The Pennsylvania Gazette: May/June Gazetteer

Previous issue's Gazetteer | May/June Contents | Gazette home

AROUND CAMPUS
University Sobered by Alumnus' Death on Campus
"We're not talking about Prohibition," University President Judith Rodin CW'66 was saying. "We're talking about responsible behavior and accountability ... The students asked for responsibility, and that's exactly what we want. We want them to take responsibility for their own behavior -- and, frankly, for one another." Continued...

CONFERENCE
Homage to DuBois: Revisiting the Problem of the Color Line
In an 1898 article titled "The Study of the Negro Problem," W.E.B. DuBois observed that what he intended to study was "not one problem, but rather a plexus of social problems, some new, some old, some simple, some complex. And these problems have their one bound of unity in the fact that they group themselves about those Africans whom two centuries of slave-trading brought to this land." Continued...

STUDENTS AND TECHNOLOGY
They Follow the Sun
Washington to Orlando in a week and a half may not sound like much of a car race, but the vehicles competing in Sunrayce 99 this June 20-29 are not your ordinary cars. Rather than guzzling fossil fuels, they run on solar power, and each is a unique creation -- conceived, designed, built and driven by engineering students from colleges and universities across North America. Continued...

BRICKS AND MORTAR

Construction began last month on the Dental School's $22 million Robert Schattner Center at 40th and Locust Streets. The 70,000-square-foot facility is named after Robert I. Schattner D'48, who gave $4 million, and will house clinical-care facilities, classrooms and conference rooms.

FACULTY AND THE LAW
Penn Appealing $5 Million Verdict
The University is appealing a recent verdict by a Philadelphia Common Pleas jury that ordered it to pay $5 million to Dr. Jorge Ferrer, professor and medical doctor of microbiology and clinical studies at the School of Veterinary Medicine, for violating his employment contract. Continued...

HEARD ON CAMPUS
Winning the Culture Wars
Excerpts from a speech to the University trustees by Dr. William R. Ferris Jr. Gr'69, chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, on February 18. Continued...

ADVENTURES IN ASTROPHYSICS
Stalking the Wild Neutrino
This past winter, Dr. Douglas Cowen, assistant professor of physics and astronomy, traveled to Antarctica -- then in mid-summer -- to search for an elusive kind of particle, using what he describes as the "world's first functioning large-scale neutrino telescope." When he returned to campus, he filed the following report for the Gazette. Continued...

GIFTS

Here's to Health, Fitness and Wharton
Fitness aficionados at Penn will benefit from a recent $12 million gift from David S. Pottruck C'70 WG'72, president of the Charles Schwab Corporation. Last month, President Judith Rodin announced that $10 million of the gift will be used to establish the David S. Pottruck Health and Fitness Center, which will include renovation of existing space in Gimbel Gymnasium as well as new construction. The project is expected to begin this summer and will be completed in 2001. The other $2 million will go to the Wharton School's Jon M. Huntsman Hall, groundbreaking for which took place last month.

CLASS OF 2003

Very Selective (and Only Slightly More Expensive)
   It has become a refrain in recent years, and a welcome one at that: The tuition increase for the upcoming academic year is the smallest in three decades, while the acceptance rate for the incoming Class of 2003 is the most selective in Penn's history.
   Tuition and fees for undergraduates will increase 4.2 percent, from $23,254 to $24,230, while the overall student charges will increase 3.7 percent, from $30,460 to $31,592. "This maintains our commitment to limit the rate of increase for both tuition and total student charges for our undergraduates at Penn," said President Judith Rodin, who added that the total charges are expected to be the lowest in the Ivy League.
   Rodin also noted that the trustees are "resolutely committed" to the University's campaign to raise $200 million to beef up the endowment for undergraduate financial aid. So far, $73 million has been raised.
   Meanwhile, of the record-high 17,649 students who applied to Penn this year (up from 16,658 a year ago), only 4,703 were accepted. That 26.6 percent acceptance rate is the lowest ever at Penn. Approximately 40 percent of those admitted had applied for early decision, and 350 were children of alumni.