A Shot of Hennessy

Looks terrifying, no?

Sometimes I wonder where this idea that all college students should be involved in volunteer activities came from.

Penn students are admittedly nuts. Trying to juggle an unfathomable amount of reading, problem sets, papers, meetings, clubs, sports teams, exam prep and, well, maybe some sort of a social life (if you’re lucky) is already nearly impossible. Now you want us to care about little kids’ addition skills? Yeah right.

I didn’t think my schedule would tolerate it, but like all pre-meds wanting to eventually be accepted to a choice medical school, I gave in. Last year, I donated three hours per week of my time to CHOP. After a background check and a stack of paperwork, they gave me a gigantic blue vest and an unlimited cafeteria debit card.

At first, I was psyched to interact with patients - it was almost like Grey’s Anatomy! But quickly my thoughts turned to disappointment. I wasn’t given much to do - most of the time I wandered through halls aimlessly, not wanting to wake sleeping patients or intrude on parents’ visiting hours. And believe me, there were no McDreamys.

Fellow pre-meds share my disillusionment with CHOP volunteering. HUP volunteers also felt as if their time was not used valuably. We all wished we could have just read our Organic Chemistry textbooks for three hours instead.

In general, access to volunteer opportunities is not what it should be at Penn. The Student Activities Fair is great for freshmen, but it’s only once a year and terribly overwhelming. There’s Civic House, of course, but does anyone actually go in there?

I went to find out. No one was available to talk to me, so I left my information with a receptionist. A week later, I called to follow up. Promised a phone call in 24 hours, I hung up satisfied. Yet I received no call-back. I guess they were too busy volunteering.

Several problems come to mind. First, information about volunteer organizations is not readily accessible. If you do find contact information, you’re lucky to get a call back. Larger organizations, like Kite and Key, are so diffuse that it’s easy to fall by the wayside.

Second, there’s the problem of limited time. My schedule is insanely busy, as I can imagine are those of most of my fellow students. We all want to help, but logistically sometimes taking part is simply impossible. Many organizations require regular, several-hour-long commitments.

Lastly, when we do get involved, many times our experiences are wholly unsatisfying. I know this is not the case with every organization or every volunteer, but the fact is that Penn students are incredible resources for these organizations - we have a lot more to give than just a pair of hands. Let us use our unique skills, whatever they may be, for the greater good.

More large-scale, well-advertised opportunities to volunteer on the weekend without a huge commitment would allow a larger percentage of the Penn population to participate. Holding regular “volunteer fairs” for undergraduates would create a continuous stream of new members for volunteer organizations. Shorter time commitments for weekly activities would be better tailored to a college students’ busy lifestyle.

In a perfect world, we’d all volunteer and feel fulfilled while helping numerous children with diabetes and puppies with only three legs. I’m going to shamelessly advance the agenda of this blog post by publicizing a few volunteer opportunities, just because I can:

The One Time Service Council at Civic House - email Sara at sgbarcla@sas.upenn.edu

Philadelphia Cares Day - Volunteer-A-Thon - Saturday, October 20, 2007
To join the Penn Team, contact Sara at sgbarcla@pobox.upenn.edu

Alternate Spring Break - contact Alison Wyant at alalond@pobox.upenn.edu

Happy soul-searching.

A Shot of Hennessy appears every Monday and Wednesday.

Caroline in the City

Just hope HotChick25 isn’t this lady.

Call me old fashioned, but internet dating still seems completely foreign to me.

I mean, I laughed when I heard my coworker say she met her boyfriend on Craig’s List, and I definitely thought it was odd when I dined with honeymooners on a cruise who met each other “e-dating.” After seeing countless advertisements for Philadelphiasingles.org on a walk downtown, it dawned on me that perhaps Penn students, and our peers at surrounding colleges, are willing to rely on such devices to meet significant others.

Out of curiosity, I checked out several internet dating sites, several of which allow you to view other people’s profiles without signing up. To my surprise, I recognized a few Penn students, including one of my former sorority sisters.

Why would students at such a large and diverse university go to such lengths to search for someone compatible with themselves? “Perhaps it’s one’s desire to find a mate of the same religious or ethnic background,” said an Engineering junior who wished to remain anonymous. “I signed up for J-date, but I’ve yet to actually meet anyone yet,” the student continued.

