Lessons learned from lifespan as an Owl

My four years at Temple will come to an abrupt end in nine days when I graduate. Much time is spent easing you in – campus tours, orientation, placement tests – but the adjustment to the real world is much more sudden. Technically, I’ve had four years to prepare for this, but I like to think I’m not the only one who feels surprised by the finality of it all.

I’ll adjust quickly enough to the bills, student loans and likely unemployment partly because I feel fulfilled by these last four years.

It took me four years to build up this reservoir of advice, and if I didn’t share it, I’d be hindering those who aren’t quite done here.

YES, COLLEGE IS EXPENSIVE.
I’ve never felt more financially taken advantage of than during college. It starts with the application fees, and I promise you, it won’t end until your loans are paid off.

People who know me can tell you I’ve spent countless hours complaining about giving Temple my money. I have Student Financial Services’ number memorized after spending the last four Septembers tracking down my loan refund. People got earfuls when I paid a technology fee for my summer internship and fees for graduation and the commencement cap and gown.

You’ll complain, too, but universities are businesses. We’re their best customers. Remind yourself of that next time you buy a $50 Temple sweatshirt or a $4 fruit cup from the food court.

SCHEDULE SOME FREE TIME.
Leisure time is important, but so are those precious few minutes between classes. I’ve tried several roster variations over the years, and there are definitely some that work better than others. I was lucky enough to have Fridays off early in my sophomore year, and I’ve never looked back – sometimes to my detriment.

Last spring, I took five consecutive classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, leaving the other days open for work, internships and fun. I was miserable two days a week, running from the 11th floor of Anderson to Ritter Hall, eating squished sandwiches I packed the night before and lugging my books around for eight hours. Sometimes, a 50-minute break matters more than a Friday off.

WE ALL KNOW OWLNET SUCKS, SO MOVE ON.
Quite pathetically, one of the best feelings of my life is knowing I never have to register for classes on OWLnet again. I relish never having to sit at my computer at 11:58 p.m. with a knot in my stomach, hoping I can crawl into bed before 2 a.m. with a completed roster. For now, OWLnet is a cruel reality that you just have to deal with. Try to do it gracefully.

TEMPLE IS IN PHILADELPHIA. EXPLORE.
Temple students have no excuse for being bored. We’re in the middle of a city of 1.5 million, with way too many neighborhoods to count. Get over your fears and assumptions about Philadelphia, and see it for yourself. Skip what you saw on the third grade field trip, and get a real feel for the place. If you graduate without getting to know the city, you’re missing out.

TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE FREE STUFF.
Temple offers tons of free stuff. For starters, the annual barbecue for the graduating class. I spent Friday afternoon drinking free beer and eating free food while hanging out with the Class of 2009. Not too shabby.

But there’s plenty to enjoy now. Try Free Food and Fun Fridays at the Student Center, which is exactly what it sounds like. And, thanks to the Tyler School of Art, we have a built-in art gallery on campus.

Keep these things in mind, and find new things to pass along to those who come after you.

Shannon McDonald can be reached at shannon.mcdonald@temple.edu.

Philly’s inferiority complex not deserved

It’s time to separate the hype and paranoia from reality at Temple.

“I would rather go halfway across the country than commute to Temple,” said 27-year-old Laura Irwin, who, in lieu of coming to Temple for her bachelor’s degree, is choosing to take a year off in Florida. “I mean, my God, in that neighborhood, people die all the time.”

A number of people fear wandering beyond Main Campus’ borders, leading the university to become a punch line rather than a symbol of progress and diversity.

“The history of crime and poverty in the North Philadelphia area is important with people’s perceptions of Temple,” said psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Lawrence D. Blum.

Today’s prospective students, in searching for their collegiate playgrounds, want educational excellence, as well as a picturesque campus – something they don’t always think they can get at Temple.

It’s these types of preconceived notions that have kept Temple’s name in the gutter in the past.
It doesn’t help that Philadelphia suffers from an inferiority complex.

Blum said the city’s inhabitants fight the “middle child” image, sandwiched between the United States’ political capital, Washington, D.C., and its economic capital, New York.

“I came from Boston, and when I came [to Philadelphia], I saw what a great city this is and how little pride was in it,” Blum said. “If someone told you how great Philadelphia was, it was almost a guarantee the person wasn’t from Philly.”

It’s not unreasonable then to believe Temple, which is intertwined in Philadelphia’s urban landscape, is a casualty of that self-disparagement.

Philadelphia residents often remark about the historically impoverished North Philadelphia area, adding to people’s misconceptions of Temple. Sometimes, the city looks down on Temple, which was once a large commuter school.

There are serious potholes in the major urban setting, but those problems could be fixed in 20 years with expansion and development.

