This picture of stolen DPs appeared on the front page of the paper back in the Stone Age when the DP was printed solely in black and white.

Can you steal something if it’s free?

Two Rowan University students will find out soon enough. The
campus newspaperThe Whit ran a front-page story implicating students in a drug bust. Two friends of the accused, upset that the names were published, responded by allegedly
stealing 600 newspapers from the student union. The students face repercussions from the university, and the legal ramifications are currently being evaluated. In the end, the whole disruption only served as a PR stunt.

Stealing newpapers in protest is nothing new. In 2002, a Temple student stole thousands of copies of The Temple News. Unlike the Rowan paper-snatchers, the Temple student sought to cover her own criminal tracks. In an open editorial, the editors estimated a $10,000 loss for the paper.

The DP has also fallen victim to paper snatchers. In 1993, students stole almost
14,000 copies of The Daily Pennsylvanian, almost its entire press run. In a semester of heated racial conflict stemming from the infamous “water buffalo” incident and the dearth of minority DP staff writers, tensions finally erupted. Specifically, George Pavlik’s “controversial and conservative” column, which claimed lighter treatment for the campus Black Honor Society, spurred the protest. But in this case, the protesters didn’t merely take the papers, they replaced them with a statement. The posted signs explained their charge of institutional antagonism by the DP, ending with an identification of the actors as, simply, the “Black Community”.

Whether or not their method of protest was appropriate, the actions of the so-called “Black Community” were much more noble. In contrast to more recent protests, where the motivation was selfish, a productive debate came out of the ashes of the lost DP circulation. The students engaged in this act did so not to protect a reputation, but to protect the larger rights of others.

It comes down to this: stealing college newspapers is a high-visibility, high-consequence act that can censor the student press. The Rowan students need to reserve their most serious tactics for our most serious and wide-reaching issues.

In an email to the New York Times, Coulter wrote “C’mon, it was a joke. I would never insult gays by suggesting that they are like John Edwards. That would be mean.” (CNN)

A Yale Law graduate with no job offers. Racist, sexist, homophobic messages. Concerned statements from the Deans of Yale and Penn Law. All the makings of another Penn scandal, but this one ends in a twist.

Anthony Ciolli, a third year Penn Law student, cofounded a law school admissions message board called AutoAdmit, that has drawn controversy for offensive posts and photos. In response, Ciolli packed his box like he’d heeded Beyonce’s request, and resigned. No fanfare, no press statements, just a quiet move to step down.

Recent scandals have exposed the need for just this kind of response to controversy.
Increasingly, those in the hot seat assert tepid and unconvincing defenses to impropriety.

Take, for example, the latest college sports scandal. Last week, USC football players came under fire for creating the Facebook group “White Nation,” complete with a picture of a black baby in handcuffs. The group, which allegedly springs from an inside joke, came under harsh criticism by some USC students. The players responsible offered that while their public display showed poor judgment, they were not racist — after all, one of the team members had a black roommate.

No kidding.

Celebrities are even more disconcerting. Ann Coulter shocked liberals and conservatives alike with her homophobic slur directed at John Edwards. To respond, she dusted off a “hail mary” offensive play in posting the speech on her website, where she notes her amusement over the controversy. Other famous figures flipped to the “Defense” section in their play books, sending their best linebackers to downplay media coverage (Paris Hilton’s alleged racist slur? Hiding under the guise of overexposure, she escaped mass media coverage of the incident). And finally, Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, read the defense well. After his inflammatory comments in a newspaper, he called an audible, quickly issuing an apology.

None of these defenses achieves a satisfactory remedy. In resigning, Ciolli bucked the trend of his contemporaries. His stepping down was a clear and severe measure, using the power of action to rectify the power of the posted words. Kudos to him. Maybe others will be bold enough to copy his playbook.

Yesterday we shivered goodbye to February, a month that brought us our first real snowstorm, a lonely Valentine’s Day, and of course, a celebration of black history.

But as the month drew to a close, we were again faced with questions around the form of the celebration. When Dr. Woodson’s original Black History Week

expanded to a full month in 1976, the goal was to emphasize an underappreciated history. However, critic from Morgan Freeman and Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr have recently criticized the celebration saying that it canonized a separation between Black History and the rest of American history.

