The letter, which now has over 200 signatures, emphasized their concerns that this decision came down from the Deans without consulting the Honor Board and other students in the community, going against the spirit of Bryn Mawr. The alumnae also shared the strong sense of family that comes from living at Radnor.

On Monday, the Deans had yet to respond, and the alumnae resent the letter with additional testimonies and signatures. An hour and a half later, Dean Michelle Rasmussen responded by saying that Radnor had already decided between the two punishments for the 2013-14 school year, and that the Deans will support them in the next few months, effectively ignoring the alumnae letter. The Bi-College News was cc’ed on this email.

The letter includes individual testimonies from former Radnor residents.

The Bi-College News was included on this exchange, and the alumnae have allowed us to repost their letter here. Please click on the following link to open the 25 page file.

Alumnae Letter of Concern Regarding Radnor

A one-woman show came to Bryn Mawr Feb. 7, as artist and musician Patti Smith took the stage in an exclusive performance for the college community.

Smith read from her memoir, “Just Kids,” sang a few of her songs and answered questions from the audience.

Smith was at Bryn Mawr to receive the Hepburn Medal, named for Katharine Hepburn ’28 and her mother, Katharine Houghton, Class of 1900, later that evening, in honor of her work as a “trailblazer in the male-dominated world of rock and roll,” according to the Hepburn Center.

Following a brief introduction from Neda Ulaby ’93, an arts reporter from NPR, Smith went onstage to loud applause from the audience, which then broke in to Bryn Mawr’s traditional cheer, the Anassa Kata. Smith responded with her own high school cheer, adding that high school was, “the only thing I finished.”

As the Hepburn Center honoree, Smith spoke briefly about Katharine Hepburn and her influence in the art world as an actress. Smith explained that after learning that she would receive the award, she read about Hepburn and her time at Bryn Mawr. Smith said that while Hepburn didn’t have the best experience at the College, “The day she got her diploma, she knew who she was.”

Smith emphasized that for students undergoing the same conflicted feelings that Hepburn expressed about her time at Bryn Mawr, their destiny hasn’t been fulfilled yet, and that they have the time to find it now and after college.

“Really treasure this time,” she said. “Even if it seems like a drag now…and all you want to do is listen to Jimi Hendrix and drink wine.”

In a separate interview with student journalists at Bryn Mawr, Smith talked about her attachment to Philadelphia. She grew up in Germantown, Penn. for seven years, and hoped to move there after high school, but couldn’t because of the cost.

“I was always proud to be from this City of Brotherly Love,” she said. “It has one of the greatest museums in the world, the Philadelphia Museum of Art. I saw my first art here, my first Picasso in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. I saw John Coltrane, Nina Simone. It’s a great, exciting city. Plus the cheesesteaks are really good.”

Smith largely fielded questions about writing her memoir, and how she felt during the experience.

She explained that Robert Mapplethorpe, Smith’s partner both romantically and artistically, asked her to write their story as he was dying. Writing the book was an intense period in her life as Smith dealt with her grief and learned how to detail their life together on the page.

“So much pain and excitement went in to that little thing,” Smith said.

She said that the process was extremely difficult, as she repeatedly wrote and shelved the book when it became too hard to write. During that time, Smith went through three different publishers.

Smith then urged the audience, “Don’t give up, if it’s really important to you, the important thing is to do it well.”

“[Writing the book] was the longest college education ever,” she said.

Smith briefly attended college, but said, “I didn’t learn from a school, I learned from my teachers at the University of Chelsea Hotel,” referencing the time she lived at New York City’s Chelsea Hotel, the famed landmark that was home to artist, writers and musicians in the 60’s and 70’s.

Smith played two songs, “In My Blakean Year,” which she said was her friend and writer Allen Ginsberg’s favorite song, and “Grateful,” which was inspired by a vision she had of Jerry Garcia.

After an audience member asked Smith what was the best piece of advice she’d ever received, she talked about the writer William Burroughs, who taught her how to build her name as an artist.