So while I am not one to judge my classmates who participate in such an activity, I do believe that there are more conventional ways to meet individuals without hiding behind the veil of a computer screen. Anyone can be outgoing, “beautiful,” and seemingly cool via the World Wide Web, but it takes initiative to approach a love interest in person, and in my opinion, more if you can win him over.

So while some might say internet dating is the dating of the future, I urge people not to rely on such a socially passive method of meeting people. As my mother says, these sites are for “those out of circulation,” like 45-year-old divorcees. As a Penn student, I can assure yoi that neither I, nor any of my 10,000 peers are out of circulation; it just may take a small push past the socially awkward boundary to find a potential companion.

Caroline in the City appears every Wednesday and Friday.

Common $ense

How’s that for a campaign poster?

It always amazes me how candidates running for student government use their campaign as a referendum on Penn Dining; vowing to miraculously make it better. I mean, where in the real world can you be rewarded by making empty, meaningless promises you have no way of delivering on?

Fortunately a dairy and beverage company by the name of Wimm-Bill-Dann Foods OJSC (Ticker: WBD) provides us a more long term way to invest in the future of food…in Russia.

Dominant in the rapidly expanding Eastern European market, I’d argue Penn hasn’t seen such a Russian force since last year’s women’s tennis freshman phenom, and my former Management 100 student, Ekaterina Kosminskaya. ( I taught her everything she knows.) Given the rising real income of eastern Europeans and a lack of market saturation, WBD has many catalysts for future growth.

While some analysts are less enthusiastic in the short term on the stock, there are still gains to be made for the patient who believe in Russia’s long-term growth story.

While on the topic of food, let’s not forget the call I made last semester on Chiquita Brands International (Ticker: CQB) as it rose from under $14 to as high as $19 this summer. That type of money could have paid for a lot of late night drunken Wawa runs. I don’t endorse the stock now, but I recommend their salads for prospective sorority hopefuls looking to get in shape for spring rush. (Look out ladies - it’s less than 12 weeks away).

In case you need more proof that WBD is the real deal, unlike Penn’s freshmen class, they won’t clutter campus with a barrage of ugly signs and shoddily made posters. Apparently arts and crafts was not one of the sections added to the new SAT.

Buy some WBD as a vote of confidence in a candidate that can truly satisfy your tummy.

Common $ense appears every Tuesday and Thursday.

Under the Button

This is what happens when bad sex happens to good people.

Somewhere in Idaho, an SUV hit a telephone pole because two people couldn’t wait to get home. Going at it in the back of the car threw it off balance, the driver lost control, and they wound up with a wrecked car and a decent-sized fine.

I’m still confused about how they got into the circumstance anyway. Sheer lust? Thrill-seeking? Complete lack of other options? I’m just not convinced that it’s normal to sexile your friend to the driver’s seat instead of all the way out of the car.

Of course, Penn students would never do anything that dumb. We all have to take physics to fill our intellectually stimulating sector requirements. We know all about forces, centers of gravity and tipping over. I realized, though, that there are certainly other situations that any innocent Penn kid could wander into without realizing the dangers. Thus, some bad ideas in honor of poor, SUV-lacking Joshua Frank.

As Penn students have consistently demonstrated their deep love of exhibitionism, I’ll go ahead and take a fellow blogger’s recommendation to warn everyone against the high rise windows. Not only are you risking exposure, breaking glass (hey, I don’t know how you’d do it, but the company that makes the windows says it could be done), and a cold butt, you’re also being unoriginal. Boo.

Same for Huntsman Hall study rooms - with the added “ewww, people work on those chairs” factor. There’s a reason they don’t have blinds in there.

I see your minds flocking to an open place without windows. No one would stop you at midnight on College Green, right? Alas, even if drunken spectators don’t throw beer on you, I’m pretty sure you still have an enemy. The ever-present squirrels will make their presence felt. (Yeah, they’re supposed to be asleep at night, but these are certainly not normal squirrels that we’re dealing with.)

