CAMPUS BUZZ
BY SANDY SMITH
All the news unfit to print?: On a recent trip to Australia, Vice Provost for Information Systems and Computing Jim O’Donnell stopped by a coin-operated Internet kiosk in his hotel to check his e-mail. When he found out he couldn’t, he decided to surf the Web instead. But even that proved fruitless: The terminal’s filtering software wouldn’t let him read The New York Times on the Web because the site contained “adult content.”
Bye-bye biometrics: Remember the much-hyped experiment in high-tech security for Penn’s dormitories? Apparently, it’s been ended by popular demand. According to a security guard in Harrison College House, where a hand and iris scanner was installed last spring, the students found the device just a bit too Orwellian for comfort. Besides, as the guard said, “In the end, you really need eyes on the scene.”
Catch the Quakers on cable: The Comcast Network (CN8) will broadcast three of Penn’s home football games this season, beginning with Saturday’s season opener against Dartmouth. CN8 will also carry Penn vs. Brown on Oct. 23 and the Penn-Princeton matchup on Nov. 6. Satellite dish owners can also receive the CN8 telecasts: For Saturday’s game, the coordinates are SBS 6, Transponder 7.
Open for business: With the opening of Steve Madden Shoes on Sept. 10 and Ma Jolie on Sept. 17, the retail part of the Sansom Common project is all but complete. The Ivy Grille is set to open soon, and the last two businesses — Papyrus, a specialty stationery and gift shop, and Stephen Starr’s yet-to-be-determined restaurant — are scheduled to open in the spring.
Buy now and save: Here’s a great deal for students — buy a semester’s worth of transit in advance and save a bundle. The new PennPass, a joint project of SEPTA and Penn Transit Services, gives you unlimited travel within the city during the week and throughout the region on weekends during the semester for only $200 — $56 less than the cost of monthly TransPasses for the same period. (Pro-rated fall passes good for three months are available.) For info about the program, visit the PennPass Web site or call 215-898-RIDE.
Penn in ink: While infants’ brains do develop rapidly in the first few years, the cover story in the Sept. 13 U.S. News & World Report suggests that parents really need not devote all that effort to such things as bathing their unborn babies with Baroque tunes in the womb lest they fall behind later: simple active play will stimulate them just as much. As Early Childhood Education Program Director Joan Goodman suggested, “Relax and let go of the guilt.”...And as if training your infant’s brain wasn’t stressful enough, there’s training your infant’s bowels. That too has become a subject of much anguish, Assistant Professor of Pediatrics Nathan Blum told The Washington Post Aug. 3: In addition to the pressure coming from preschools to have kids potty-trained, he said, “you have the pressure coming from friends and grandparents and other family members who are saying, ‘Why isn’t this kid trained yet?’”
What’s the buzz? Tell us what’s happening! Call us at 215-898-1423, drop us a line via e-mail, or write us at 200 Sansom East/6106.