“He told me this; you have to build up your name and keep your name clean,” she said. “You always have to make choices in your life that are right for you and who you are.”

“I made mistakes in my life, but they were my mistakes, not anyone else’s.”

When asked what she would tell her younger self though, she focused on dentistry.

“I would tell myself to get my teeth professionally cleaned.”

As for what she wants her legacy to be, Smith said, “Just simply that I did good work. In the end that’s what’s going to endure.”

Towards the end of her performance, Smith gave advice to students with their career aspirations, telling the audience that, “Everything you want to do well for your vocation, you have to be willing to work hard when things are worth it,” she said. “It takes a lot of work.”

“My culture was very work based. I wasn’t concerned about obstacles or breaking in to any scenes. For me my main concern was my work. The main obstacle is the ones of your own process. The rest is just climbing a ladder.”

Smith ended by singing “Because the Night” a capella, something she said she would never do in the 70’s or 80’s, for fear of embarrassment. She advised the audience though, not to live by that sentiment.

“Don’t sweat being embarrassed, everybody’s going to look like an asshole sooner or later.”

Political columnist and blogger Andrew Sullivan, of The Daily Beast, spoke at Haverford last Friday night in a talk sponsored by the Haverford College Speakers Committee.

Sullivan, who recently took his political blog independent, is noted in the world of politics as a conservative whose personal politics do not exactly conform to the party lines.

Sullivan made some of his more subversive views clear in the opening lines of his speech, declaring that he wanted “to come out tonight as a Christian, to come out tonight as a conservative, and in a less controversial way, to come out as a homosexual.”

Playing off the stereotypically liberal views of his college audience, Sullivan garnered a roomful of laughs before his topic turned more serious.

“People have said these are three things in me that cannot coexist—which is like saying that I don’t exist,” Sullivan said.

He went on to speak in open detail about his life as a true political conservative—one who advocates for a free-market economy and small government—yet one who is often excluded from today’s more radical Republican party.

Sullivan differs from other conservatives in that he openly supports gay rights, something which he believes should be a universal policy of the Republican Party because it implies government non-interference in private citizens’ lives.

Sullivan also told the audience that he supports President Barack Obama, calling him “the most conservative president since Clinton.”

He also believes the gridlock in Congress the past two years “gave us the optimal outcome”—the possibility of compromise between Republicans and Democrats on pivotal issues, like the Affordable Care Act.

Sullivan condemned the fundamentalism of the modern Republican Party on some of these issues, calling it one of the biggest errors a politician could make—and also declaring that fundamentalism is a quality that does not fit into the definition of a true conservative.

“The conservative temperament is characterized by a resistance to certainty,” Sullivan said. “Fundamentalism must be undermined with the knowledge that we have been wrong, are wrong, and will continue to be wrong in the future.”

Furthermore, “anything can be turned into dogma if you’re stupid enough.”

Sullivan cemented his place as a progressive conservative by talking about his struggle coming to terms with his Christianity and the fact that he is gay.

“I’ve never been able to not believe in God,” Sullivan said, “but there was a 15-minute period of my life where I wondered if God was evil.”

This period of doubt came during the AIDS crisis in the 1980s, when many of Sullivan’s friends were being diagnosed with terminal AIDS—and when Sullivan himself found out that he was HIV-positive.

Sullivan learned of his HIV while spending his thirtieth birthday at the beach, only two weeks after his boyfriend had turned out to be HIV-positive as well.

“I found out I was HIV-positive and I couldn’t tell anyone because I was a public figure, because my mother was recently admitted to an institution because of her bi-polar disorder, and because I could have been deported because I was a threat to public health” and born in England, Sullivan said.

It was during this period of personal crisis however, that Sullivan gained a deeper understanding of his religion and faith and became even more committed to Christianity.

However, he decried some elements of the Church that suffer from the same fundamentalism he hates in Republicans.

“The Christianity I know has no desire to control anyone else’s soul because it does not believe it is absolutely true,” Sullivan said. “Faith that’s not freely chosen is not a faith at all.”

