One of the greatest art heists in history is happening under the noses of Pennsylvania state officials. The art vandals are none other than trustees of the Barnes Foundation, who plan to transfer over $25 billion worth of artwork from a suburban Merion home to the bustling avenues of Philadelphia.

But first, a little background on this controversy that’s rocking the local arts scene.

Back in 1922, philanthropist Alfred Barnes (who graduated from the School of Medicine in 1892) built the Barnes Gallery to house his expansive personal art collection and develop art education programs. Today, the collection contains over 2,500 pieces from around the globe, painstakingly gathered and arranged. It’s a must-see for any Renoir /a>
lover, housing over 180 pieces from the French master, more than five times as many as you’ll find in the Metropolitan Museum of Art
.

Seventy years later, Barnes Foundation trustees petitioned to overturn the stipulations in Barnes’ will and move the collection to Center City. Plans have been solicited for a new museum on the corner of 20th Street and Benjamin Franklin Parkway, rendering the Parkway
an art lover’s mecca.

Foundation trustees claim that the move will allow the museum to stay afloat financially. In accordance with Barnes’ will, the collection is only open to the public three days a week and pieces are not permitted to go on tour. Courts in Lower Merion have limited the number of visitors allowed weekly to 1,200, giving rise to a cumbersome reservation system.

Faced with these fiscal woes as well as strained town-gown relations, the trustees intend to move the collection by 2009 or early 2010. Several area charities have helped the Barnes raise $150 million for the move, and the state legislature — backed by Governor Ed Rendell — has approved over $100 million
to support the transition.

Many argue that the museum is not accessible enough to visitors. Fixing this problem, however, doesn’t require the strain of a full-fledged move to Philadelphia.

For instance, a shuttle could run directly from the Philadelphia Museum of Art to the Foundation, which is really only 5 miles away. In fact, the collection is already serviced by train and bus from the city. It’s actually faster
to travel from PMA to the Barnes, than from PMA to the Liberty Bell.

In a recent op-ed in theInquirer,,Nancy Herman, a member of the “Friends of the Barnes organization,” recommends maintaining the current museum while building a new museum at the Parkway site. The new museum would house visiting modern art exhibits and a small part of the original Barnes collection.

Most importantly, however, a new museum will damage the artistic integrity of the original. Art critic Peter Schjeldahl of The New Yorker has deemed the structure “a work of art in itself . . . Altering so much as a molecule of one of the greatest art installations I have ever seen would be an aesthetic crime.”

Henri Matisse painted a magnificent mural on site in the entrance gallery. And the surrounding twelve acres of garden are a horticultural masterpiece. As an Impressionist haven, the gallery is refreshing in the spareness of its labels–giving only the name of the artist with each painting. No fussy critical interpretations, no nonsense. The gallery bears the curatorial mark of its namesake through the peculiar arrangement of diverse pieces of art, interspersing Pennsylvania Dutch hardware with Titian oil paintings — an intimate experience lost in a dominant landscape of large art galleries.

Keep the Barnes as it is. Moving the collection to Philly would be like shipping the cheesesteak to California. You can take the artwork out of the Barnes, but you can’t take the Barnes out of the artwork.

After a total of 32 hours spent driving to St. Louis and back, my brain can’t process a whole lot. Luckily for you dear readers, I have just enough mental strength to impart to you the wisdom I gained from my pseudo-Kerouacian journey. Without further ado, I present to you the rules of the road trip:

1. Delegate responsibilities. Any successful road trip needs a driver, a navigator and a DJ at all times. Music is as essential to keeping a road trip on track as Google Maps.
2. As a corollary to the above rule, any members not fulfilling one of these roles has no right to criticize. No back-seat driving/Djing. Wait your turn and lead by example.
3. All local/regional-specific restaurants take precedence in pit-stop decisions. There’s no need to stop at Micky D’s or Taco Bell when you’ve got options like Cracker Barrel or Bob Evans. Cholesterol comes in many glorious forms, and it’s important to sample them all.
4. A) Any social commentary (e.g. Midwesterners are incredibly fat or Eastern Illinois is a God-forsaken wasteland) is best kept in the car. Public pronouncements of such views should be avoided at all costs.

