an unknown suspect on the 100 block of S 33rd Street.

May 31 — A woman unaffiliated with the University, 24, reported at about 9:00 p.m. that someone cut a wood pole on her porch and removed a secured bicycle on the 4200 block of Pine Street.

May 31 — Tyrone Mason, 35, unaffiliated with the University and of the unit block of S 43rd Street, was arrested at about 11:30 a.m. for taking items without paying from Fresh Grocer, located at 4001 Walnut St.

When 1993 College graduate Caren Lissner entered the working world after matriculating from Penn, she said, she suddenly found herself thinking, “gee, I should have been in Wharton these past four years!”

While Wharton graduates “juggled job offers,” Lissner added, she was forced to contend with an economic recession and “every other English major in the country” as she faced New York City’s competitive publishing industry.

Yet 17 years later, Lissner has channeled that “idea of getting out of college and suddenly realizing you still don’t know what you’re going to do with your life” into her novel, Carrie Pilby.

Originally released in 2003 and set to be re-released on July 1, Carrie Pilby tells the story of a Harvard alumna who struggles to fit in with her seemingly immoral peers — “a sort of extreme version of me,” said Lissner, who wrote for The Daily Pennsylvanian and Punch Bowl magazine, and cultivated her own writing independently while in college.

Lissner recalled “seeing people going to frat parties and thinking on the one hand ‘I’d like to meet more people and be more social, but I don’t want to go to these parties all the time’” at Penn.

Following her low-key college experience, the Hoboken, N.J. native landed a job at a local newspaper, and has since become editor-in-chief at the Hudson Reporter, a New Jersey-based newspaper chain.

Though Lissner had already written several novels which were never published, Carrie Pilby was picked up by publisher Harlequin Teen ten years after Lissner entered the professional world.

“I got really frustrated and decided to just write something funny … instead of struggling with novel ideas that don’t work,” Lissner said of Carrie Pilby’s conception.

Fortunately, Lissner added, when she finished the novel, “chick lit” was gaining momentum as a literary trend, following the 2001 release of Bridget Jones’ Diary and other similar stories.

“In the summer of 2003, everyone was writing ‘chick lit’ books. The timing was really good,” Lissner said.

However, Lissner’s timing was not the only thing that propelled her success in the literary world.

When it was originally published, Carrie Pilby sold more than 40,000 copies. It was lauded in The Miami Herald and the New York Times, among others.

According to Cheryl Pientka, the agent who first sold Carrie Pilby to Harlequin, Lissner’s strength is her “honesty and directness. You feel like you could be talking with a friend,” Pientka wrote in an e-mail.

A review in Philadelphia Weekly called the novel “Woody Allen-hilarious, compulsively readable and unpretentiously smart.”

Now, however, the book industry has become “saturated” with ‘chick lit’ novels, and young adult fiction has in turn become the most popular new genre, according to Lissner.

In light of this trend, the second publication of Carrie Pilby will specifically target adolescent and young adult readers. It will feature a more “teen-oriented” cover, as well as a few minor textual changes to reflect the most recent technologies.

“Instead of renting videos, the lead character will be renting DVDs,” Lissner explained.

Though seven years have passed since Carrie Pilby’s original release — and Lissner has since released another novel and several pieces for publications such as The New York Times — she remained excited by the prospect of publishing her story again.

“Getting published is like falling in love,” said Lissner, who is married and expecting her first child. “It’s something you want all your life but can’t control.”

Linda Weidmann, associate director of the Benjamin Franklin Scholars Program, recalled the wittiness and enthusiasm for writing Lissner had even before leaving Penn.

“Writing was a passion of hers as an undergrad,” Weidmann said of Lissner, who was selected to participate in the BFS program as an incoming freshman. “She’s done a wonderful job of following through ever since — clearly this was something she always wanted to do.”

PennMOVES held its annual community sale June 5, during which the service group sold students’ donated items at a low cost. Proceeds went to organizations identified by the United Way of Southeastern Pennsylvania, a volunteer-based community service group.