Black professors in particular wrestle with packaging their culture into a mere month’s worth of activities. English professor Dr. Herman Beavers explained his position in an e-mail interview, “I think Black History Month has run its course–in the 21st Century, black folks deserve to be so integral to how we talk about ‘American history’, that it should be unnecessary to ‘commemorate’ our contributions to American culture–we get programming that tries to address everything going on in the black community. The problem is that maintaining the charade just allows our history to be ghettoized.”
Both white and black histories are so interrelated, we need a more comprehensive way of telling these stories in a normative, integrated way.

On the last day of Black History month, Professor Michael Eric Dyson confronted this issue as he promoted his book,
Debating Race at the Penn Bookstore. He offered up witty, controversial remarks on everything from hip-hop to Barack Obama. When asked for questions, a concerned mother asked about dealing with the victim-heavy treatment of black history at her son’s school.

Dyson responded in his distinct Southern cadence, “The greatest victory of white supremacy is to convince black people that they don’t need to know their own history.” He added, “Even certain strands of Afrocentric calls to exclude slavery collude with those who don’t want us to talk about it.”

Dyson warned strictly against remaining in his oft-quoted, “United States of Amnesia.” He correctly seeks a balance between the “repeated articulation” of black history and avoiding the fire hose of single month recognition. African-American history should be celebrated not because so-called “tolerance” obliges listening to any hyphenated group, but because the contributions of African-Americans to American History were, and are, truly remarkable.

Ikea is also selling reusable bags (Ikea)

Pay more or plastic (Ikea)

Part of the Hill experience is the dining hall. With a little help from my scholarship, I’ve been on the meal plan for my four years here. My daily routine consists of two or three on-the-go Express
meals saddled into staple “Thank You Very Much” plastic bags. I’ve used the excess bags, as trash cans and first responders in keeping the Hill draft in check.

But Ikea’s creative. Last week, href="http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSN2131088920070221?src=022107_1433_ARTICLE_PROMO_also_on_reuters&pageNumber=1"="_blank"> Ikea announced it will expand its plastic bag reduction program to the United States. They’ll charge five cents fora plastic bag, with the option of purchasing their reusable, biodegradable “Big Blue Bags”. No, their accountants aren’t failed Whartonites, the program isn’t designed to make money. The ultimate goal is deterring people from using bags they don’t need, thereby reducing excess waste from plastic bags. The program has seen incredible success in Europe. According to Ikea’s press release , plastic bag usage has decreased 97 percent, falling from 32 million to 900,000 bags in one year. On March 15, they will initiate their program in American stores, projecting a 50%
reduction in the 70 million bags currently given out.

Kevin Levy, Director of the Penn Environmental Group, is enthusiastic about the program. He wrote in an e-mail interview that, “Ikea’s incorporation of policies that will discourage the use of plastic bags is a positive step towards reducing waste…PEG would like to encourage businesses to follow Ikea’s model in creating environmentally friendly practices that are also cost effective.”

And we should look to businesses on campus to take the lead. General Manager of Penn Dining Services, John Cipollini, is familiar with the program, noting “It’s a pretty cool idea.” Although unable to estimate the usage of plastic bags by Penn Dining customers, he emphasized “The idea of reducing plastic usage is a good one.”

We’ve seen through their commitment to local food products and nutrition, Penn Dining and Aramark value socially conscious programs.

Granted, plastic bags may not be as weighty an issue compared tolarger environmental concerns. However, addressing it would add breadth to Penn’s legacy of preserving and driving local conservation
efforts.

Drink a highball at nightfall.

The Penn Lady Quakers lost to Cornell 58-67. But the real loss was that the crowd in the stands seemed to have little cross over with the crowd on Locust Walk. It appeared that only parents and alumni joined my friends and I in the stands. Unfortunately, the norm for Penn basketball games is a decent, but wanting level of attendance.

During one of my graduate school interviews , I had the fortune of attending a University of Michigan basketball game. I was blown away by their passion. Fans were ferociously and single-mindedly devoted to a Blue win, a fervor some wish was here at Penn. The Michigan fight song broke out several times, demonstrating that students were more interested in displaying school pride than disparaging their opponents with overdone cries of “a-hole.”

It’s disappointing that the only Penn basketball shirts I see around campus are Penn vs. Princeton designs. We should love and cling to our Penn sweatshirts, not only when it’s cold. With our current senior class and rich athletic history, Penn has enough to cheer for on its own merits. Penn pride should swell at every tip-off, every home game.