   B) The same goes for political commentary. Restroom graffiti like “Deport Bush to Mexico so he can be with his friends” serves as reminder that Bush’s low approval ratings aren’t just from people who find him too conservative.

5. Under no circumstances should you attempt to ghost ride your whip.

Well, the price of a Penn education is getting even pricier. Two semesters of red and blue madness will now cost you[r parents] $46,124–a 4.9 percent increase since last year.

Will my education really be 4.9 percent more spectacular than it was last year? I doubt it (I’d say 3.6 percent more awesome, tops). The price-raising madness must end somewhere. Since Penn doesn’t face the same incentives to cut costs as the private sector, all sorts of wacky ways of spending money are devised, but rarely revised to see if they are being anywhere close to cost-effective. Here are some ways Penn can raise revenues, cut costs, and stop the endless upward spiral of tuition.

• Revert to powering Penn with dead dinosaurs: Sure, we get a warm and fuzzy feeling from windmills and press releases heralding a “carbon-neutral campus” (massive amounts of official hot air not notwithstanding) But the marginal difference Penn’s energy consumption makes when compared to, say, China, pales in comparison to the marginal difference in our cost.
• Fire whoever bought
  designer chairs for the High Rises.
• Then, sell the chairs.
• Put toll booths on Walnut and Spruce Streets. Man them with work-study students.
• Dump Microsoft everything and switch to Macs and Linux. It would take 50 percent fewer IT staff to manage (and 100 percent fewer antivirus subscriptions to pay for) (Disclaimer: I shill for Apple).
• Would anybody notice if, say, the School of Social Work Social Policy & Practice was replaced with a Starbucks?
• How many free condoms does the university buy every year? Let’s see some competitive bidding between Lifestyles and the Trojan Man.
• Facilities & Conference Services should join the rest of the university in stealing silverware from 1920 Commons.
• Corporate sponsorship. Nike University sounds nice. So does iPenn.
• “Diversity” groups should be funded by their members and alumni, not me. Hillel pays its own way (and how!)
• Speaking of which, why does an avowedly secular institution pay for a University Chaplain?
• Start a record label for all of Penn’s crappy singing groups. Penn parents would buy CDs of their precious babies farting and call it art (and buy 50 copies for relatives).
• Cut Penn transit. Penn’s fatties could stand the extra exercise. And then we could cut Pottruck funding, too! That’s two flabby birds with one stone.
• Replace SpectaGuards with a student militia. “Fight on, Pennsylvania,” indeed.
• This Penn People’s Army could also take a jaunt up to Princeton and pillage it, bringing home billions in endowment booty. Our battle-hardened ghetto warriors would make quick work of the pampered pansies of Princeton (to be renamed Vichy University).
• Rent the campus to Drexel during Spring break. We’re not using it, and they may as well have a real school for two weeks.
• Open up a University-owned liquor store.
• Ask Harvard’s new President Drew Gilpin Faust (Penn GS ‘75) to slip a few billion our away. Harvard probably won’t notice.
• As Penn is already essentially a sovereign campus-state in Philadelphia, we should secede from and declare war on the United States, get liberated, get $87 billion in quagmire reconstruction funding.
• The last time I checked, we had a well-respected business school. If my ideas are simply too forward-looking, let’s just put the wizards at Wharton in charge of cost-cutting and see what happens!

“Fat” has become the new weather.

As if!

Instead of the latest temperature drop being the social lubricant of small-talk conversations, there’s a new small-talk champion in town (at least for women.) Body weight. A new study came out mid-March describing the contagious phenomenon of “fat talk”.

“Fat talk” was originally described in middle school girls, but is now seen in college women. The study, co-authored by Dr. Martz from Appalachian State University, tested both male and female expectations to how a woman will react in a conversation. Given a scenario of a female stranger entering a group already discussing their weight, 40 percent of men and 51 percent of women participants predicted they would join in with the body-bashing. Dr. Martz, in an interview with LiveScience online, concluded “Because women feel pressured to follow the fat talk norm, they are more likely to engage in fat talk with other females”.

This group-critique coupled with communal affirmation is a short-term solution that is both damaging and self-reinforcing. The
Office of Health Education website puts it sternly, “No one is perfect! When you find yourself being self critical immediately stop and pay yourself a compliment!”

