Not every new college student is packing on the pounds

By Hannah Turner

The ubiquitous Freshman 15 is dead.
While the lifestyle of college students still lends itself to high stress, overeating, and excessive partying, and while some students still do gain weight in college, many are fighting the trend of gaining 15 pounds or more in freshman year. Some are even replacing it with a Freshman Minus 15.
One of them is Haverford College sophomore Maria Johnson, whose name has been changed at her request. She said “wanted to avoid the Freshman 15 at all costs and possibly lose 10 of my own.” Surrounded by her family’s obesity and her friends’ eating disorders, the athletically-built Johnson had been trying to lose weight for years.
“I thought, when I get to college, my mom won’t be there to tell me to eat so I will finally be able to lose weight. Plus, I will have close access to a gym. It’s the perfect opportunity,” she said.
When she arrived as a freshman, Johnson planned to exercise regularly and minimize snacking and ice cream consumption in order to lose weight. “Some mornings I didn’t eat breakfast but then I would be shaky and weak so I stopped doing that,” she said, but she met her goal and did lose weight._
Haverford freshman Allie Kandel had a similar strategy upon beginning college. Kandel, who called snacking a “dangerous habit”, said she lost six pounds in her first six weeks of college simply by making healthier choices.
Fellow freshman Anna Russell echoed the anti-snacking sentiments, but didn’t know if it had led to any weight loss. “I know that I eat less than I did in high school, simply because I don’t have snack foods available to me,” Russell said. “It’s a set-up that I deliberately created for myself…but…I haven’t been exercising like I did in high school.”

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Food trucks are using social media to make new customers

By Stephanie Trott

With effortless ease, Tom McCusker, owner of Honest Tom’s Taco Truck, ladles some hand-chopped salsa on top of his two beautifully made tacos, hands them to an eager customer, and whips out his phone to post a message on Twitter: he had just run out of sweet potatoes. He had just served the last sweet potato tacos.
McCusker is part of a new wave of food vendors, ones who are using the Internet as a means of free advertising and to gain a steady following among Philadelphians. Popular social networking websites such as Facebook and Twitter allow entrepreneurs to set up a free website containing information, pictures, events, and specials.
According to Facebook’s online statistics, the website has over 500-million active users, spending approximately 700-billion minutes on the website per month. As of April 2010, Twitter reported to the Huffington Post that it had 180 million visitors in the website every month and 37% of those users update their pages through use of their cell phone.
Though word-of-mouth initially helped McCusker get the wheels of Honest Tom’s Taco Truck rolling back in the summer of 2009, it was his decision to bring his business to the Internet that brought in a more steady stream of customers.

1,000 followers

“I wasn’t familiar with Twitter when I started,” said McCusker in a recent interview in his lunch truck, located in University City at 33rd and Arch Streets.

He cited his brother’s roommate as getting him interested in Facebook and Twitter, both of which he now regularly updates. His Facebook page, which boasts over 1,000 followers, also contains the same                                         Honest Tom’s Taco Truck

updates as his Twitter page. Using both of these websites has allowed McCusker to gain stand out among the sea of vendors in University City, and has also improved his business.
“There was definitely an increase once we got onto the Internet,” he said, referring to the amount of patrons visiting his truck.
The beauty of Twitter, noted McCusker, is that the updates are short and simple. “I don’t write too much,” he said, “just my location and any specials.”
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New people are arriving, new problems are arising