Now, we certainly boast some passionate fans, even outside of the Red & Blue Crew . The spirited students I fantasize about made their way out of the dorms for the classic Penn-Princeton game last week. Brian Head of the Penn
Athletics Marketing Department estimated the crowd at roughly 1,000 students. Even so, for Penn’s most highly publicized home game, we could have come out in even fuller force.

Former Senior Sports Editor Joshua Hirsch noted in an e-mail interview about the Penn-Princeton game, “I definitely like the intensity of the students that are there. Am I disappointed that more students don’t come? Yeah, but it’s a lot better than every other Ivy League school.”

Let’s not take for granted the chance to cheer on our team, even after the season is over with upcoming March Madness events. After all, you only live, or live at a Division I school, but once.

Excited for that school let out after only half a day, I eagerly left my high school to head downtown. I, like a good suburban Maryland student, was on my way to a protest at the Supreme Court during the 2003 challenge to the University of Michigan’s affirmative action policy. I ended up missing the march, but picked up one of the signs anyway provided by the organization By Any Means Necessary.

Otherwise known as BAMN, this political action group has a history of swarming meetings to block votes and organizing public protests. Beyond marches, they’ve expanded their arsenal to include aggressive legal campaigns. In 2003, they filed as a co-defendant supporting affirmative action in the Grutter v. Bollinger Supreme Court case, and are currently fighting to block the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative, claiming that the anti-affirmative action Proposition 2 was improperly allowed on the ballot. BAMN is not merely a rag-tag group of over-passionate, under-informed radicals, and their supporters show as much.

The list of endorsements for BAMN’s 2003 march reads like a roster for a Fels Institute of Government symposium. The AFL-CIO, Congressman John Conyers, and three city councils all officially endorsed the protest.

The list had local supporters as well. The former faculty fellow of DuBois College House, Dr. Vinay Harpalani, was instrumental in organizing Penn’s 500-person delegation to the 2003 protest at the Supreme Court. Harpalani also earned his PhD from Penn in 2005, and while a graduate student, organized press conferences downtown, coordinated student groups in support of affirmative action, and orchestrated a picket of Justice Scalia when he spoke at the law school. Our own GAPSA endorsed the rally- their detailed resolution is online, at the BAMN website no less!

A protester joins others in a demonstration against Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia outside of the University Museum when he spoke at Penn in 2003. (Geoff Robinson/DP)

Intelligent, rational, well-thought out individuals is in our own backyard &mdash BAMN is not an organization for extremists.

On a broader scale, BAMN is not the end-all for affirmative action activism, nor should it be. They have honed their specific method of contribution &mdash investigating how anti-affirmative action petitions are conducted, protesting court cases that may undermine racial integration, and raising awareness of the exponential loss to minority students after affirmative action programs are discontinued. There’s a host of ways we can get facts out, BAMN represents a public arm that is complemented, and not complicated, by conventional discussion.

Well, the hiatus is over!

I’ve missed you all terribly–my friends, my classmates, and the maintenance man who fights a losing battle against my drafty window. I’m unpacking from a round of graduate school interviews- think OCR except, well, it was actually designed with personal sanity in mind!

For the last four weeks I’ve been dragging my gear to the R1, getting to check out some excellent Biology programs for three days at a time. I interviewed, I saw the sights, and came back with a new perspective–or at least, a new hoodie to call my own. At these schools I saw good, I saw bad, and I saw so ugly that it made Norbit look decent.

Still appreciating Penn, I could see the good in other schools:

What made me dream fondly of the uneven bricks and grid-pattern streets? The bad:

And certainly, the ugly:

Fortunately, I’m feeling great about my visits, but am certainly glad to be back in the city. Coming back from the airport, I was greeted with an etched “F U” on the seat of the R1. I smiled — I knew I was home.

Duke had its rape case. Dartmouth had its Native American iconography. Cornell had a student sentenced for a racially motivated stabbing. Wait, what?

It’s not been thirty days since Dick Clark and confetti and already racially motivated controversies have begun in earnest. Let’s take a spin around January at the Ivies. At Princeton , the editors of the Daily Princetonian came under fire last week for a controversial joke issue degrading Asian-Americans. At Columbia , the school severed ties with its popular Boredatbutler.com site, an anonymous discussion board, in response to student uproar over racist comments about its coach. And yes, at Cornell , Nathan Poffenbarger was sentenced yesterday for a federal hate crime. He is accused of, and pled guilty to, stabbing a black visiting student in 2005.