While this response can seem obvious to the problem of self-criticism, the study describes the benefit women derive from this strategy. Dr. Martz argues that because our society disdains egotism, we gain kudos for so-called “modesty” — i.e., trashing our bodies. We can subversively gain the approval of friends while disparaging what makes us unique.

But really, any student who’s taken a class in the College should be able to talk about fat more intelligently. Biology majors could chew over how women naturally
distribute fat differentlyand may
fatigue less during aerobic exercise than men. Anthropology buffs might chat up their friends about the “Fat and Society” course, which offers a sociological analysis of the issue. Sure, body image may not be the most enticing topics to discuss, but an open, accepting conversation is clearly and immediately superior to the “fat talk” plaguing our circles of friends.

“Fat talk” is a self-gratifying but vicious cycle that must be exposed for what it is. Let’s make public self-criticism taboo, one dining hall conversation at a time.

Kind of spooky looking…no?

For a lot of commuters like me, the hour-long train ride to campus is prime time to catch up on some reading. And it’s always interesting to see what books the rest of America (or at least Philly) is stuffing into their overfilled briefcases. I find that the lists don’t lie. My seatmates are usually absorbed in the latest James Patterson thriller or Jodi Picoult tear-jerker, right off the Barnes & Noble bestseller displays.

Some quick research on Facebook shows that Penn students are no exception. They finding time between assigned readings by Plato and Nietzsche to read all of the hottest contemporary authors. Our “Favorite Books” lists look suspiciously like the New York Times Best Sellers list, with maybe a couple titles from 11th grade AP English thrown in for good measure.

For the most part, these books are relatively harmless, and I’ll admit, they make for good beach reads, if nothing else. But then there are always some questionable titles that manage to achieve cult-like appeal through a bit of clever marketing and celebrity endorsement.

Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret is one such bestseller, claiming to hold the key to success and happiness in every aspect of life.
“You are God in a physical body,” says writes Byrne, “You are the master of the Universe.” With lines like these (plus a little help from Oprah), this self-help sensation has sold soldmade millions of copies and made made quite a few headlines. In fact, the last time I checked, it was second only to Harry Potter #7 on B&N.com’s Hourly Top 100 list.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I have to question America’s judgment when I start reading things statements like, “The earth turns on its orbit for You. The oceans ebb and flow for You. The birds sing for You. The sun rises and it sets for You. The stars come out for You. Every beautiful thing you see, every wondrous thing you experience, is all there for You. Take a look around. None of it can exist, without You.” Yes, this is exactly what this country needs–every American saying, “Ah-ha! So the world really does revolve around me after all.”

Maybe The Secret is an extreme example. But the numbers can’t be ignored. Millions of Americans, educated and uneducated alike, buy into these best-selling book crazes are buying into these the self-help genreliterary trends. Book culture is such that we have no choice but to rely on recommendations and reading lists.

But even as we look to these resources, let’s make sure that we ourselves we should be are being discerning readers. Let’s be our own book critics and ask our own questions. What are we reading? Who’s telling us to read it? Or better yet, what would should the DP bestseller list look like?

Franklin Kramer (NATO)

If you rolled out of bed this morning and joyously thanked your deity of choice for finally sending warm weather, you might be surprised to learn that not everyone is as enthusiastic about this spring’s soaring temperatures.

As the issue of global warming edges its way forward in the media’s spotlight into the public’s consciousness, concerned citizens are finding ways to get out their message.

This past Saturday, Penn hosted Power Shift2007, a conference hosted by 2020 Vision, a non-profit lobby that urges Congress to promote global security and protect the environment by decreasing our dependence on foreign oil and switching to alternative fuels.

The conference, which featured workshops and keynote addresses from former Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs Franklin Kramer and Congressman Chaka Fattah, drew about 110 people, half of them students, College sophomore and conference organizer Katarina Lackner said.

It’s refreshing to see such a conference take place on Penn’s campus, especially in light of recent, more controversial speakers coming to town.

But if 2020 Vision may have thought it would make a deep impact at one of the nation’s best universities, it was sorely mistaken. As part of its fight to slow global warming, 2020 Vision wants to limit our dependence on foreign oil. According to its website, the group is dedicated to changing “an economy that ships billions of dollars per year overseas, bankrupting our economy and supporting nations that are committed to international terrorism.”