Haverford and Bryn Mawr prospective athletes are learning to be more wary of what they post on social media sites. As of January, Division-III delegates from the NCAA committee are enforcing changes to D-III regulations, the most influential being testing for the sickle cell trait in athletes and open communication between coaches and prospective students via the students’ social media sites.

The D-III sickle cell proposal which goes into effect on August 1st of this year, requires all student athletes to be tested for the sickle cell trait. The testing is intended to help ensure the safety of these athletes, as the sickle cell trait can make athletes more susceptible to muscle breakdown and heatstroke. If a student tests positive for sickle cell, they will be advised on how best to approach their sport safely, rather than restricted from playing at all.

The more controversial change, however, has been in regards to the use of social media to recruit prospective student-athletes. The proposal “allows contact between coaches and prospects as long as it is strictly between only the sender and the recipient,” according to the NCAA. There has always been a strain over when and how coaches can contact their prospects, so opening the door for social media interaction instead of simply emails or phone calls may be beneficial for college recruiting purposes in regards to getting responses from prospects and staying in contact. A member of the Bryn Mawr College Student-Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC) recognized that “reaching students by phone and email just [isn't] cutting it.”

The SAAC still approached the proposal with caution, wary of the idea of coaches using social media sites like Facebook as a recruiting tool. The same SAAC member pointed out that, “a lot of us like to keep our social media life separate from people such as our coaches, professors, bosses, and even parents.” Stepping into the social media realm may be a bit too personal for many prospective students. The use of phone calls and emails seems to be less prominent for this generation however, so perhaps reaching into that personal sphere is a reasonable step for contacting athletes. Even text messaging has been approved as a recruiting tool in D-III sports. The NCAA is aware of these changes in communication and seeks “to make recruiting more effective and efficient.”

The SAAC sees the pros and cons of this proposal and with its clearance for D-III sports, SAAC knows that there will be more benefits than drawbacks for Bryn Mawr and its prospective student-athletes. “Our goal at Bryn Mawr is to not only recruit athletes, but students and strong women as well,” said the same member of SAAC. SAAC looks forward to how Bryn Mawr will use these new recruiting tools to bring more strong women onto campus, into the classroom, and on the field.

Poet Terrance Hayes has recently visited Bryn Mawr College to conclude the fall semester of the Creative Writing department’s ‘Reading Series.’ As a winner of the National Book Award for Poetry for his most recent collection, Lighthead (2010), as well as a recipient of a Whiting Writers Award, and Pushcart Prize, and the author Wind in a Box (2006) and Hip Logic (2002), Hayes has without question established himself as a skillful, influential writer in our time. Professor J.C Todd noted in her introduction that through a love of language and a craft for poetry, Hayes brings us a “lyric narrative.” From Hip Hop to Jazz to Blues, his poetry draws from musical traditions and oral vernacular. His work might be characterized as ‘hybrid poetry’ with variations and riffs on traditional forms and quickly changing perspectives on modern ones. His poetry is a gumbo infused with rhetorical tactics, from questions and answers to confessions and recollections. It is playful, nuanced, probing and perceptive.

From the moment Terrance Hayes arrived at the podium and welcomed us with his soulful voice we were transported to a world filled with “primate tongue[s] and its syllables of debris” against a soundtrack of “Not the noise, but its rhythm; an arrangement of derangements” (“Lighthead’s Guide to the Galaxy”) and an atmospheric state of erotic moonlit carelessness alongside cautionary self-preservation and inhibition.

Unlike previous readers during this semester’s Creative Writing series, Terrance Hayes conducted the evening in a very spontaneous manner. While casually speaking to the audience, he broke up selected readings from his newest book, Lighthead, with commentary to give us some insight into what he was thinking when he wrote each piece. He came across as having a self-assured and charismatic personality. In following the natural train of his thoughts, his talk took on a conversational dimension, giving the audience a chance to relate his speaking voice to his reading persona. Program coordinator and Creative Writing professor, Daniel Torday, welcomed the ‘enthusiastic and robust’ turnout, as students seemed engaged, curious and amused.

