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October
28, 1999
CAMPUS BUZZ BY SANDY SMITH Civic-minded: Talk about putting your money where your mouth is. Not long after his appointment as the Fox Leadership Professor of Politics, Religion and Civil Society became official, John J. DiIulio Jr. visited Civic House to speak on the subject of volunteer service and society. DiIulio was so impressed with the faculty and students’ community spirit that he donated $5,000 of his speaker’s fee to the house on the spot. (The rest, by the way, went to religious charities, whose cause he has also championed.) Make room for the gals, guys: As has become routine of late, the Quaker men’s basketball squad was picked as the odds-on favorite to take the Ivy League title this season at the league’s annual media day Oct. 13: all 16 of the reporters who voted gave Penn their first-place vote. But joining the men atop the Ivy heap for the first time ever is the women’s team, with nine first-place votes and 114 points to arch-rival Princeton’s six votes and 113 points. Seems the media folk are impressed by the performance of returning players Diana Caramanico (W’01), the 1998-99 Ivy Player of the Year, and All-Ivy guard Mandy West (C’00). Tongue-tied? If you’d like to improve your public speaking skills as a way to advance your career -- or if you’d just like to stop sweating bullets when asked to speak before an audience -- you can now get help right here on campus. Penn now has a Toastmasters chapter, “Strictly Speaking,” where members can improve their communications skills in a supportive environment. The group meets twice a month (on the first and third Monday evenings) on the third floor of Lauder-Fischer Hall, 256 S. 37th St. For more information, e-mail bermanmt@yahoo.com or call Marie Berman at 215-587-9370. Book report: David Cohen, a library service associate in the interlibrary
loan department of the University Library, has just written a new book
about legendary protest singer Phil Ochs. “Phil Ochs, A Bio-Bibliography”
(Greenwood Press, 1999) is a compendium of source materials on the singer’s
life and work, published as part of Greenwood’s “Bio-Bibliographies
in Music” series.
Penn in ink: In two separate essays published the same day, Wendy Steiner, the Richard L. Fisher Professor of English and director of the Penn Humanities Forum, suggested that maybe modernism and post-modernism have run their course. She told New York Times readers Oct. 10 that today’s most honored fiction is rich in emotion, in contrast to 1980s macho ironic detachment and intellectualism. Meanwhile, on the Left Coast, she argued in a Los Angeles Times essay that the modernist imperative to cause constant sensation, as illustrated by the current Brooklyn Museum flap, should be given a rest so that we can contemplate beauty every now and then. ...They’re beginning to take notice in the ’burbs: The lead story in the “Living” section of the Oct. 17 Courier-Post (Cherry Hill, N.J.) focused on the ongoing transformation of West Philadelphia from “dull, dangerous and ‘institutional’” to a dynamic destination for the region. What's the buzz? Tell us what's happening! Call us at 215-898-1426, send e-mail to current@ pobox.upenn.edu or drop a line to the Current at 200 Sansom East/6106.
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