A Virginia Tech student at Tuesday night’s candlelight vigil. (Taylor Howard/DP)

When I heard about the shootings, the first thing that came to mind was a Penn undergraduate’s response to a column I wrote last September on inadequate support for international students.

“I can tell you that I never before felt so lost as I did in the first semester here at Penn,” the student wrote in an e-mail. “I got depressed, clinically diagnosed…”

“None of the American students could understand how I felt, and I felt misunderstood in almost everything, jokes I said, my humor, my reasoning, etc. The other international students were busy with their own depressions save a few, but many students developed a barrier to these conversations as they are scared of being affected themselves. Also being at an Ivy, students hardly have enough time for themselves, rather than worrying about this international awkward kid that has nothing to offer for benefit.”

The student then said he had considered suicide — an “easier” route than the “torture” of having no one to talk to — before entering a program at CAPS, “which really saved me.”
Other isolated international students also wrote me. One wanted to read more about a case I cited — that of Sinedu Tadesse, a lonely Ethiopian student at Harvard who killed herself and her roommate in 1995 after she failed to connect with counselors on campus.

When I first read them, these e-mails confirmed my original notions: International students, who must acclimate both to a new culture and to the college environment, are at greatest risk of isolation on today’s campuses (which isn’t to say Cho Seung-Hui’s self-perpetuated alienation derived from being Korean; he had legally lived here since 1992 — though mostly among other immigrants in Centreville, Virginia — and was mentally ill).

Today, I reread the emails and think I should have taken every precaution and forwarded them to CAPS. Recent media coverage of Cho’s mental state has made us all rethink our past actions and ask two questions: What can I do to help? And could it happen here? But long after we stop asking, the answers will remain: It could happen here, but we can minimize the risk with certain steps.

Like reading Melanie Thernstrom’s Halfway Heaven, an insightful account of how Tadesse became excluded by Harvard’s preexisting social circles and slowly spiraled into a secluded delirium. Steps like revising the advising system so students actually have a faculty member with whom they feel comfortable talking.
Steps like plotting an actual course for students with “trouble getting acclimated.” Currently, a faculty resource guide tells advisers to refer such students to Penn Women’s Center, the English Language Programs Office and the Weingarten Learning Resources Center, among other groups.

That sounds like a very precise way to let a student fall through the cracks. And if I sound alarmist, it’s only because Penn’s sirens have been ringing for nearly 20 years: A 1989 study found that black Penn students leave school more often than others because they feel a “widespread sense of racial isolation.” At 12 percent of Penn’s population, international students may be the new isolated minority group.

(Alexandra Bell/The Crimson) President Gutmann visits Harvard earlier this semester.

Penn President Amy Gutmann has made Harvard’s official list of 30 “contenders” for its presidential opening, according to a late-breaking story in The Harvard Crimson. The list also includes Columbia President Lee Bollinger and Princeton President Shirley Tilghman.

The Crimson has only learned 11 of the 30 names on the list, after “two sources close to the Harvard Corporation” leaked the information. The list was formed by Harvard’s presidential search committee and presented on Sunday to the school’s Board of Overseers, an influential group of alumni.

So, what does this all mean?

For one, it means Harvard didn’t rule Gutmann out after her Halloween photo fiasco. It also means that Harvard doesn’t care whether its candidates have expressed interest in the position, as Gutmann publicly has not (despite being named a finalist for the position when it was last vacant in 2001).

But most important, for Penn, Gutmann’s inclusion on the list means she must now look to Rutgers and pull a Greg Schiano.

Schiano, of course, is the Scarlet Knights’ football coach and the man who last year led them to their first bowl game in 27 years. The man who transformed a team that lost a game 80-7 in 2001 into a 16th-ranked contender in 2006. The man who was just named coach of the year.

Of course, coaches of the year tend to elicit interest from powerful schools on the prowl. And so it was with Schiano last week, when the University of Miami (Fl.) came a-knocking, hoping to hire Schiano as its replacement for the fired Larry Coker.

At the time, Schiano had two main choices and one secondary choice: First, he had to choose whether he wanted to stay at Rutgers, where he is under contract until 2012; second, he had to decide how to handle his decision–i.e. whether to go public about his decision to stay or leave.

As it turns out, Schiano has decided to stay at Rutgers. But That’s not why his actions should serve as the perfect example for Gutmann. No, what sets Schiano apart is the way he quickly quashed rumors of his move to Miami by publicly asking the school to remove his name from its list of candidates before the end of the season.