No school should be shielded from criticism, but condemning a respectable institution because it’s so embedded with the urban setting associated with Philadelphia speaks more about the city’s inhabitants than the school itself.

Tom Rowan can be reached at thomas.rowan@temple.edu.

Fumo was corrupt, but city allowed it

Politicians are a favorite punching bag for citizens throughout the country. They are ridiculed for being greedy, incompetent and dishonest, and sometimes they deserve those accusations.

The politicians we love to hate are there for a reason. Specifically, we put them there, and we choose to keep them there, even when we know they may be greedy or dishonest.

Such is the case with Vince Fumo, the former state senator from South Philadelphia. Fumo was probably the most powerful man in the state Senate, and for good reason. His influence spread from people in the Board of Revision of Taxes to people in the Delaware River Port Authority to various nonprofits.

In what may be a sign of just how powerful Fumo was before he was convicted of 137 counts of conspiracy and fraud, local politicians were fairly measured in their reactions to Fumo’s conviction.
Mayor Michael Nutter called the outcome shocking even though the guilty verdicts were, if not virtually certain, at least a pretty good bet.

Philadelphia politicians were measured in their words perhaps because they realized that Fumo not only brought money into the city, but he was responsible for the success of quite a few political careers.

The average Philadelphian can afford to be more callous, and if the sometimes-caustic messages on comment walls of articles about the Fumo conviction are any indication, the average Philadelphian really does feel a little more callous about Fumo than the politicians do.

We probably shouldn’t, considering Philadelphians knew Fumo had a sketchy past, having avoided two previous corruption charges by chance and by a technicality. These charges were early in his career, the first before he was elected to the state Senate. At that point, he was still working on the campaign of Henry “Buddy” Cianfrani, who occupied the South Philadelphia Senate seat before Fumo.

Cianfrani was also convicted of fraud and spent time in federal prison.

The point is, Philadelphians knew Fumo had a shady past before we elected him. But, we chose to keep electing him. First, he was a truly charismatic person, and it wasn’t hard to like him. Also, he did bring a school, street cleaners and money to his district. And in return, a few corruption charges didn’t seem bad enough to take the effort to vote him out of office.

Therein lies the moral behind corrupt politicians.

Usually, it’s not their first brush with impropriety. Usually, their constituents have some kind of warning that there is something not completely upstanding about their duly elected representatives.

Until we are willing to demand more integrity from our politicians, there isn’t much point in complaining about them.

Stephen Zook can be reached at stephen.zook@temple.edu.

Centro Musical

Centro Musical hosts a weekly radio show on Saturday. La Mega and has live music. Photos by Sabrina Jacott/TTN.

Tourists size up the city’s weaknesses

Congratulations, Philadelphia.

For the second year in a row, Travel + Leisure magazine named Philadelphia the least attractive and least stylish of America’s Favorite Cities 2008.

The city also continues to have a high murder rate, although the numbers are steadily declining.
While the city’s faithful locals can look past Philly’s faults, it may be much harder for tourists and potential residents to do so.

Vicky Linde, a London native, recently returned to the United Kingdom after a three-day stay in Philadelphia. She said safety was one of her biggest concerns prior to her visit.

“There were certain areas of the city where the people [made] me feel a little uneasy,” she said. “I would not have liked [to be around there] at night, but during the day [people] were very friendly – less so on the streets, but I couldn’t name a city where that is not the case.”

But some weren’t so forgiving of the city.

A 38-year-old woman, who wished to remain anonymous, said friends offered to walk her four blocks down to her car after a night out, in fear of her safety.

“How sad is that?” she said.

Jenny Lin, originally from Cupertino, Calif., has never been to Philadelphia. She plans to move to the city soon to attend graduate school, so she uses online forums and co-workers’ stories for advice. Some of what she has heard is unsettling.

“I work with travel RNs who have worked in large cities across the country, [who] have mainly told me stories about the unfriendliness of people in Philadelphia,” she said in an e-mail interview. “One RN, originally from Canada, worked at Children’s Hospital … relayed mostly negative stories … that she’d never seen the sheer number of child abuse cases that she’d encountered in Philly.”

Although there are mixed feelings when it comes to security, it’s safe to say food is one of the best things about Philadelphia.

Travel + Leisure would probably agree – in the category of ethnic food and cheap eats, Philadelphia came in seventh out of 25.

“The food is the best I’ve had in any city I’ve ever lived in,” said Kevin Ott, a Philly native currently living in Los Angeles, in an e-mail interview. “Should I ever decide to move back to the East Coast, it’ll be to live in Philly.”

“My favorite thing about the city was actually the food – so much better than the rest of the U.S. so far. I was very impressed by each little eatery I went into,” Linde said.

But like the middle child, Philadelphia struggles to separate itself from New York City, the attention-grabbing younger sibling from 100 miles away.

