From pedophilia to drug
dealing, Street looks back
at Penn's top 10 most scandalous moments of the past 20 years.
Perhaps 'Hippopotami' would have been better?
The Incident (with a capital I) of 1993, that garnered nothing of consequence but a lot of media hoopla (and a personal call from Jesse Jackson), innocently began with then-freshman Eden Jacobowitz slaving over an English assignment in his dorm. Tormented by writer's block, the noise outside of his high-rise window proved enough to push him over the edge. An irate Jacobowitz shouted, "Shut up, you water buffalo!" to the ruckus-makers outside. While other incensed high-rise inhabitants had chosen to shout more commonplace expletives at the group, Jacobowitz's choice of a large, dark (and, incidentally, Asian) animal was construed as racial harassment by his targets - a group of black sorority sisters participating in a purposely boisterous ritual.
In what seems to be every university's perpetual war on political incorrectness, Penn responded to the Incident in a matter of minutes and later urged Jacobowitz to accept a settlement after the sorority sisters decided to press charges.
The tenacious freshman chose, however, to fight back. He explained his choice of word as derived from Hebrew slang, rather than race-based intent. After incessant attention from reporters, camera crews and prominent politicians, Jacobowitz achieved victory when the girls dropped the charges for unknown reasons. Moral of the story? Save colorful vocabulary for English assignments - when people piss you off, just call them assholes.
-Annette D'Onofrio
Penn
involved in massive public art cuts, students continue not to care
When Penn's Institute of Contemporary Art launched a retrospective of photographer Robert Mapplethorpe's work in 1988, the reaction was similar to most shows at the ICA - widely lauded by the international art community and roundly ignored by Penn students at large. The exhibition - made possible in part through a $30,000 National Endowment for the Arts grant - included an explicit series of photographs depicting gay sadomasochism, which despite its potential for controversy, remained up at the ICA through early 1989 without incident.
But when the show reached Cincinnati's Contemporary Arts Center in 1990, it set off a shit storm of national debate over whether or not the public, under the auspices of the NEA, should pay for controversial art - with the ICA spotlighted at its center. The debate eventually wound its way into the hallowed halls of Congress where a bunch of old, conservative white men decided, in all of their infinite wisdom, to cut artist funding nationwide. (Much to the chagrin of aspiring artists all over the U.S., the NEA still receives $35 million less per year than before the Mapplethorpe snafu.) The ICA, however, was not phased by the whole ordeal, as various representations of sundry sex acts continue to adorn its gallery walls to this day.
-Christopher Ahearn
Newsflash: Crack cocaine exists in West Philadelphia
Crack cocaine made headlines all over the country in the late '80s and early '90s, but it wasn't until The New York Post splashed the words "IVY LEAGUE CRACK DEALER" across its pages that the urban epidemic hit home at Penn.
Christopher Clemente had just completed his sophomore fall at Wharton in January 1990 when police burst in on him in a Harlem apartment to find 214 vials of crack, a loaded gun, a drug ledger with the name "Christopher Clemente" on it and over $11,000 in cash. An additional 2,000 vials of crack and another gun were found outside one of the apartment's windows.
Clemente was originally suspended from Penn, but hundreds of students protested the decision and raised $15,000 to help bail him out of jail. Even then-University President Sheldon Hackney contributed out of fear for Clemente's safety. Clemente eventually returned to the University to await his January 1991 trial, where he was represented by famed civil rights attorney William M. Kunstler. Despite a defense focusing on fourth amendment rights violations, prosecutors portrayed Clemente as a poor student with drug connections, and he was convicted.
Originally sentenced to 15 years to life in jail, Clemente was released with a slashed sentence in 2005. He continued to maintain his innocence and claim that it had all been a matter of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. A few months after his release, he told Street, "I am concentrating on . getting my life together. That's a very big job; that's a tremendous job."
-Heather Schwedel
Campus Copy smackdown
On April 2, 2001, Greg Seaton entered the Campus Copy on the 3900 block of Walnut Street with a large order of copies to place. But rather than leaving with a fresh stack of warm Xeroxes, Seaton walked out with bruises, a pair of broken glasses and a lawsuit just waiting to be filed.
Seaton, a black grad student, was told to wait while a white customer (who entered the shop after him) was helped first. When Seaton protested, a physical fight ensued. Shortly thereafter, Campus Copy was slapped with a lawsuit that alleged, among other things, racism on behalf of Campus Copy owner Ronald Shapiro and the staff members involved in the melee.
While waiting for his day in court, Seaton initiated a grassroots e-mail campaign against Campus Copy, asking Penn students and faculty to take their business elsewhere. Though the boycott wasn't strong enough to bring the ubiquitous bulk pack purveyor to its knees (and judging by the frat party invites littering trash cans up and down Locust Walk, Seaton's message never reached the Greek community's listservs), Seaton came out on top in the end. After a two-year court battle, he was awarded $350,000 for bills and punitive damages. Copies, anyone?
-Laura Minskoff
"So a murderer, a pedophile and a professor walk into Huntsman."
Philly is the murder capital of America (welcome to Killadelphia), but it turns out that you're more likely to get axed in your Econ lecture than you are at Club Wizzards. Case in point: former Economics professor Rafael Robb, who bludgeoned his wife to death. It was widely reported that Mrs. Robb's injuries were so severe that authorities originally believed she'd been killed by a "shotgun blast to the face." As far as the motive for the crime, Robb's wife had been planning to divorce him and, being the econ whiz that he is, Robb was anticipating a painful future of $4,000 a month in alimony payments.