It seems like we don’t hear about these incidents unless they’re major national news. Even our own Daily Pennsylvanian has never reported on the Poffenbarger arrest, trial, or conviction. We rely on an “out of sight, out of mind” policy, one that lulls us into a false assumption of civility and maintenance of the status quo.

What can we do to affect change in this? As Karlene Burrell-McRae, director of the Black Cultural Center Makuu offers, “I loathe racist, sexist, homophobic, hateful language. But at the same time, I appreciate that we have been given this democracy to be individuals. I always try to charge myself with how to think about creating and sustaining a healthy community.” But in order to have constructive exchanges can happen, we’d need to know there was an issue. This lack of awareness, as seen (or not seen!) by minimal coverage in the DP, gives us a sense of perceived normalcy in our peer campuses.

Harvard Crimson columnist Sahil Mahtani is sympathetic to the Princeton editor’s plight, boldly ending his column by declaring “Most mean well. In fact, this is as close to a perfect community as we are likely to see in our lives.” Well, if we could read more of what’s actually happening around us, we’d see more of how “perfect” these communities are.

courtesy Consumerinfo.com

The other day I was checking Facebook for some study relief when a sidebar ad caught my eye. It declared, “Just like your GPA, your credit score follows you through life.” An exaggeration to be sure, but it hits on a sore point.

We’ve been inculcated that our GPA is our identity, our worth, and our highest pursuit. let’s face it– Penn students continue to be burdened by the pressure of maintaining an impeccable transcript. But I’m not ready to upgrade my struggle for perfect grades to a more “adult” numerical mirror — the dreaded credit score. What we need isn’t a credit check, but a reality check.

We all know the importance of a GPA in getting that first post-college position, but does it really “follow us” for life, as the ad suggests? I checked the University’s Human Resources vacancy listing, looking at 49 records for Executive/Managerial Administration positions. Out of these openings, there was not a single post that mentioned GPA. All experienced, high-prestige positions, none wrote of undergraduate grades.

Peggy Curchack, Associate Director of Career Services, echoes seeing this trend. In an email interview, Curchack explained that “When employers look to hire ‘experienced’ people, they do not ask for GPA, regardless of industry. For all the years that I have posted jobs for alumni, I’ve never seen a request for a transcript or a GPA.” She further noted that although the GPA is highly valued in certain industries, the GPA’s maximum authority peaks “when you apply for your first job out of college…and when you apply to graduate or professional school.” let’s take advantage of her far-reaching perspective and check it against our own fears, as grades verifiably are not markers of our ultimate worth.

There are some things that will follow me through life — integrity, love, and hey, even your criminal record. But my GPA? I won’t buy the hype and I won’t be scared — I want to be remembered for greater things.

I’ve never been robbed in my four years at Penn-save for my nicest umbrella being stolen in Au Bon Pain (no hard feelings Wharton, seriously!). So I’m certainly shocked to hear of the recent trial of senior Andrew Boyd. In a letter to the editor last week, Boyd decried the lack of security on campus–his house on 41st and Spruce was robbed over the winter break.

Seal of the Penn Police Force (courtesy of the Penn Police/)

To be sure, the Penn Police force is responsible for the safety of the Penn community both on and around campus. But sometimes, this outrage can collectively lead to calls for “over-policing”, into a widespread suspicion of those in the West Philadelphia community. What happens then?

I was a freshman when I learned of an Associate Faculty Master being pepper sprayed under suspicion of bike theft. Sophomore year, a classmate was pulled over and handcuffed for a suspected crime. Both men, both black, have since had their charges dismissed.

At that same time that break-ins such as Boyd experienced may lead to concerns of under-policing, there are those among us who have suffered the opposite. A blanket call for increased police presence without accompanying discretion can leave a wake of innocent victims, both inside and beyond our borders.

One way to help resolve our desires for sensitive yet effective policing is to learn more of the “other side”. We know how it feels to be Penn students in the middle of this city, let’s hear more about those who have encountered characteristically different interactions with the police. One way to have a more comprehensive view of how crime policies affect all of us is to come to the events this week in remembrance of Dr. King’s birthday. In fact, there’s a panel discussion on “Police Relations within the Community” on the 25th.

You may see me there — I’ll be the one without an umbrella.