Among the estimated 3,000 attendees, the sale’s most popular items were clothing, refrigerators, lamps and microwaves, said Business Services Spokeswoman Barbara Lea-Kruger.

PennMOVES is still calculating the total proceeds from this year’s sale. At the sale last year, Penn saved 90,0000 pounds of waste and raised $30,000, according to Business Services Vice President Marie Witt.

“We are very pleased that PennMOVES’ efforts were once again quite successful thanks to the strong support from students who donated items,” Witt said in a statement.

The sale, which was held at the Class of 1923 Ice Rink, lasted from 8 a.m to 6 p.m. Unsold items were donated to Goodwill.

On June 7, a Clinton County judge sentenced Domenique Wilson, 25, to 70 to 196 years in prison for the February 2009 attack of three Lock Haven University students and sexual assault of two of them.

Wilson, who used to live on South 51st Street, is also accused of holding two Penn students against their will and sexually assaulting one of them at 44th and Spruce streets in December 2008. He a trial for the Penn case is scheduled for June 16 in Philadelphia.

According to the Philadelphia Daily News, Clinton County Judge Craig Miller called Wilson “evil” and said he should never have the opportunity to commit such a crime again.

The sentencing follows Wilson being found guilty by a Clinton county jury in March of 39 charges including three counts of rape, four counts of indecent deviate sexual intercourse and five counts of unlawful restraint.

The 13-member Presidential Commission for the Study of Biological Issues, chaired by Penn President Amy Gutmann, will convene for its first public meeting in Washington on July 8-9.

The commission’s first order of business will be a study of a milestone in synthetic biology — the replacement of natural genetic material in a bacterial cell with synthetic genes, according to a letter from US President Barack Obama to Gutmann.

“This development raises the prospect of important benefits, such as the ability to accelerate vaccine development,” Obama wrote. “At the same time, it raises genuine concerns, and so we must consider fully the implications of this research."

The Commission was asked to complete a report of findings and recommendations within six months, the letter said.

“The creation of a synthetic genome raises complex and challenging ethical and policy-related questions,” Gutmann said in a statement.

“We will provide the President with evidence-based, ethically responsible guidance,” she continued.

Among other appointees to the Commission include University of Pennsylvania Law School Professor Anita L. Allen.

A new program, led by Penn professors, will help a Beijing school understand why some fliers compel students to wash their hands, while others don’t quite persuade students to grab the nearest bottle of hand sanitizer.

This summer, a group of faculty of Penn’s Annenberg School of Communication plan to share their expertise in the field of health communication with the Chinese public at the Summer Institute for Health Communication Studies at Renmin University in Beijing.

Health communication is the practice of “helping change peoples’ behavior so that they lead better lives” through mass media, said Director of Annenberg’s Center for Global Communication Studies Monroe Price, who added that Annenberg is one of the world leaders in the field.

The summer institute will commence with a one-day symposium at Renmin on health communication studies in the United States and China, with a focus on communicable disease. A series of lectures and discussions about many health communication issues will follow, lead by several Penn faculty and researchers including Annenberg professors Joseph. Cappella and Robert Hornik, researcher Amy Jordan.

Annenberg has been hosting visiting scholars from Chinese universities for a while, according to Libby Morgan, Senior Research Coordinator for the Center for Global Communication Studies at Annenberg. This year, a scholar from Renmin took the lead in bringing together a collaboration between Renmin and Penn faculties.

However, one difficulty that may arise from the program is that of communication across languages. Although most of the Chinese scholars participating speak English and some of the American participants speak Chinese, Morgan theorized that, since health communication studies is new to China, some of the theory might get lost in translation.

Like many other students lingering at Penn beyond May 11, rising College senior Meredith Perry is keeping busy with class this summer. She is conducting research for her senior thesis and taking a required physics class. It’s “nice to get it over with in one month,” rather than take a three and a half month physics course during senior year, Perry said.

More students may be following Perry’s example. Exact enrollment numbers were not available because the add/drop period has yet to end, and the numbers “are still very fluid,” according to Director of Summer Academic Sessions Eli Lesser. However, the number of students enrolled in the 12-week courses has increased drastically from last year, although enrollment in 6-week classes have not increased significantly, Lesser said.