But before you file a transfer application, have faith. Not all our educators get off on murderous activity. Some get off on kiddie porn. At the time of his 2005 arrest at Dulles International Airport, Wharton professor emeritus Scott Ward's baggage included a ten minute "sexually explicit" video starring eight-year-olds. Ward was also accused of paying a teenage boy for sexual favors. And you thought all of the business-type professors were evil simply because of their cold, unflinching avarice.
-Jessica Goldstein
Owls was framed, brah
Late one evening in 1990, Delta Psi (St. A's, to the rest of us) brother William O'Flanagan was abducted from his apartment, handcuffed to a pole and verbally attacked with racial slurs by members of the rival fraternity, Psi Upsilon - also known as "Castle." This case of Greek competition-gone-bad not only resulted in Castle's banishment from campus, but also in the arrests of several of the offending brothers and in the sequestering of their house by the University, who then turned it into the residence for the Community Service Living Learning Program. To top it all off, the members of Castle had to pay the victim $145,000 in compensation for the abuse.
In an attempt to salvage their disbanded fraternity, the disgraced members of Psi Upsilon created the super-ultra double-secret society now known as Owls. Castle, in the meantime, was officially granted reinstatement to the IFC in 1995.
-Elizabeth Elfman
High-flying
fornication
It was late November of 2005 when the commotion erupted all over campus. No, it wasn't a political protest or even the screams of grad students agonizing at a Van Pelt carrel. This scandal stemmed from a different sort of eruption. Early one morning, an adventurous couple living in Hamilton (now Rodin) College House decided to test the strength of their windows by nailing each other against the cheap glass. Lucky for them, it didn't break; lucky for us, somebody snapped up a couple pictures before they finished. It didn't take long for the salacious photos to make their way onto collegehumor.com, then to the DP and eventually to national news.
Despite the humor inherent in this situation, there were serious issues at stake. The incident provoked probing questions: Does it count as public if you're still in your room? Is it any more exciting if someone else is watching? And anyway, what kind of pervert is spying on high rise rooms in the daylight?"
When the dust settled and people stopped caring, the school wisely issued no punishment to any of the parties involved. Despite this, the Penn community walked away from this scandal learning a valuable lesson: Close your blinds.
-Maunik Patel
University president supports terror, horribly gaudy witch costumes
President Gutmann's 2006 Halloween party was targeted by the one-man public image destruction team (also known as then-engineering senior Saad Saadi) who arrived in style as your typical suicide bomber - miniature Qu'ran in hand and all. A photograph taken of Gutmann posing cheerily next to the C-4-strapped Saadi turned out to be worth a thousand words in apologies, explanations, excuses, formal statements and other such garbage (i.e. weeks worth of excellent DP material).
What's more, Saadi's Facebook album from the evening included some choice shots, including photos of himself shooting "prisoners" (fellow party-goers) and training mini-terrorists (some guests from the under-12 crowd) and - most importantly - The Photo. It may have incited a rather short-lived PR damage control frenzy, but that image will live on in our hearts forever. Oh, the joys of free speech.
- Monisha Chakravarthy
Penn wrestling team involved in gay porN. who knew?
Steam surrounded the illustrious male members of the Penn wrestling team. They were showering. Collectively. Dripping with sweat, mounds of moist singlets and headgear covering the floor of the locker room, they thought they were alone. In fact, their supposedly private moments were about to get a lot more public. Unbeknownst to them all, they were fast approaching their very first outing into the world of gay wrestler pornography.
Sometime during a four-year span beginning in 1995, hidden cameras strategically placed in gym bags and showers captured approximately 40 pornographic images and at least two videos which were subsequently posted online for the world to indulge in. The footage appeared on "Young Studs Online," a Web site boasting the biggest collection of hidden camera locker room "activity" from the depths of both the University of Pennsylvania and Northwestern University's athletic communities.
Of course, all good things must end in lawsuit, and illegal homosexual wrestler porn is no exception. Four years and $506 million later, the pornographers were charged with invasion of privacy and were ordered to pay legal fees and compensatory damages to the victims. Now all that's left of the now infamous Young Studs is a couple of mesh gym bags and many broken hearts.
- Raya Jalabi
Econ major finds career path other than i-banking
Like many Penn alumni, Edward Anderton (C '05) and his girlfriend Jocelyn Kirsch lived an indulgent, romantic and generally enviable lifestyle - jet-setting to destinations around the world, filling their apartment with high-end electronics and shopping at designer stores.
That is, until police searched their Center City apartment to find, amid their expensive furnishings, around $18,000 in cash. along with a professional-grade ID card machine, scanners, several computers, printers and a slew of fake driver's licenses. Oh, and several credit cards in their neighbors' names.
The couple, arrested just before the search due to a neighbor's reported suspicions, appear to have been running a massive identity-theft operation. And beyond breaking into neighboring apartments and stealing identities, Kirsch had allegedly attempted to pass a phony check for nearly $2000 to pay for hair extensions at a Center City salon.
In total, their thefts are estimated to have amounted to $100,000 in the past year alone. Anderton, recently fired from a job as a real-estate analyst, had apparently decided there were better ways to make use of his Ivy League economics degree.
Goes to show that no measure is too extreme when it comes to scoring a designer suit and a kick-ass weave.
- Laura Mandel