If we’re still looking around Penn for interesting places to sex it up, how can we neglect Van Pelt? Sadly, there, too, we run into problems. Pick up the pace or the energy of the encounter in the stacks and you’ll certainly be crushed to death by books on things you didn’t even know existed.

Of course, there’s always the construction if you need an adrenaline rush. It’s everywhere, might as well be good for something.

In your sexcapades around Penn, be safe. Don’t be like our friend Joshua. For every hot, steamy moment, remember the person who brought it safely to you: your good old physics professor.

Under the Button appears every Tuesday and Friday.

Beckstreet’s Beck (Alright!)

Philly’s own Ryan Howard tied the Major League Baseball record for strikeouts this Sunday. Over the past 130 years, since the National League’s inception, of the over 15,000 estimated players, none have failed as much as Howard to do the most basic thing a baseball player is paid to do - put the bat on the ball.

So fast even I can’t see the ball zooming past him.

Why aren’t Philly fans up in arms over last year’s MVP breaking this dubious record? The notoriously harsh and sometimes evil fans will boo almost anything, so why not Howard?

The reason is simple. Despite his assault on the record for whiffs, Howard is still one heck of a player. He’s second in the league in home runs and in the top ten in the statistic OPS OPS. Turns out when it comes to baseball, power is positively correlated to strike outs.

What can us non-coordinated Penn nerds learn from the 6′4″ first basemen? Simple: swing for the fences.

Since the age of five, adults have asked us, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Sadly, the answers are now much different than they were in kindergarten.

Doctor is still a popular one, but things like astronaut and president have been replaced by IT manager and financial analyst.

The sad part about it is that as students at Penn, we have a tremendously greater chance of becoming president than the kids in our kindergarten class ever did. Think back: half the kids spent their day sharpening their crayons for no reason, and a few inexplicably managed to cut themselves with “safety scissors”. Should these kids really have higher aspirations than us? Note: This is probably untrue for those of you who went to elite primary schools that were younger versions of Deerfield. I imagine everyone in your class read The Cat in the Hat in a way worthy of your heritage.

So the moral of the story is, keep striving for those goals. Don’t take the job that pays you the most; take the job that teaches you the most. Then, once you’ve learned and networked all you can, swing for the fences.

If you fail, try again. Nobody knows how many days Neil Armstrong has spent not landing on the moon, and if the Phillies make the playoffs, people will forget how many times Ryan Howard struck out. Just remember - power is positively correlated with strike outs.

Beckstreet’s Beck (Alright!) appears every Tuesday and Thursday.

A Nick at a Time

It’s all fun and games until someone goes to the hospital.

“…the freshman party thing, where you just roam in packs, looking for whatever’s going on…ears perked, listening for noise that might hint at a frat party.”

So College freshman Marty Borowsky described the social scene during New Student Orientation. This scene arises out of three defining characteristics of the freshman experience.

First, complete and total freedom - the freedom “…of not having anyone to supervise you all the time,” as College freshman Colin Dampier put it. This is a marked change from the homes most students come from, where, as College freshman Trixie Canivel said, “…you had the luxury of having people help you with some stuff. You didn’t have to be responsible.”

Second, the need to make new social connections. Freshmen come in not knowing anyone - which is one reason freshmen go to these parties in the first place. To meet people.

Third, easy access to alcohol and a virtual lack of consequences for using it.

Put all of this together and you get an environment where it is very easy for freshmen to make bad choices concerning alcohol.

When bad choices are made, little is done to help them. While resources are available to those who seek them out, authority figures rarely exercise it in an effectual manner. “Even if you do get written up, you really don’t get in any trouble. You just get a talking-to,” Dampier says.

While such a policy emphasizes freshmen’s maturity, it does not have their best interest in mind. Students are cast into an environment where they are free to make choices that may really mess up their lives, and those who struggle are often left to struggle alone. You can teach someone to swim by throwing them into a river, but there are more compassionate ways to do so.

Penn should stop turning a blind eye to the situation during NSO, and it should recognize that discipline is necessary to teach healthy limits.

The 2005 Alcohol Response Team considered “…whether the UPPD should be asked to crack down on underage drinking,” but decided not to risk alienating students and the police. The mindset that the University can ask (read: tell) the police force what and what not to enforce is alarming to me, but that’s another blog. This perspective should be reconsidered.