By Meld0n Jones

The largest township in the country has seen its fair share of change.
“I remember when Upper Darby was mostly Irish Catholic, White Protestant, Jewish and Italian, there weren’t many minorities at all” said Helene Curley. Curley has lived in Upper Darby Township, PA for over 60 years and has been a witness to the rapidly changing demographics.
Now Upper Darby is a smorgasbord of ethnicities, home to over 100 ethnic cultures earning it the nickname “The United Neighborhood”. A trip down 69th street is a linguist’s dream, where a slow stroll will treat the astute listener to over 50 languages. The crowded streets are framed with colorful restaurants and grocery shops from almost every imaginable place. Local residents are just as likely to have spicy homemade ceviche for lunch as Guyanese dhalpuri roti (a hot, buttery flatbread stuffed with ground yellow split peas, garlic and pepper, usually served with savory curry).
“I moved here because of the diversity” said Monica Routh, a new resident who moved to Upper Darby a year ago. “The high school is very good, and it’s very close to downtown Philadelphia too.” And Routh’s favorite thing about her newfound home? “The shopping!” she gushes. Indeed, the local businesses are ripe with interesting finds; from catchall shops run by local Sikhs to large chain stores, filled with glossy posters of the latest Nikes.
But Curley remembers the real glory days of shopping in Upper Darby. Her blue eyes take on a dreamy quality as she reminiscences about bygone years: “People used to come from the outer suburbs to shop here. The big department stores around then-in the 50’s and 60s- were you know, Gimble’s, Lit Brothers, Woolworth’s. Everyone came here to shop, especially around the holidays!”

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Flirting via texting on your cell has become de rigueur in college today

By Raffi Williams

Saturday night for college students is filled with dancing, drinking and flirting. Unlike the dancing and the drinking, the flirting continues after the night is over, as it has for decades. This generation of college students, however, has changed the game. No awkward pick up lines, no waiting for the girl to pick up the phone: this generation flirts by texting via their cell phones.
“The risk is less,” said Haverford College senior Oleksa Gerlak. “I do not have to immediately have to say something I can take my time to write a response.”
Gerlak who — by his own accounts — text flirts with at least one girl a week, is not alone is seeing the benefits of text flirting. Bryn Mawr junior Steph Schorsch agrees with Gerlak, “You are more in control with text flirting.”
Bryn Mawr College and Haverford College both have become more technologically advance institutions in recent decades. The students have also become more technologically savvy. One of the advantages to living in a technologically advanced society is the speed of communication. Cell phones give unprecedented access to people. Everyone is a button away, no matter where they physically are located.
Businessmen use this quick access to people to do business, parents use it to check in on children and college students use it to flirt.

Serious business

Gerlak predicts that for him about half the girls he flirt texts with he kisses or does more. This is not flirting just for fun, each word is carefully selected and meaning pored over. “I put more focus on the individual words of a [text flirt] message than I do most words in papers in write for class,” said Haverford senior J.P. Cashiola.
Haverford senior Robert Breckinridge unabashedly admits to seeking out friends advice when text flirting. “When flirting with a girl over the phone or in person, you can’t turn to your friend and ask how should I respond to that, but when texting you can.”
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Social media sites have become a new venue for political activism

By Julie Mazziotta

Forget politicians encouraging you to vote on social networks, now you can hear it from people you know much better. Your friends.
On Nov. 2, the day of the 2010 mid-term elections, Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare provided applications for users to easily declare to their friends or followers that they voted, according to Computer World Daily.
Facebook placed a large toolbar on the homepages of every user in the United States over 18 with an “I Voted” button. The toolbar showed the total of Facebook users who clicked the button, along with your Facebook “friends” who pledged that they too voted by absentee ballot or at their polling place. The toolbar also linked users to a separate page on Facebook, where they could look up their polling place, and check back later in the day for live coverage of the results with ABC.
Twitter made #ivoted an official hashtag, a way of tracking popular topics on Twitter, that day, and also added #votereport for Twitterers to report back on their experiences voting, MSNBC reported.
Foursquare, a service that allows users to “check in with their friends and update their location,” according to their website, added a program similar to Facebook’s, with additional information about the person’s gender, the time they voted, and their polling place, according to an article on Tech President.