With a bowl game still on the schedule, Rutgers players can now focus on football instead of their coach’s possible departure. Which makes all difference in the world, because no athlete appreciates playing for someone who’s off to “bigger and better places.”

Or to quote Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Jim Salisbury, no one wants to play in the “Stepping-Stone Bowl.”

If Gutmann doesn’t yet know whether she wants to remain at Penn, she must decide now. That should be the first move. And if she decides to stay here, she must immediately and publicly petition Harvard to remove her name from its candidate roster.

Her credibility as a fundraiser for Penn’s long-term projects (like eastward expansion and financial aid growth) will suffer if she remains silent, even though she hasn’t actively expressed interest in leaving.

For alumni won’t trust she who views Penn as the Stepping-Stone School.

If you’ve walked into the Writers House lately, you’ve probably seen them. Photographs hanging from the walls - of third-world poverty and nameless children. Kids in bright shirts sent from the West. And a landscape of rolling hills.

Taken by College alumna Rebecca Sherman, the images capture daily life in Fondwa, Haiti, a poor mountain village 40 miles southwest of the capital, Port-au-Prince. Like much of Haiti, Fondwa suffers from deforestation, a lack of drinking water and virtually no healthcare.

But 18 years ago, a Roman Catholic priest used American donations to help Fondwa form its Association of Peasants. This rural cooperative worked to solve local problems, resulting in the 2004 founding of a university.

The University of Fondwa now enrolls more than 20 students, who learn business, medicine and agriculture. The University employs 15 staff members and owns six computers, which remain on for three hours per night, using gas-powered generators.

It’s a small operation, but one aimed at making a big difference. Because the idea is not merely to educate students, but to empower them to return to their villages and help.

“The philosophy is that they will go back to their home communities to help promote development,” Renate Schneider, the university’s German-born rector, told the Chronicle of Higher Education last year. “You have to do development in the rural areas before you can solve the problems in Port-au-Prince.”

It’s a radical model - and one that American universities should look to when dealing with surrounding communities. Obviously, students at Penn don’t come from ramshackle homes without water. But just as small towns in Haiti could benefit from what Fondwa’s students learn, so too could West Philly benefit from the skills Penn students develop.

Of course, in Fondwa, the university uses donations to pay for all students’ tuitions. Here, where most of us contribute to tuition costs, we feel we have the right to choose how to use our education.

But perhaps, then, we might learn from Fondwa’s professors. Some of them are Americans who elsewhere could earn far more than their current $400 a month. But they don’t go elsewhere.

They stay and they sacrifice and they teach, in the hope that their knowledge will spread to 20 students who’ll each spread it to one home and, ultimately, one village. It may be slow, but it’s a way to pay education forward - to give learning a life of its own - and keep the chain of benefit going.

It would be nice if we could all say the same of own education. Realistically, though, most of don’t share, or even act on, what we learn. I certainly don’t.

But in the next two weeks, at the very least, we can be small links in Fondwa’s chain. Tonight at 6, the Writers House will hold a reception with Sherman. On Nov. 7, the International House will screen a short documentary, “The Road to Fondwa.”

And those photographs I mentioned earlier are for sale - with all proceeds going to the University of Fondwa.

The latest news out of Darfur, Sudan, is bleak.

A report in today’s issue of Science estimates that 400,000 people have died in the region, since the Janjaweed milita–with the open support of the government in Khartoum–began raping, torturing and killing civilians there in early 2003.

Meanwhile, militiamen have threatened and attacked aid workers, cutting off humanitarian relief from those who desperately need it. On Monday, in fact, the World Food Programme said that 355,000 people in North Darfur “had been cut off from food aid last month,” Reuters reported.

And all this is occurring during the “hunger season, the period before the harvest when food stocks run low and prices climb.

there’s little we can do–but certainly not nothing. On Sunday, I and other Penn students will hop on a bus at 9:30 from the Hillel building to New York City for the “Save Darfur Now: Voices to Stop Genocide Rally” at 2 p.m. in Central Park’s East Meadow.

For more information about the situation in western Sudan, visit http://www.savedarfur.org/pages/background.

Check back on Monday for exclusive, on-the-scene coverage from Spin columnists Gabe Oppenheim and Stephen Morse.

Today marks the beginning of Facebook’s end.