In addition, to mean anything, being written up should result in more than a slap on the wrist. A policy without discipline is impotent.

If the University cares about its students’ wellbeing, it should take a more active role in deterring unhealthy behavior.

A Nick at a Time appears every Tuesday and Thursday.

Dear Danny

The extent of Penn’s help to students (Photo by Dan Brickley, of a poster in Harnwell College House)

The RIAA is at it again. They sent 403 “pre-litigation” letters to students who used university networks to download music illegally. The letters offer students the “opportunity” to settle before an official lawsuit is filed against them. The options are stark: thousands of dollars in “settlement” or protracted court battles, legal fees, and uncertain outcomes.

The students come from schools across the country. MIT has 30. UC-Santa Barbara, 13. The University of Wisconsin system has 62. And, unfortunately, our very own University of Pennsylvania will receive 31 letters to deliver to students.

But with so many prestigious schools being targeted, many industry observers wonder why Harvard University avoids conflict. From eight waves of these letters, Penn received 48 (at my count), while Harvard received only one, in 2005.

However, since Harvard Law professors stood up to the RIAA in the form of an op-ed in the Harvard Crimson, the RIAA conspicuously avoids this Ivy League institution. The op-ed didn’t condone illegal file sharing, but it did call on the RIAA to, essentially, pick on someone their own size. The authors, Charles Nesson and Wendy Selzer, also call out the RIAA, saying “it is easier to litigate against change than change with it.”

While some affected schools refuse to deliver the letters, none have spoken the progressive words that Harvard has. And none have received a respite from the RIAA.

Although I do not condone peer-to-peer file sharing of copyrighted material (did you hear that, RIAA?), I do call on Penn and others to follow Harvard’s lead. The RIAA’s (and, coincidentally, Congress’s) support of outdated copyright laws should not prevent Penn and other like-minded institutions from standing up for change.

Penn can always refuse to deliver the letters, but demanding change in the letter of the law would be more effective.

Dear Danny appears every Monday and Wednesday.

BeatNick

“Our bikinis are exciting. They are simply the tops.”

Get it? It’s what’s known as a double meaning, or, to those in the know, a lexical ambiguity. Offer one up in a linguistics class and you’ll get all the giggling and snorting you’d expect from a roomful of nerds.

But lexical ambiguities aren’t so funny when they deal with guns, kids, and Philadelphia. That’s why I wasn’t laughing when I read this sign at the corner of 40th and Chestnut streets:

“The gun you buy for a criminal could kill a child.”

There are two very different interpretations of that message. The first, in which “for” means “on behalf of,” is the more intuitive of the two. Just like you shouldn’t buy liquor for minors, maybe the sign is discouraging you from buying guns for criminals.

But who the fuck buys guns for criminals? And what kind of morality can we expect from these kinds of people? Is anyone really going to be deterred because the gun they’re exchanging for crack might discharge in some schoolgirl’s face?

These kinds of questions lead us to think maybe the other interpretation is the intended one. In this second reading, “for” means “to protect against,” in the same way you might buy mouse traps for mice. That would mean the message is targeted towards a law-abiding civilian who buys a gun to protect his family, only to have his adorable daughter accidentally blow her brains out. That theme is a familiar one–I’ve seen PSAs expressing the same idea.

The sign wouldn’t be so disturbing if it were confined to one spot. But apparently it’s everywhere - at bus stops, on the backs of SEPTA buses, even on billboards right off the freeway. Something has to be done.

Fortunately, there’s hope. Pennsylvania Attorney General Tom Corbett, District Attorney Lynne Abraham, and Philadelphia Police Commissioner Sylvester Johnson have proudly affixed their names to the sign. Time to make some phone calls. I won’t stop until I know whose idea the sign was, and what the hell it’s trying to say. Stay tuned for part 2 of this investigation.

BeatNick appears every Monday and Thursday.

Editor’s note: Since posting, two of the ads have been taken down - perhaps they heard about this blog?