‘I Voted’ toolbar

Facebook first debuted the “I Voted” toolbar in the 2008 presidential elections, with 5.4 million people clicking “Yes.” This year, that number increased to over 12 million people according to Tech President, although there are now 500 million Facebook users, compared to 100 million in 2008.
Matt Kerbel, a political science professor at Villanova University spoke to students at Bryn Mawr College Nov. 11, on a panel titled, “New Media in the 2010 Election: What the Hell Just Happened Here?” Kerbel doubted the legitimacy of the Facebook toolbar, saying, “The internet give you new ways to talk to your friends, and to convince them to vote,” he said. “Checking a little box on Facebook; there may be a little social bias in play and you want similarly-minded friends to check yes.”
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More and more Bryn Mawr students are coming from overseas

By Amanda Kennedy

To enter Madhavika Bajoria’s room in the Rhoads North dorm at Bryn Mawr College, one must first walk through elephants-and parrots and fish, too.
These vibrant mobiles from her native country of India hang from the ceiling, a combination of jangling beads and embroidered animals in bright pinks, yellows and blues flecked with gold yarn. Bajoria, 20, a sophomore, got them last year at home in Calcutta over winter break to brighten her room during a bleak winter.
“I really need color,” she said.
Bajoria is used to “pleasant” winters in India that feel more like fall, she said. She especially misses home when the rain falls in Bryn Mawr because the showers remind her of the monsoons in India.
Bajoria has had to adjust to many other aspects of life at an American college: classes held in English, American food at the dining halls and being thousands of miles away from family, to name a few. But the lure of studying at a liberal arts college in the United States, where young women gain insight on independence and intellect, helped her to hop on a plane and never look back.
Bajoria is one of a growing faction of international students who choose to study at Bryn Mawr each year. In fact, the number of international students attending Bryn Mawr during the 2010-11 school year is the largest in history, with 18.9 percent of the student body from 62 countries represented, up from 17.4 percent last year.
Bryn Mawr is part of a national rise in bringing more international students to college campuses-the Chronicle of Higher Education reported in July that foreign enrollment increased by 2 percent in American colleges and universities to 586,000 students for fall 2009.
Each year the freshman class at Bryn Mawr includes more international students. While class size has remained the same-around 370 students-the percentage has risen, from 20 percent international for the Class of 2012 to 21 percent international for the Class of 2013, “the most international yet,” Bryn Mawr President Jane McAuliffe proclaimed in 2009 at convocation. The Class of 2014, however, trumped all previous years with 27 percent of entering freshmen coming from overseas.
The sudden increase in enrollment in the past two to three years is thanks to Bryn Mawr’s ability to provide financial aid to international students, as well as the development of the global economy, said Jenny Rickard, Chief Enrollment and Communications Officer.

The world is flat

“That I would attribute to the world is flat,” she said. “With the economy changing, now more students of those who don’t need financial aid or those who aren’t needing as much financial aid as before [can come to Bryn Mawr] just because of the economies in other countries have grown. It’s a situation we hadn’t seen before.”
Because of the large influx of international students in such a short period of time, Growth and Structure of Cities professor Gary McDonogh and other faculty members on the Diversity Council would like to gain more knowledge about the make-up of the student body.
“What I think has struck some of us is, that this is a serious change that demands some discussion,” he said. “It’s not to say that incoming students have caused problems. It’s more significant that it is a conscious shift.”
The Diversity Council is considering hiring people to work with the deans’ office to run focus groups and compile questionnaires for the student body to complete. Responses of international students would be compared to responses of domestic students to gauge how international students are fairing with the rest of the student body.

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For Ryan Henrici, his mother’s illness defined his goals

By Dana Eiselen

For one Conestoga High School senior, his defining educational experience did not happen at school, but closer to home. When Ryan Henrici’s mom, Carol, was struck with a mystery illness, he decided to pursue a career in science and medicine.
Ryan Henrici’s mother, Carol, was known in her Chester Count town of Chesterbrook as the modern day Wonder Mom. She managed a household of three children, a husband and cat with boundless energy.
“Every day before school she would ask the children if they needed anything pressed,” said Lucy Quigley, a family friend. “The house was spotless and she never missed one of the kids’ [athletic] games.”
In second grade, Ryan came home to find his mother passed out on the couch. The family called 9-1-1. Mrs. Henrici spent the next six months in the hospital, undiagnosed. While playing the waiting game, Ryan’s father, Mike, began managing Mrs. Henrici’s health care, and Mrs. Henrici’s parents moved in to help take care of the family.