At the end of poems like “New Folk” or “A Plate of Bones” he expressed humorously (speculating on his structure and syntactic construction) “See, that’s crazy… there’s something going on here.” His poems deftly alternated from scenes of physical action to stories and dialogue, to others that were more meditative.

Hayes spoke interestingly about the process of writing poetry as an organic form. He noted the shift that takes place when you look back at a poem you haven’t read in a while and how that distance of time makes you feel more detached or nostalgic. For Hayes, the structure becomes clearer as he continues to rewrite and revisit his poems. Before reading his elegy to “The Mustache,” he confessed “I have not read this poem since the last time I shaved my mustache.” He spoke honestly about how sometimes one writes with a clear intent and how other times it’s just a manipulation of words on paper, and watching it is like letters with legs, seeing where they lead. Responding to questions about the origin of a poem, he said: “I still don’t know where it came from.” His answer to why he writes poetry speaks for itself: “I want to make something. My profession grows out of a need for expression.”

His most re-visited form is the list poem—a construction most harmonious to the instinctual flow of his thoughts. He varies this tendency through slant rhymes or repeated sounds, or taking figures of speech or well-known expressions, turning them on their heads, to stir an internal dialogue, a cause & effect relationship—the goal being unexpected juxtaposition.

Underneath a satirical weaving of modern pop-culture and colloquial dialogue, his poems carry a thread of more serious themes, ranging from globalization, politics, race, family, sexuality and existential dilemmas on self-fulfillment. But his handling of these issues never preaches moral platitudes. He writes about a level of unmet expectations “thinking, ‘is that all there is?’… All species have a notion of emptiness” (“Lighthead’s Guide to the Galaxy”). In poems such as “Snow for Wallace Stevens,” he adopts literary references ranging from Kafka to Odysseus, adding a distinct texture to his sentences.

Hayes’ reading voice was tuned like a musical instrument, articulating every syllable and animating changes in tone or pace. In this way his poetry speaks not only to the eye but to the ear as well. He described how he sometimes finds himself falling in love with a certain word, like “fork—what a great word” or “somberness,” and like a cough drop, he just let it just roll around in his mouth. When he had read “All words come from pre-existing words” and the “world is connected to a circle,” we were reminded of the cyclical, ouroboros nature of things. His wry frank tone commands us to look within ourselves and examine how “blood spirals [a] helix of defects” (“Lighthead’s Guide to the Galaxy, Blind Contour Drawing”). His poetry manages to speak a trilingual language of atmosphere, biology and metaphor. Not only does his poetry target the five senses, it fundamentally appeals to the mind, body and soul.

It should not come as a surprise that Bryn Mawr Dining Services has been struggling with their budget recently. Students have seen a loss of sundae bars, absence of some special dinners (such as the holiday dinner during first semester) and even cutbacks on takeout containers.

In an open forum on dining hall cutbacks last Wednesday, Bernie Chung-Templeton, Executive Director of Dining Services at both Bryn Mawr and Haverford addressed these issues and called for student support and action to bring back the much-beloved dining menu of a year ago.

Chung-Templeton fielded questions especially regarding the reasons for the Bryn Mawr cutbacks, explaining that Dining Services, which usually overspends around $70,000 a year, overspent around $140,000 last year. However, contrary to the concerns of some students – who remarked that the dining center at Haverford has not suffered the same cutbacks as Bryn Mawr’s dining centers – this overspending is not a result of Haverford students eating at Bryn Mawr dining halls. Attempting to limit the number of Haverford and Swarthmore students who frequent Haffner and Erdman would, “go against the spirit of the Tri-Co,” Chung-Templeton said.

Instead, the tight budget is related primarily to the economy and food waste on campus. Chung-Templeton called for suggestions from the audience on how to keep from throwing away uneaten food. Some of the more popular proposals – composting and smaller portions – have already been implemented in both Haffner and Erdman dining halls.