But as I reported a few months ago, Penn hasn’t taken any steps (like making a symbolic or actual divestment) to distance ourselves from companies that buy their oil in the Middle East. If Penn wants to live up to the new green standards sweeping the nation (especially across college campuses), I can only hope that 2020 Vision’s efforts will help influence our own administration.

British Airways may not be flying so high for so long.

Hoist the flag and start the band for I am the bearer of good news. And not only that, I bring proof that globalization has benefits.

The US and the UK, encouraged by the pimp of laissez-faire, the EU, have agreed to an ‘Open-Skies’ accord. This agreement/deal/pact means that no longer will British Airways, Virgin Atlantic, American Airways and United Airlines dominate trans-Atlantic routes. Today (well, in March 2008 but who’s counting) we herald in a new era of nearly-perfect competition in trans-Atlantic air travel. And we, you, us, the consumers are set to benefit handsomely.

With the ‘Open-Skies’ deal set to launch in the Spring of next year, BMI, Lufthansa, Continental, Northwestern and Delta are all keen to commence flights of their own, which will bring new competition to the market and force down prices. Currently, the only direct flight from Philadelphia to London Heathrow is through BA. I just flew back from London on BA yesterday – the prices are rather expensive and in-flight environment is poor.

But fear not, for Terry Trippler, airline expert at U.S. travel club myvacationpassport.com told MSNBC last week that things are going to change. “As it gets into its real swing, we will have fare wars. It’s going to get bloody.” And by ‘bloody’ he means cheap, not gory like the 300, which, by the way, is a very entertaining movie and well worth a couple of hours of your time. But I digress. Back to the skies.

The biggest changes are set to come in the premium classes of travel. Business Class flights often cost 5 or 6 times the price of an economy class ticket, mainly due to a lack of flight options and a reluctance on the part of the businessman to make stops in order to lower the price. Convenience, up to now, has come at a price. But no more.

And the price drops aren’t to be confined to the luxury of upper-class fares. Those without the money or the parents to fund such excess will also to benefit from lower-prices and greater choice of flight times. The 7 hour red-eye to London has never been so appealing.

So for all the international kids here at Penn, your parents can sleep easy, safe in the knowledge that they’ll have some extra cash to burn on golf clubs, croissants and/or summers in the south of France. And for the Americans here who like to travel, the doors to Europe are more open than ever before. You will soon be out of excuses for never having climbed the Eiffel Tower, visited the Coliseum or seen the Crown Jewels.

It’s awkward to ride alone in a stranger’s car. For many of us, this is a routine experience — we take cabs. Roadway tet-a-tet between the driver and a Penn student rarely extends beyond destination information and a request for change. Each person continues a separate cell phone conversation in the language of his choice.

But two weeks ago, I had quite a different experience, en route to the Philadelphia Airport. As I hurriedly opened the doors of a taxicab, I quickly noticed something unusual. No, not the exorbitant cab fare or the rundown seat cushions. Not the lengthy Nigerian nameplate or the colorful scarf worn on the driver’s head. There was only one thing that really surprised me:

My driver was a woman.

At first, I sat quietly in the backseat, checking to make sure I had my plane ticket for about the fifth time. Peering out the window, I observed the usual near-collisions and listened to my driver gripe about this reckless motor etiquette.

“We do not have collision insurance,” she explained to me. Each driver must personally bear the financial and time expenses that result from an accident — the cab company doesn’t provide insurance.

Her comments broke the cell phone dam. I learned about her exhausting 12-hour shifts that will hopefully pay her way through school. An ambitious woman in a dangerous city, she has to bear day-to-day obstacles that I could never imagine. Her most shocking revelation was her interactions with male visitors to Philadelphia.

“They rely on taxi drivers to take them to where the prostitutes are,” the driver said. “Occasionally, the moment they realize that I’m a female, they are apologetic.”

My driver wished to remain anonymous, in order to protect her job. But she is one persistent woman, working her way through a male-dominated profession in a city quite far away from home. For this, I admire her.

“Hello and welcome to the metropolitan Texas Hold ‘em tournament. With massive budget deficits and crumbling infrastructure across the board, I don’t really see how the pot can grow too large tonight. What do you think Bob?”

