All (particularly Glenn Moyer):
There seems to be some confusion about my role with this list serve
controversy. Here are my clarifications:
1 - I live in University City/ West Philly. The nonprofit I direct, Campus
Philly, has nothing to do with my participation on this or any other list serve
in West Philly. In fact, our offices are now in Center City. We do have a
relationship with Penn, Drexel, USIP, and twenty other schools, but we are an
independent nonprofit and we are strictly concerned with our mission to
attract, engage, and employ college students in the city and region.
2 - I have never met Kyle Cassidy, and I once met Bruce Anderson. I am not in
love with Kyle's new list and I am personally not in favor of any "new" list
being on a Penn server. I do applaud Kyle for starting a new list because this
list is very poorly organized, from my perspective, and I wish as a local
resident for a more useful and less abused local list serve. My desire is for
that list serve to be independent from Penn, despite the fact that I attended
Penn, I contribute money to Penn, and on the whole I think Penn has done great
work for the community. I think we are wasting resources by not using a
universal service like Yahoo or Google that constantly adds new and useful
community features. West Philly Freecycle is amazing, and simple, and not
abused. But it is not a forum.
3 - There has been an idea publicly floated by Bruce Anderson to merge the
"new" list with the PFSNI list. I have no opinion about the PFSNI list, except
that it is significantly less abusive than the UnivCity list, and therefore I
read the PFSNI list. I presume that Penn runs the list as a service to the
community, as PFSNI stands for Penn Faculty, Students, Neighborhood,
Something... I therefore presume that if the "community" wanted to "take it
over," then people on that list and at Penn should get together and talk about
it.
4 - The first time I ever spoke to anyone about this issue was my e-mail to
UnivCity applauding the concept. I would not be writing about it publicly again
if my company's name hadn't been alluded to in an e-mail.
5 - I am personally (solely on my own behalf, not on behalf of my organization,
my wife, or my wife's synagogue) planning to participate in an offline
conversation about the need for a better list. I will publicly let you know
that I wish there were a better list in this community, but I do not have any
negative wishes against this list. I will simply unsubscribe when there is a
better alternative. If I can be helpful to anyone working to create a better
community list serve, I am not embarrassed to offer that help. I don't think it
is called a conspiracy when it is done publicly.
Thank you,
Jon Grabelle Herrmann
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