If All Else Fails, Sue Your College

Do you promise you'll get me a job?

It’s a tough job market these days, but some college grads are refusing to accept their fates. According to Huff Po via the AP, Trina Thompson is suing Monroe College because the school’s Office of Career Advancement “hasn’t provided her with the leads and career advice it promises.” She is suing for $70,000, the amount she paid in tuition because she’s been unable to find a job since she received her information technology degree at the Brooklyn school. Meanwhile, the Monroe insists her charges are without merit. We’re excited to see how this case plays out!

Mark Sanford May Be Smarter Than We Thought, Sez Penn Prof

According to Daily Intel, Linguistics prof Mark Liberman has been trying to decode the statements of South Carolina’s scandal-ridden governor, Mark Sanford. Daily Intel writes: “For instance, Liberman suggests that when Sanford talked about ‘doing stupid,’ he may have been channeling the New International Version of the Bible — which refers to ‘doing good’ and ‘doing wrong’ — when he nominalized the adjective.”

We dug a little further and found that on Language Log, Liberman draws an interesting comparison between Sanford’s statement that “the biggest self of self is indeed self” and Gerard Manley Hopkins’ unfinished fragment On the Portrait of Two Beautiful Young People.

Here’s an excerpt: ”Man lives that list, that leaning in the will/ No wisdom can forecast by gauge or guess,/The selfless self of self, most strange, most still,/ Fast furled and all foredrawn to No or Yes.”

Liberman doubts Sanford is “familiar” with the fragment, but hey, it’s a cool parallel. And Linguistics professors teaching us how to excuse awkward syntax — that’s kinda cool too.

Why On This Night Are There Six Different Seders?

Mom and dad don’t love you enough to pay for your shlep home for Passover? You happen to be at a university that sometimes defines “diversity” as “more than one kind of Jewish person.” Don’t be overwhelmed by all the options; we break it down for you here. This year in Philadelphia, next year in Jerusalem! (Why not travel? It’s not like you’ll have a job…)

Pickles = Kosher for Passover.

Tonight:

If you want rabbis running the show, you’ve got two choices: a Conservative seder with Rabbi Mike Uram in the Falk Dining Commons and Reform seder with Rabbi Janice Elster in the Korman Rotunda (both on the 1st floor of Steinhardt Hall at 7:15). 2 smaller student-led seders, for the less authority-inclined among you, will also be going down.

JRP Seders start at 7:30; there’s one in the Morris Bodine Lounge of Ware and another at the LGBT Center.

Tomorrow:

Get to Hillel at 7:45 for a big seder in the Falk Dining Commons. If you aren’t free until later, there’s a smaller student-led seder at 8:30.

Guster’s Not Gonna Write You A Love Song. Unless They Do?

When SPEC announced that Guster would open for Akon at Fling, some Penn students were up in arms. But it looks like we at Penn may get something special out of the deal, like, say, a song written especially for us. This expectation is not unprecedented — Guster performed a song about Penn State for our stateside friends during an October 2007 performance.

With lyrical gems like, “If you’re out real late cause you’re smoking pot, stay up all night and eat breakfast at the Waffle Shop,” perhaps we can expect some love for campus favorites like Smoke’s.