Yet one of the largest concerns remains: how will the new budget affect Bryn Mawr Dining Services in the near future? Unfortunately, Chung-Templeton explained, the answer is unclear. The students of Bryn Mawr can only hold out hope for the best as Dining Services tries to save money for the traditional May Day strawberries and cream as well as senior commencement brunch.

The audience was left with words of hope, however. There is a possibility of foods which were cut this semester, returning next year. And – in response to one student’s question – it is unlikely that Bryn Mawr will have to close another dining hall.

Next year’s budget will be finalized in April and Chung-Templeton assured students that a petition to raise the Dining Services budget could affect how much money the department receives.

A bald man’s head branded with the Nike symbol, a reproduction of a Gap Red ad, altered with the words Ebony Life, and a photo-and-film combination of a man slam-dunking a basketball through a lynching noose. These are just some of the striking and shocking images at Hank Willis Thomas’ art show “Other People’s Property” or “OPP,” currently on exhibit through March 8th in the Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery at Haverford. The show, curated by Kalia Brooks, could best be defined as a socially charged exhibition on the politics of commodifying African American men’s bodies. The exhibit combines past and present identities within several types of medium including light jet prints, photography, animation, painting and live film

One of the collection’s goals is a satirical interpretation of African American men’s masculinity, history and identity, using modern day corporate images to demand viewers to question the way African American men are treated in society. Another piece, probably less obvious in its statement, is a placid display of a bottle’s silhouette looking out to the ocean and named Absolut No Return, perhaps suggesting the exodus of millions of slaves from Old World slave posts to the Americas. It’s a magnificent image full of nostalgia, anxiety, anticipation, fear and serenity. It’s almost as if the viewer is looking through the eyes of, but not necessarily identifying with, an African slave. The exhibit, though it may not be relatable to everyone, promotes awareness about what’s at stake for African American men’s identities in the future.

The overall show is exact, illuminating, innovative and complex. It refreshes our awareness of our social conceptions and expectations. Whether some racial statements are obvious or not, the works of art really engage the viewer to admire the creative puns, metaphors, social and political statements. There are several pieces that repeat the theme of lynching, basketball and branding, which prick our conscience into cognitive dissonance about how the lines between past and present are blurring. So go take a walk to the Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery and get ready to own up to society’ s consequences of having made African American men into Other People’s Property, past and present.

“Excuse me miss, no photographs allowed.”

With a frantic gesture, I brought my camera phone to my side and stared blankly into the eyes of a six foot five museum guard.

“Sorry,” I mumbled, walking off in the opposite direction.

That wasn’t the only photo I failed to take that day, at The Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia.

Photo number one of Paul Cézanne’s Toward Mont Sainte-Victoire was a blurry capture, as I attempted to snap the photo from my purse while walking; photo number two of Pablo Picasso’s Girl Holding a Cigarette was cut short by the admonishing eyes of a nearby security guard; and photo number three of Vincent Van Gogh’s The Postman was non-existent due to the utterance of those three little words I dread to come by, “no photographs allowed.”

While my persistent attacks on the museum regime may have seemed like the workings of menacing rule-breaker, my photographing motives couldn’t have been more benign.

As a passionate art-lover, I look forward to visiting art museums and documenting my favorite works as well as sharing my memoriam online with friends and family.

For years, art museum directors and historians have shunned the possibility of allowing museum-goers to photograph the fine art-adorned walls. Flash photography has been reported to diminish the lives of canvas, paint, and paper, special collection exhibitions have been watched with wary eyes to prohibit the photography of copyrighted artwork on loan, and rigid museum board members have defended their right to control the aesthetic experience of exhibitions, condemning the cramped clutter of tourist photographers.

According to The New York Times, director of Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Anne Hawley was “appalled” and had to “leave the gallery” when a flood of tourists with cameras rushed into an exhibition at the Louvre in Paris.

The Louvre is among several of the greatest art museums in the world to permit photography on their premises, along with the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the National Gallery of Art.