When asked about Philadelphia, it was inevitable the two cities would be compared.

“Philadelphia’s got it all over NYC, in my opinion – great restaurants, [a] big arts community, lots of stuff to do and extensive nightlife – but without any of the self-satisfaction you see associated with New York,” Ott said. “It’s also generally cleaner, although it does have its unpleasant parts of town and has a good deal of local pride.”

The anonymous woman, who hails from Queens, N.Y., admits to her bias.

“I was never really into the whole Manhattan see-and-be-seen scene. I never lived in Manhattan. I didn’t go clubbing, etc.,” she said. “But my impressions of Philly are obviously colored by my impressions of New York, so a lot of what I say about the city is in comparison with New York.”

Despite the city rivalry, people do have positive experiences in Philadelphia.

“Before I visited Philadelphia, I thought that it was going to be a lot less tourist-friendly and more dangerous than I found it,” she said. “My main impression other than that was the accessibility of American history, which it certainly lived up to,” Linde said.

“As someone planning to obtain a master’s degree … the city offers several highly-regarded programs to consider,” Lin said.

Unfortunately, Philadelphia is going to have to work a little harder to win some people over.

“I don’t think I’ll live in Philly permanently, probably NYC, although that isn’t set in stone,” Lin said.
“I guess [Philadelphia’s] just not for me,” the anonymous woman said.

Sherri Hospedales can be reached at sherri.hospedales@temple.edu.

Incomplete Experience

Temple’s new general education curriculum promises to envelop freshmen in local arts and culture, but the structure of the program fails to push students into Philadelphia.

Temple is not afraid to tell students what they should know. Courses in one’s major are not enough to graduate: a litany of core classes covering everything from racism to mathematics to the history of Western thought are required of us.

The GenEd curriculum continues in that vein by pushing the Philadelphia Experience. Temple’s Web site describes this experience as a way to blend local exposure with the academic content of GenEd classes.

For this, Temple deserves recognition. There are 34 classes that are listed as part of the Philadelphia Experience. This is a healthy serving of Philadelphia for anyone who is looking for it.

The problem is that there are almost 100 GenEd classes available. Any student who doesn’t particularly care to learn about Philadelphia doesn’t have to. Temple can do better than this.

Students do not have a choice as to whether they will study race or ancient texts, and rightly so.

Temple realizes that the various topics covered under core requirements, and now GenEd classes, are vital to a well-rounded education.

Temple does not seem to carry the same attitude about Philadelphia. Instead of requiring a course about Philadelphia, it only offers the courses for those who want them. If students want to learn about their adopted city, they will do so, whether they are given a class on it or not.

Temple should require at least one class on Philadelphia for all those students who wouldn’t otherwise take one. Just like it is necessary to study race, it is necessary to educate Temple students about Philadelphia.

The class could teach Philadelphia’s history and neighborhoods. Not only would it help students understand why the city is the way it is, but how to improve on what is good, and fix what has gone wrong.

Temple graduates will be that much better equipped to take on the problems that face this city if they know where the problems came from.

Chess tournament discourages violence

More than 100 Philadelphia school students participated in the city’s first 24-hour chess tournament last weekend, aimed at providing an alternative to violence.

Half of the participants spent Friday night playing informal games in the Howard Gittis Student Center, while the other half arrived Saturday morning for the tournament.

Temple hosted theevent, which saw a brief appearance from Mayor Michael Nutter on Friday The mayor spoke to the participants before leaving to pick up his daughter.

“Chess is more than a game,” Nutter said. “These are all the skills you will use when you’re older.”

Nutter had a chance to display his own skills in a match against one of the students, but was defeated.

Also in attendance were Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey and Leteef Street, son of former Philadelphia Mayor John Street.

Street, a Class A ranked player by the United States Chess Federation, played 18 kids at one time.

One of the weekends competitors, 14-year-old Dwight Johnson, said he got involved with chess because of his mother.

“I didn’t think I would like it. I thought it would be a boring game,” Johnson said. “[My mom] said I needed to do an after school program.”

Johnson, along with two of his friends, won iPods for participating for more than 24 hours and playing what they think was well more than 100 games.

The event was organized by Philadelphia’s After School Activities Partnership. Aside from chess events, the group provides other after school alternatives for the city’s children such as dances, debates and scrabble.

“When you go out in the community, you realize there are kids all around here that need enrichment,” ASAP President Marciene Mattleman said.

Mattleman received her degrees from Temple and taught for 18 years in the university’s College of Education while doing research on academic success. After teaching, she left Temple to pursue full-time non-profit work.

Before starting ASAP in June 2002, Mattleman had already established four non-profit organizations.