This could be because students with internships during the day may find the evening schedule of the 12-week summer courses convenient, Lesser added. He said he couldn’t make any conclusions about reasons for summer enrollment trands, although he said the administration plans to take surveys of the student body.

A change in admission policy for the summer enrollment of visiting students from other colleges has resulted in a drastic increase in the number of visiting students enrolled at Penn. Penn is using a pilot program of open enrollment for visiting students who wish to study at Penn for the summer, according to Lesser. Under open-enrollment, any student who signs up for classes can take them.

With open enrollment, Penn is following in the footsteps of schools such as the University of Chicago, Cornell University and Harvard Extention, he explained.

Another new innovation this year is the addition of more online-only courses, which according to Lesser have proved very popular among Penn students. This summer, students can choose from nine online courses instead of the three offered last summer.

Last month, Inside Higher Education reported record-highs in summer enrollment at public institutions. However, as the last day to add and drop summer courses draws closer, Penn’s preliminary enrollment trends do not seem to be in line with this trend.

According to educational consultant Steven Goodman, students might take summer courses at public universities because courses might be less expensive over the summer; or, students who took AP classes in high school can shave a semester or even a year off college by earning supplemental credits during the summer. Ivy students might take summer courses to catch up on requirements in a month rather than over a whole semester, Goodman continued.

However, Goodman emphasized that comparing Ivy schools and Public universities is difficult.

Even though enrollment in 12-week classes has increased, the number of high school students who applied for Penn’s capped pre-college programs has decreased very slightly, despite a trend of steady applicant growth over the past several years, Applications and Admissions Coordinator Chris Veitz said.

These numbers contrast those at other Ivy League schools. The number of high school students enrolled at Brown for summer has increased 20 percent since last year, according to Geoffrey Chrisholm, director of marketing at Brown University . Similarly enrollment of high school students at Columbia University’s pre-college programs has increased by almost 7 percent, and has been growing steadily since 2006, according to George Calderaro, Director of communications at Columbia.

Calerado said he attributes increased high schooler enrollment at Columbia to the increased competitiveness of college admissions and the increased importance of “having academic credentials on their applications.”

Newsweek’s Senior Washington Correspondent, columnist, and NBC and MSNBC analyst Howard Fineman will teach a 3-session mini course at the Kelly Writers House this fall.

The sessions, to be held on three Mondays Sep. 27, Oct. 18, and Nov. 8 at 5:30 PM, will “survey the history of the best attempts, in fiction and non-fiction, to capture (in books primarily) the essence of American politics,” KWH director Al Filreis wrote in an e-mail.

Students must apply to attend the session. If accepted, participants will choose and discuss examples from magazines, using the “Best Political Writing” anthologies of 2008 or 2009, published by Public Affairs.

The course will also analyze the coverage of the 2010 midterm elections — not limited to the Pennsylvania Senate race, although “certainly not ignoring it, since at least one Penn alum is involved and another is lurking behind the scenes,” Filreis stated.

“Obviously, the course is set up to coincide with the fall 2010 elections. I imagine that everything they learn and discuss will be relevant to the national political scene,” he added.

Applications are due June 15 at the KWH, at 3801 Locust Walk, to Associate Director of Administration Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing Mingo Reynold. Interested students must submit a short writing sample of any format, including academic papers or journalistic pieces, as well as a list of related courses they’ve taken, according to Reynolds.

Those reviewing the applications will probably “give a nod” to juniors or seniors first, Reynolds said.

So far, Reynolds has received approximately twelve applications, but expects several more as the deadline approaches. Although the KWH hasn’t decided on a cap yet, the course probably won’t accept more than around twenty students, Reynolds said.

Fineman and Filreis had been discussing the non-credit course for a few months, according to Filreis. Fineman “loved the idea, and then he put a lot of effort into creating it, running ideas by me, etc.,” Filreis wrote. In addition to working for Newsweek, MSNBC, and NBC, Fineman has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post and The New Republic. He published a book, Thirteen American Arguments, last spring.