While there are certain areas of the aforementioned museums that do not permit flash photography, there are also many spaces that do allow the use of flash.

The New York Times reported that chief of conservation at Washington’s National Gallery of Art Mervin Richard said,

“Fears that flashes damage art are left over from the days when people used flashbulbs, which could actually explode. After personally examining studies of the effects of light exposure on art, I’ve concluded that there is little risk.”

Yet, many smaller, more exclusive regional museums like The Barnes Foundation, the Brandywine River Museum in Chadds Forth, Pennsylvania, and the Michener Art Museum in Doylestown, Pennsylvania have zero tolerance for any form of artwork photography.

It’s a shame that in this era of technology many museums still cannot bear to jump on the bandwagon and, at the least, reap the rewards of free Internet publicity via online photo sharing.

With viral social media platforms for photo sharing such as Instagram, Flickr, Tumblr, and Facebook, the pool of people that can now be responsible for advertising any given thing online has expanded to, well, basically all of us.

During my trip to the Philadelphia Museum of Art last week, I snapped a photo of a wall of fine art I particularly enjoyed. After uploading the photo to both Instagram and Facebook 20 minutes later, I received a multitude of ‘likes’ and positive comments on the photos, inexplicably marketing the museum commodity through arguably the most viewed platform to currently exist, the World Wide Web.

While my pleasure of photographing fine art is not solely derived from my photos’ overall reception, there is no questioning its consequential benefit for the museums themselves.

All it takes are those responsible for issuing the ‘No Photographs Allowed’ signs plastered across art museum walls to consider the everyday museum-goer hoping to experience artwork with an everlasting snapshot.

For movies and television, awards shows are a dime a dozen. In January and February, the same group of actors and directors dress up and head to Hollywood for every event; the Golden Globes, the Screen Actors Guild Awards, the Directors Guild, and of course, the Oscars.

Musicians, despite the enormous pool of potential nominees, are limited to a single mainstream awards show in the U.S.; the Grammys. This leads to major flaws in the system.

For the Recording Academy, the group that chooses the nominees, they have to focus on musicians that break into the Top 100 or else the list of potential nominees would be endless. They don’t explicitly state that the nominees for the major awards must be atop the Billboard Charts, but ask that they “achieve prominence” during the eligibility year, according to the Grammy guidebook.

While this is a necessary step to condense the possible nominees, it leaves out excellent musicians until they hit the charts. Last year, the rapper Macklemore debuted multiple singles, including “Thrift Shop” and “Same Love.” “Same Love” debuted in July, and is well within the eligibility requirements, but it didn’t break into the Billboard Top 100 until this week, and therefore wasn’t considered for a nomination.

“Thrift Shop” is currently the number one song in the country for the third week in a row, but it debuted too late for eligibility. Instead, the song will likely show up at the Grammys in 2014, unless the voters are sick of it by then.

While the Recording Academy has strict rules for eligibility years, they constantly bypass them. In their regulations for the Record of the Year category, the Academy states, “Tracks from a previous year’s album may be entered provided the track was not entered the previous year,”shifting the language of the award. For the Best New Artist category, nominees can have up to three albums before receiving a nomination, making their status as a “new” artist questionable. While it is still important to recognize musicians for their hard work, it just makes the Grammys look outdated when they’re nominating bands years after they actually debuted.

The band Bon Iver, for example, put out their first album in 2007, and despite enormous critical acclame, wasn’t nominated for the Best New Artist Grammy until last year, after the lead singer collaborated with Kanye West on an album.

By ignoring their own regulations, it seems obvious that the Recording Academy is just looking for the artists that will ensure the greatest amount of viewers come awards night.

So what’s the solution?

One idea is to copy the U.K.’s format, and move to an awards system that focuses on each genre, rather than grouping them together. This would allow for a more in-depth look at each of the possible musicians for each category, instead of trying to fit each genre into the Best New Artist pool.