She credits the idea of a 24-hour tournament to Gil Motley who brought his own team of 25 elementary school children. One of the children placed first in the unrated section of his age group in the State Scholastic Championships in March.

ASAP holds other chess tournaments, and while the next large event is another four months away, there will be an all-girls tournament in June held at Drexel University.

“Philadelphia has a rich history of chess,” Mattleman said. “But it’s kind of fallen on the skids.”

Kriston Bethel can be reached at kbethel@temple.edu.

Soaring above the city

Emergency notification system announced for Philadelphia region

Emergencies at a city, regional or perhaps national level can be better managed because of a partnership between city and suburban leaders, according to an announcement from the City of Philadelphia’s Office of Emergency Management last week.

On Friday, leaders in emergency management services announced a notification system that uses text messaging to spread directions for evacuation or safety plans.

The partnership launched a Web site at www.ReadyNotifyPA.org, where residents can sign up for the text message and email alerts or view possible threats. Additionally, residents can join the free service by texting a county code to 411911. Philadelphia residents use PHILA; BUCKS for Bucks County; CHESCO for Chester County; DELCO for Delaware County; MONTCO for Montgomery County.

It is similar to the emergency notification system that has been installed by Temple University and was first tested in February, though that system automatically includes a text message, an automated phone call and an email, to more comprehensively alert students and staff. That system is only for employees of or students at Temple.

Residents outside of the participating Philadelphia region can also request the warnings from ReadyNotifyPa.org. The automated service was established with $900,000 of federal funds, as first reported by the Philadelphia Inquirer.

This system is different than the already established city-wide effort called Alert Philadelphia, which is online at www.AlertPhila.com, and may be related to similarly named and designed ReadyPhiladelphia.org, though that was not confirmed in the brief release.

Participating residents could potentially receive a warning of an impending hurricane and directions for when and how to best evacuate, including advice on the best measures, methods and times to do so. Beyond weather, the system could be used for widespread crime or terror attacks.

The initiative is part of a comprehensive preparedness plan, which includes a detailed evacuation plan for a city of nearly 1.5 million with crowded suburban neighbors.

Christopher Wink can be reached at cwink@temple.edu.

American Commerce Center highlights building boom in possible recession

The American Commerce Center has shed light on an ongoing construction boom in Center City.

The building plans will make it the tallest in the city by its completion in 2012, as reported by The Temple News, despite fears over a struggling U.S. economy. The American Commerce Center announcement came on the heels of a proposal to raze one of the Philadelphia’s oldest skyscrapers, the 1896 Stephen Girard Building at 12th and Market Streets.

The Delaware Riverfront is seeing a well-publicized condominium crunch, including plans for the tallest residential tower in the city and The Delano, a 269-unit, 30-story luxury apartment tower developed by Walnut Street Capital, the same company behind the American Commerce Center. That crunch has lasted for at least two years, including launches of Marina View, 101 Sky and the 950-foot-tall, $600 million Bridgeman’s View from March 2006.

The Pennsylvania Convention Center is under a massive expansion bringing it to 1 million square feet, including the largest contiguous exhibit space in the Northeast, and there are as many as 26 new hotel projects in and around Center City that could bring more than 2,500 new hotel rooms in Philadelphia by 2011, when the first conventions are expected to come to their newly expanded home. Still, all construction has suddenly been overshadowed by the American Commerce Center behemoth.

Walnut Street Capital bought the mixed-use lot at 1800 Arch Street in October. Since then, the group hired Kohn Pederson Fox, an architecture firm, and developed plans for an $800 million, 2.2 million-square-foot, 63-story office tower standing 1,500 feet tall, with an adjacent 26-story hotel, according to PhillySkyline.com, which first broke the story March 13. As proposed, it would be taller than the Empire State Building in New York City, making it the second tallest building in the United States, behind the Sears Tower in Chicago. The American Commerce Center would be 525 taller than the recently completed Comcast Center, which officially becamethe tallest building in Philadelphia in a ceremony in June 2007. That building is located at 17th Street and John F. Kennedy Boulevard.

The building push comes amid a sagging economy and debates over whether a recession has already begun in the United States. The Philadelphia development company Walnut Street Capital has partnered with a pension fund from Washington state that is financing the project, backed by its $6.18 billion in assets, allowing the American Commerce Center project to avoid the pressure of the country’s economic sluggishness.

Other projects are less independent of fear over available credit. While at least four notable hotel projects of the 26 proposed are underway, perhaps four more have been recently shelved out of financial fears, as first reported by the Philadelphia Business Journal last week.
Christopher Wink can be reached at cwink@temple.edu.

Also read: “American Commerce Center to be tallest in Philadelphia skyline.”

Photo courtesy of Walnut Street Capital and Kohn Pederson Fox, depicting the proposed street view of the American Commerce Center.

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