As the Associated Press and USA Today first reported late Monday night, Facebook.com will open its membership to everyone with a valid e-mail address–students and non-students alike–within a month. Facebook had initially planned to announce the change today, but execs rescheduled the launch after users complained about the News Feed and Mini Feed features, forcing the site to add new privacy controls.

The reason for the expansion is simple: MySpace, which has always been open to all and is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, features 30.1 million users. And, according to USA Today, Facebook has only 9.3 million users (though The New York Times puts that figure even lower, at 6.1 million). So this move is an attempt to catch the conglomerate, a chance for the 150-person, Palo Alto, Calif.-based Facebook to go even bigger.

When the revamped site launches, Facebook will divide the world into 500 geographic regions. Those living in a certain region will have access to every other profile in that region, by default.

But by opening its users up to the outside world, it’s obvious that Facebook’s attempt to divide and conquer will fail. Facebook, after all, arose out of the ashes of Friendster, one of the first social networking sites to gain serious popularity. What Facebook offered–and Friendster lacked–was privacy, as in the ability to hide one’s information from everyone but his close friends and the ability to shut off the world outside of one’s university, or, more recently, high school.

Of course, MySpace does not offer such privacy, and as such, it has become a giant of the Internet (though Rupert Murdoch spends way too much money on rent). Last week, MySpace even announced plans to sell digital music and, in the process, take on iTunes.

But whatever the reason for MySpace’s success–and there are many–the fact is that MySpace already exists. It had 51.4 million unique visitors in May alone and was bought last year in a deal worth approximately $580 million. Those numbers are big. And they don’t leave much room for a serious competitor.

Indeed, the new Facebook won’t offer anything that MySpace doesn’t already have. Worse, its new features will alienate its current base. No punk college kid will want his mother screening photos of his frat exploits. And no serious student will risk future employment by posting personal information on a site available to all employers.

This is a recipe for disaster.

And to be honest, I’m a bit excited–for two reasons. The first is basic: Facebook denied the first rule of business–that the customer is always right–and now its founder and chief executive officer, Mark Zuckerberg, will have to listen to the people.
In layman’s terms: Zuckerberg violated students’ privacy by posting their exploits in a News Feed. Now, after students complained, he’s eliminating privacy altogether. And the students will revolt.

The second reason I’m giddy dates back to November 2003, when Mark Zuckerberg agreed to work on ConnectU.com, a Web site being developed under the name “HarvardConnection” by a few of Zuckerberg’s Crimson classmates.
That site’s founders charged Zuckerberg with creating its programming. Instead, Zuckerberg spent the next few months developing the Facebook, while writing e-mails to his ConnectU friends like “Sorry I have not been reachable for the past few days. I’ve basically been in the lab the whole time working on a CS problem set which I’m still not finished with.”

Zuckerberg never told his ConnectU friends about the Facebook, and they only found out about it from an article in the Harvard student newspaper after Facebook launched in the beginning of 2004.

Two years ago, the ConnectU founders filed a lawsuit in a Massachusetts federal court, alleging that “Zuckerberg stole their idea and connived to delay the site’s launch so that he could complete Facebook first,” according to a May New Yorker article. Now, I’m not saying that Zuckerberg definitely stole the idea of Facebook, as I don’t know. And the case probably won’t go to trial until next year. But wouldn’t it be cosmic justice if Facebook ultimately lost out to tiny, student-exclusive ConnectU?

At this point it’s obvious.

Penn made a mistake in allowing alleged child-pornographer Scott Ward to remain on the Wharton faculty after his first two run-ins with the law.
But now, a Christian group has provided Penn with one more reason to regret its past decision. The American Family Association of Pennsylvania has begun a PR campaign urging universities to ban gay professors.

And the lynchpin of this new campaign? Why, it’s none other than Scott Ward and his deviant behavior.

“I think the University of Pennsylvania needs to learn from the Boy Scouts’ ban that that is what they need to do to protect their students,” said Diane Gramley, the head of the Association. “When you look at the small percentage of homosexuals in the country and compare that to the number of young men who are being molested by men, the ratio is just astounding.”

I’d hate to legitimize Diane Gramley’s words by actually analyzing them. Her group’s intolerance doesn’t merit that. But at the very least, Penn should further realize the liabilities it incurs when it allows faculty to get off easy. Sure, Ward embarrassed the Penn community. But worse, our community, which The Advocate named of one the nation’s 20 best for LGBT students, is now being used as fodder for bigotry. Just one more unintended consequence of ignoring someone’s past in this age of global information.