Lets be frank, the 76ers have had rotten luck in their search for the next “answer” sans Allen Iverson.

With no true superstar on their roster since Iverson’s departure in 2006, the Sixers’ organization has stayed completive through drafting young talent and making sensible trades—making a playoff appearance 4 times in the last seven seasons. But to reiterate, this organization has had very few breaks in acquiring a cornerstone to their franchise. The last game-changing talent was Iverson and since then the 76ers have only made two moves to bring their team back to elite status during the Iverson tenure.

In 2008, the Sixers signed Elton Brand, an All-Star and consistent 20 and 10 guy to a five year deal. On December 17, 2008 Brand went down with a shoulder injury that needed season ending surgery. When he finally returned to the Sixers, it was clear he wasn’t the same player. He was no longer that consistent 20-point scorer and aggressive rebounder he was before arriving to Philly.

This past summer the 76ers were apart of a 12-player blockbuster trade that landed them Andrew Bynum another 20 and 10 threat. But the dominated big men has yet to suit up for a game this season—chronic knee problems—for the Sixers (12-11) who are now sitting with the 8th best record in the Eastern Conference. Although it’s still early to determine the Bynum deal a “bust” we can still evaluate if the Sixers needed to make this move.

Andrew Bynum is in the final year of his contract and is owned $16.8 million. Worst-case scenario, the 76ers are only renting Bynum for the year since he will be a free agent this summer. But if you look at the moves made by the Sixers since the acquisition it is clear the Philly brass have “gone all in.” Especially since they added Jason Richardson and Dorrell Wright to stretch the floor in anticipation for Bynum’s low post scoring.

It’s very clear that the 76ers want Bynum to sign a long-term contract and be the new face of their franchise. They traded Andre Iguodala—an all-Star and one of the best perimeter defender in league—for Bynum. Iguodala would guard the best scorer on the opposing team, but head coach Doug Collins knew what he was giving up “Andre’s one of the better defenders in the NBA,” Collins said. “We knew that. Giving him up, we thought we were going to have one of the best post defenders (Bynum).”

Collins is highlighting the fact that Bynum has not played a single game because of his right knee problem along with a number of setbacks. “My left knee is still really sore right knee is actually better, so that’s good,” said Bynum on Monday, who last spoke to the media on Nov. 25. “It’s just pain, just by walking around. Worst case scenario it’s another month.” At first glance this is great news to Sixers’ fans because they still have an above .500 record and will be getting Bynum who definitely help them move up the standings in the Eastern Conference.

Even with this hopefully prediction of his return his comments concerning the actual problem doesn’t sit well with scouts and fans:

“It’s just continuous pain,” he said of the left knee. “It’s just the bone bruise has to heal. It’s a mirror image of my right knee and my right knee took four months. I think we’re a little bit ahead of the curve because two months my right knee was swollen pretty big. So we’ve gotten the swelling out of that already (in the left) and I think it could be quicker. If my left knee gets better and feels like my right knee then I’ll be playing.”

Bynum will probably be out a whole lot longer than one month to comeback from this type of pain or have season ending surgery. And it seems that the Philly brass would agree with this claim as well because recent reports state that they have been inquiring about acquiring starting caliber center. “They got to be a little panicked now,” one GM said. “They could get a really interesting deal for him. I could see them doing that.” This is a reasonable option because they will be guaranteed to get talent in return instead of nothing if Bynum leaves for free agency.

Overall the Sixers were wise to trade for Bynum. Iguodala wasn’t cutting it as the “guy” for Philly for a number of reasons. With the Sixers style of play they normally had balanced scoring nights and no one was really a designated closer for the 76ers. While this was good in terms of versatility, a team needs a star to consistently close games—especially in the playoffs. Iguodala couldn’t do this. Bynum can do this and also put fans in seats because of his drawing power. And now with Evan Turner playing better he could fill the void that Iguodala has left. Acquiring Bynum was a calculated risk because if it worked the Sixers would be in the upper echelon in the East but if it failed they could cut their losses in a trade or with free agency.