A Shot of Hennessy

Ben Harper rocking the stage at Saturday’s concert. (Photo by Morgan Hennessy)

I worship Ben Harper. He’s an incredible lyricist and composer - talented in ways not many recording artists these days can hope to be. And he puts on one hell of a show.

Saturday night at the Tower Theater, my fellow Ben enthusiasts and I paid homage at the alter. The energy of the crowd was overwhelming - and Ben acknowledged it, saying, “I wish I could take you guys to Boston with me,” at the end of the show. See how good it was in the video below (the pictures not that great, but the sound, as usual, is divine):

Some of my most treasured experiences have been concerts shared with close friends and family. Music occupies a central part of my life and I can’t imagine living without it. It’s my soundtrack, my stress relief and my work-out motivation. It wakes me up in the morning and puts me to sleep at night.

But I get the feeling not many Penn students feel the same way. Mostly I just hear complaints about the selections for SPEC events on campus.

Cultivating a taste in music takes work. Short of illegally downloading the new Soulja Boy single (though, wow, does it stir up some serious discussion) on LimeWire, most people our age don’t try hard enough to enrich their musical collections. Everyone needs to find music that stirs the soul. It’s just one of those things. And Britney probably can’t deliver that.

Like everyone else, I’m always trying to find music for free. There are legal ways - none of us want to be one of the 31 who got letters from the RIAA. Raid your parents’ CD collections, ask your foreign friends for mixes, check out the library’s collection. I swear I’ve found some of my favorite albums on library shelves.

Try something new, even if you haven’t heard of the artist - you might be surprised to find you love Miles Davis or Todd Rundgren. Love that song from the new iPod commercial? Listen to more Feist. There’s room on that 30GB iPod, no matter how many techno songs you have crammed onto it.

Check out XPN’s live archives. They also constantly stream music online - it’s a great way to mix up your studying in Van Pelt. Just make sure you keep a list of artists that have caught your…ear? You can also find a list of all the songs played each day online.

Earlier this year a fellow blogger wrote an account of all World Cafe Live has to offer - who could turn down a free live concert? I second his remarks, and after all, it’s not that far of a walk.

Not sure if you want to actually lay down the $9.99 for the album on iTunes? Test-drive it at Rhapsody. Also, Pandora (i.e., “the music genome project”) will offer you less predictable alternatives to Dave Matthews Band.

Take my suggestions and you might find an artist who can change your life and make you think in ways you haven’t thought before - like Ben Harper does for me. We’re in college, after all - we’re supposed to do that kind of hippie crap. Rediscover The Grateful Dead and all that.

Then maybe next time someone asks you what kind of music you like, you’ll have something more interesting to say than “Oh, everything.” I look forward to it.

A Shot of Hennessy appears every Monday and Wednesday.

CommenTATE

Students mill about at a Wharton career fair last year.

If you’re in Wharton, Engineering or Nursing you’re probably not worried about a job. Well, at least you don’t act like it.

We in the College feel a lot of anxiety about getting a job because we think our degree is dismissed by those in Wharton and doubted by those in Engineering. They try to make us think a College degree is for novices and that a more “advanced” degree is essential. Throw out the doubt. It’s not.

Career Link 2007, the annual career fair at Penn, happened this past week. Patricia Rose, Director of Career Services, told me over the phone that students in the College are “sought after” by many employers there. Rose e-mailed me some very handy Class of 2006 raw data, which surveyed roughly half the Class of 2006. Over-half of those reported full-time employment with salaries in the range of $20,000 to $85,000.

Okay, so the statistic sounds great. However, the concern of becoming a College graduate struggling to find employment isn’t unfounded. Recently, I glanced at a New York Times article pointing out that the number of students in a master’s program had doubled since 1980. It featured people who claimed they wouldn’t have their job without a master’s degree. It surprised me because there’s also a reverse trend - I had just read a different article about people forgoing an M.B.A. because it’s “a waste of money and time - time that could be spent making money.”

Nevertheless, the question still burned: Is a College degree enough to carry me into a first job? Yes it is. Don’t let others discourage or dilute the value of a College education when solid evidence reveals we are entering the workforce successfully. Take that, Whartonites and Engineers!

CommenTATE appears every Monday and Friday.