‘It was really scary…’

Doctor consultations and hospital visits became routine. “At first it was really scary seeing her on a ventilator, but then I saw the doctors and nurses trying to help her, doing everything they could,” said Ryan.
The unpredictable course of the disease propelled an interest in medicine for Ryan and his sister. “When she got sick, that’s when Meaghan applied to medical school, and I thought maybe this is something I should do.” Ryan’s older sister, Meaghan, is now a second-year medical student at Drexel University.
Ryan has completed all of the Advanced Placement science and math courses his high school offers. The school helped tailor his needs by creating a multi-variable calculus class; he is also working one-on-one with a teacher to learn the basics of organic chemistry.
“Together, we work through a college organic chemistry textbook. The course is really by my design. I go at a relaxed pace, but by the end of the year I am planning to perform some experiements in the lab most don’t do until college.”
It is ten years since Mrs. Henrici first passed out, and Ryan is constantly reminded about the importance of medicine.
“Being put in this whole medicine situation, put on one side of it, across from the doctors, changed my perspective,” said Ryan. He thinks it’s “all about compassion.” “They’re healing patients physically, but they’re also emotionally healing the family.”
Mrs. Henrici lost the ability to walk and speak. She was first diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, but was re-diagnosed five years ago with Neuromyelitis optica, a rare syndrome of the central nervous system that affects the optic nerves and spinal cord. The original misdiagnosis was a substantial setback for recieveing effective treatment in the early stages of her disease. Continue reading →

How a Haverford College sophomore became a triathlete

By Hannah Turner

What began as a casual joke has, over the past three months, become a way of life for Haverford College sophomore Bekki Schwartz. Now, in addition to musician, sister, and friend, Schwartz can add triathlete to her resumé.
Schwartz decided that she needed to take her fitness more seriously over the summer. She began running daily, and “was feeling really good about myself and about my body, because I knew I was doing the right thing for it,” she said. Until this August though, Schwartz “would not have self-identified as an athlete…Not at all.”
When she told some friends about her new fitness kick, one facetiously suggested that she train for a triathlon. “But then,” Schwartz said, “we looked it up on Wikipedia and realized that this was something I could definitely do, and something that would fill a void in my life.”
This void, she explained, was two-pronged. First and foremost, she said, was the fact that she still had no specific goal to keep her motivated. The second, more general, issue was that “I’d kind of settled into a niche on campus…It had been a long time since I’d done something totally outside of my comfort zone…It was time for me to do something totally different, and to prove to myself that I could do it,” Schwartz said.

Getting a trainer

Schwartz first used the internet to implement her plan. She found several free triathlon training plans for beginners, picked one, and intended just to follow it. She realized quickly though that Google couldn’t provide her with the advice and feedback crucial to a successful training program. Schwartz decided that she needed a coach, and asked for funding as a birthday gift from her parents.
Again Google came in handy as Schwartz looked for triathlon trainers in the area. She called several and in a “purely fiscal decision” found Mary Sundy Kelley. Armed with a new trainer and plans to compete in a specific race (The Bassman Distance Sprint Triathlon in Tuckerton, N.J.), Schwartz began her seven-week training program.
Schwartz’s schedule included six workouts per week, with one off day. These workouts included one long bike, run, and swim each week. The other training days were comprised of interval workouts, combining varying intensity levels in one of the events with a short session of one of the others. By the end of her seven weeks, Schwartz’s workouts exceeded the duration of those in the actual race.
By the time race day arrived, Schwartz felt physically prepared. She had noticed the changes in her fitness over the past two months, and was proud to put her new strength to the test. Continue reading →