The Pennsylvania Gazette: The Gift

L ONG BEFORE George Weiss became a Penn trustee, a wealthy money manager, and an educational sponsor and friend to more than 300 students in three Northeastern cities, he was a Wharton student and a member of Kappa Nu fraternity. Kappa Nu hosted a holiday party one year for some low-income, neighborhood kids, and Weiss became particularly friendly with a gang of them who went by the name of "the Twelve Apostles." For the remainder of his college career, he would sneak them into Penn football games and advise them much as an older brother would.
   Several years later, during Alumni Weekend, he called the same guys to get together for lunch. Weiss, at that time a young stockbroker, was stunned to learn that all of them had gone on to graduate from high school. When he said how proud he was, one of the men replied, "George, we couldn't look you straight in the eye if we didn't graduate from high school." Right then, Weiss recalls, "I made a pact that if God ever gave me the financial wherewithal to do something in education, I would do that. I realized that if you really get involved with kids and show them that you care, then they have to look you straight in the eye and say, 'I failed.' It makes it much more difficult to lose them [to] the streets."
   Weiss's vow happened to mesh with Newberg's interest in involving Penn more in the West Philadelphia community. With the help of then-University President, Dr. Sheldon Hackney, Hon'93, Newberg, a senior fellow in the Graduate School of Education, had created an organization called the Collaborative for West Philadelphia Public Schools. As its executive director, he assessed the needs of about 25 local schools, fielding concerns about the drop-out problem, inadequate college counseling, and other issues. In response, his organization increased tutoring in local schools, created a scholarship fund, and obtained a grant to pay for more college counselors. He proposed a plan, eventually implemented, for reorganizing city schools to improve accountability as students move up the grade levels.
   At Hackney's suggestion, Newberg also met with the Weisses -- Diane is now a member of the board of overseers of the Graduate School of Education -- presenting a range of programs they could invest in. The one they "absolutely fell in love with" was the concept that became Say Yes to Education.
   The Weisses' announcement that they would be shepherding 112 students through school may have thrilled parents, but it meant little to students at the time, says Harold Shields, now a soft-spoken senior majoring in psychology at Penn. Shields, who used a break from his six-course study load this semester to talk, recalls that he was impatient to get out of his tie and dress shirt and off the sweltering stage so he could start summer vacation. He was sitting in the back row, talking to his best friend during their sixth-grade graduation ceremony. Suddenly, a great roar came up from the audience. "The crowd was cheering and I didn't know what was going on, but I stood up and started cheering because everybody else was doing it. I didn't know until later that they had offered us a college education."
   Shields initially tried to sabotage his success at school, believing it would violate his religious faith, as a Jehovah's Witness, to spend time pursuing higher education (Church doctrine actually doesn't address this). Allen Alexander, a classmate who lives in Hartford, Conn., says that he, too, did just "enough to get by" in school, because he felt his teachers didn't deserve more. "I didn't think they did a good enough job pulling it out of me," he says, or of "relating education to life." But the Weisses' gift didn't stop with money for college. What distinguishes Say Yes from similar programs is its strong association with a university and the use of its many resources. As the program has expanded to Hartford, Conn. and Cambridge, Mass., and to another class in Philadelphia, each group has been affiliated with a nearby university or college. Continued...

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