“Well, Ted, I agree. We’re not going to see any windfalls. But I am interested in how Philadelphia will play this hand. People have written Philadelphia off before, but she’s scrappy. Let’s see what she’s got.”

“Philadelphia’s hand doesn’t look pretty, Bob. She’s been dealt ‘a struggling transit system‘ and ‘a sub-par casino plan‘. But she might as well ante in, see what’s in the flop.”

“Couldn’t agree more, Ted. Couldn’t agree more.”

“The first card, ‘inept politicians’, surely isn’t helping the situation. Oh, and the second card is even worse. It’s ‘a lack of sound city planning by the city government!’ I don’t see how Philadelphia can make anything out of this hand so far. The ‘lack of sound city planning’ card really doesn’t complement the ’sub-par casino plan’ card at all.

“No, Philadelphia needs lady luck to fix this hand.”

“But the third card in the flop could be a good sign. ‘Help from Harrisburg’ always seems to lend a hand, no matter how bad it gets.”

“I’ve seen Philadelphia use that card to her advantage before. This is a good sign for her.”

“Luckily, the turn is checked around. She can stay in and see what the turn card has to offer. And the turn card is flipped, and–WOW! Does that card ever reverse Philadelphia’s fortunes!”

“It’s a ‘problem combination’ card, Ted! Man, did Philadelphia get lucky tonight.”

“I can see what Philadelphia is thinking, Bob. Combine the ’struggling transit system’ and ’sub-par casino plan.’ Then pair that with ‘Help from Harrisburg.”

“But then she has to pray for a ‘creativity’ card. And we’ve only got the river card left, Ted.”

“Yes, it certainly is a gamble, Bob. But here’s the river card, and amazingly, Philadelphia gets her ‘creativity’ card! I’ve never seen anything like this Bob!”

“Now at the showdown, Philadelphia explains just how she’ll use these cards. With the ‘problem combination’ and ‘Help from Harrisburg,’ Philadelphia can legalize gambling on SEPTA. And using ‘creativity,’ she can fill her appetite for gambling on SEPTA, increasing ridership and plugging the funding gap.”

“It’s brilliant, Bob. This game is one for the centuries!”

Graffiti in Fisher-Hassenfeld last year (DP)

Blame the squirrels for those all cellophane wrappers on College Green, but take the rap when soda cans and empty take-out boxes start to crop up in hall lounges.

And when the contents of late night take-out spill into the hallway and begin to fester over the weekend, clean it up. Chalk it up to vandalism, sloth, drunken rampages, whatever. Just get rid of it. Pronto.

Trashing the halls seems to be a venerated Penn tradition as old as throwing toast or pelting juniors with ketchup on Hey Day — just larger manifestations of a schoolwide passion for putting food anywhere but in your mouth. However, littering too often crosses the line.

For several days, unidentified food (which I suspect are souring barbeque chicken wings) has been strewn across the halls in Ware. The sticky mess is splattered over several yards of floor tile, forcing me to skip comically over the mess on tiptoe. A big black trash bag has been artistically pinned to the walls. The spread’s on s tile, not carpet.

And it’s coming to a hallway near you. Over Halloween, an elevator in the high rises was vandalized out of commission. Last year, people stole furniture and potted plants from King’s Court. Sometimes, the vandalism turns malicious. Last January, anti-Semitic and homophobic graffiti appeared in corridors of Fisher-Hassenfeld.

And then, there’s senseless, run-of-the-mill destruction. Those people who don’t flush the toilets, pour coffee grinds down the sink, or vomit in the elevators. Insomia cookie boxes left on window ledges, under-the-door frat party leaflets, overflowing trash bins — courtesy of the un-housetrained few who treat public trashcans as personal garbage disposals.

Since the residential maintenance staff usually have the weekends off, they can’t come to the rescue until it’s too late. Come Monday morning, the festering remnants of our weekend debauchery rise to greet those much-enduring souls.

Vandalizers, repent now. Clean up your own messes. Release your destructive tendencies elsewhere. Turn Spring Fling into Spring Clean.

Or, if you must vandalize, do it through more creative channels. I like the poems written in chalk in Van Pelt stairwells. Or how, the other day, I spotted a Dr. Pepper can in the hands of a College Hall statue of former provost William Pepper. Try to navigate the tenuous line between art and crime. Flash mob on College Green, anyone?